#mgm movie

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So... Wicked is coming back in style. And as such I need to make a little informative post.

Because since as early as my arrival onto the Internet, in the distant years of the late 2000s, a lot of people have been treating Wicked as some sort of "official" part of the Oz series. As part of the Oz canon or as THE "original" work everything else derives from (literaly, some people, probably kids, but did believe the MGM movie was made BASED on Wicked...) And as an Oz fan, that bothers me.

[Damn, ever since I watched Coco Peru's videos her voice echoes in my brain each time I say this line.]

So here's a few FACTS for you facts lovers.

The Wicked movie that is coming out right now (I was sold this as a series, turns out it is a movie duology?) is a cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked created by Schwartz and Holzman, the Broadway classic and success of the 2000s (it was created in 2003).

Now, the Wicked musical everybody knows is itself an adaptation - and this fact is not as notorios, somehow? The Wicked musical is the adaptation of a novel released in 1995 by Gregory Maguire, called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. A very loose and condensed adaptation to say the least - as the Wicked musical is basically a lighter and simplified take on a much darker, brooding and mature tale. Basically fans of the novel have accused the musical of being some sort of honeyed, sugary-sweet, highschool-romance-fanfic-AU, while those who enjoyed the musical and went to see the novel are often shocked at discovering their favorite musical is based on what is basically a "dark and edgy - let's shock them all" take on the Oz lore. (Some do like both however, apparently? But I rarely met them.)

A side-fact which will be relevant later, is that this novel was but the first of a full series of novel Oz wrote about a dark-and-adult fantasy reimagining of the land of Oz - there's Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, Out of Oz, and more.

However the real fact I want to point out is that Maguire's novel, from which the musical itself derives, is a "grimmification" (to take back TV Tropes terminology) of the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz. The movie everybody knows when it comes to Oz, but that everybody forgets is itself the adaptation of a book - the same way people forget the Wicked musical is adapted from a novel. The MGM movie is adapted from L. Frank Baum's famous 1900 classic for children The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - and a quite loose adaptation that reimagines a lot of elements and details.

Now, a lot of people present Maguire's novel as being based/inspired/a revisionist take on Baum's novel... And that's false. Maguire's Wicked novel is clearly dominated by and mainly influenced by the MGM movie, with only a few book elements and details sprinkled on top. Mind you, the sequels Maguire wrote do take more elements, characters and plot points from the various Oz books of Baum... But they stay mostly Maguire's personal fantasy world. Yes, Oz "books" in plural - because that's a fact people tend to not know either... L. Frank Baum didn't just write one book about the Land of Oz. He wrote FOURTEEN of them, an entire series, because it was his most popular sales, and his audience like his editor pressured him to produce more (in fact he got sick of Oz and tried to write other books, but since they failed he was forced to continue Oz novels to survive). Everybody forgot about the Oz series due to the massive success of the starter novel - but it has a lot of very famous sequels, such as The Marvelous Land of Oz or Ozma of Oz (the later was loosely adapted by Disney as the famous 80s nostalgic-cursed movie Return to Oz).

So... To return to my original point. The current Wicked movies are not directly linked in any way to Baum's novel. The Wicked musical was already as "canon" and as "linked" to the MGM movie as 2013's Oz The Great and Powerful by Disney was. As for Maguire's novel, due to its dark, mature, brooding and more complex worldbuilding nature, I can only compare it to the recent attempt at making a "Game of Thrones Oz" through the television series Emerald City.

The Wicked movies coming out are separated from Baum's novel at the fourth degree. Because they are the movie adaptation of a musical adaptation of a novel reinventing a movie adaptation of the original children book.

And I could go even FURTHER if you dare me to and claim the Wicked movies are at the 5TH DEGREE! Because a little-known-fact is that the MGM movie was not a direct adaptation of Baum's novel... But rather took a lot of cues and influence from the massively famous stage-extravaganza of 1902 The Wizard of Oz... A musical adaptation of Baum's novel, created and written by Baum himself, and that was actually more popular than the novel in the pre-World War II America. It was from this enormous Broadway success (my my, how the snake bites its tail - the 1902 Wizard of Oz was the musical Wicked of its time) that, for example, the movie took the idea of the Good Witch of the North killing the sleeping-poppies with snow.

[witchesoz]

I randomly found on this Internet this picture of Glinda from the MGM movie... and where the colors were changed/muted in such a way that Glinda's outfit appears white instead of pink. And I wanted to share this, because this shows how Glinda's outfit would have looked like if the MGM crew had stuck with the original description by Baum of the Good Witches wearing white.

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SHELLEY DUVALL

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Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse - Anchors Aweigh (1945)

[travelinglikethelight]

Cinematic Highlight of the Year: BLINK TWICE (2024)

[rydersxsource]

‘The Fire Inside’ is now in theaters, support black films and see this incredible movie today! 🤎

[dynared]

The VLD fandom holding on to Shiro, ships, and their fandom one week before the show is taken off streaming, possibly forever.

Amazon MGM announcing their cast for their big budget live-action Voltron movie starring Henry Cavill, promising it will have nothing to do with VLD and starring a new cast of characters within the same week with a focus on giant robots.

[blondebrainpowered]

Jackie, 1928-1956, the second lion to be used in the MGM logo. Photograph ca. 1928

Jackie’s roar was recorded for use at the beginning of MGM talking movies. A sound stage was built around his cage to make the recording.

In addition to appearing in the MGM logo, Jackie appeared in more than one hundred films (all black and white films from 1928-1956, including the Tarzan movies that starred Johnny Weissmuller).

[witchesoz]

The dark side of the Wizard of Oz (MGM)

The 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz” is remembered as a beautiful, colorful and magical story – and yet its production and behind-the-scenes was filled with pain and suffering. This whole movie was so complicated and troublesome to create that some even thought of calling it “cursed”… Here are some of the “dark sides” of the MGM movie:

# The actor we have for the Tin Man in the current movie was a second choice. Or rather a third choice… You see, originally the actor for the Tin Man was Ray Bolger. But Ray Bolger had a childhood hero – Fred Stone. And Fred Stone was renowned and famous for having played on stage the Scarecrow in the original Wizard of Oz musical (I talked about it before, it was the Wizard of Oz play that Baum oversaw and that was created as a complement to the original book). So Ray Bolger, wanting to emulate the star he admired so much, actually managed to swap his place with the original actor for the Scarecrow – Buddy Ebsen, who got the role of the Tin Woodman. However the actor of the Tin Woodman in the movie is Jack Haley. What happened? Well… You see, the original Tin Woodman makeup was MUCH shinier, truly sparking. It was because the makeup was created out of aluminum powder. What the makeup department clearly hadn’t planned was that with each breath he took, Ebsen would INHALE aluminum particle, that slowly lined up and filled his lungs until, in his own words, he tried to breath and found out he couldn’t do it. Ebsen nearly asphyxiated to death. Hopefully he survived, but he still suffered massive respiratory issues that stuck with him for the rest of his life, and of course he refused to work on this “damn movie” anymore. Jack Haley, his successor, benefited from a much less toxic makeup made out of aluminum paste – but his costume wasn’t much more comfortable, since he couldn’t sit down or bend easily (after all, it was a rigid metal-imitating costume). If he wanted to rest, he had to use a reclining ironing board. He apparently constantly remembered the movie as an “awful experience” due to everything that happened there, and insists that he had no fun playing his role (though he apparently didn’t had anything against the movie itself, it just wasn’t a good memory for him).

# The script for the movie was written times and times again, and while three writers are credited for the final product, there was actually much more authors behind the scenes. These three were just the ones that the studio worked the most with/the ones that stayed around for the longest time ; and the piling up different scripts deserves a whole post on its own. And similarly, the movie kept changing directors: in fact, there was five different directors for this piece. Number one, Norman Taurog who oversaw the casting and the constructions of the sets, but left. Number two, Richard Thorpe, who oversaw the initial shooting of the movie, but was fired due to his footage looking REALLY bad (he notably wanted Judy Garland to put on a “baby-like” makeup to make Dorothy young looker, which looked ridiculous). Third, George Cukor, who came just a few days to help save the mess and put back everything together, before leaving for his actual big project, “Gone with the Wind”. Fourth, Victor Fleming, who oversaw most of the shooting of the movie – but ultimately had to leave as the movie was almost finished, ironically to replace George Cukor on “Gone with the Wind”. The missing scenes (which were the Kansas sequences) were shot under the fifth and last director, King Vidor – but in the final product, only Victor Fleming was credited since he had done the most work out of the five.

# Beyond the “Tin Man” incident, questions of makeup and costumes also greatly bothered Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow) and Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion). The Cowardly Lion’s facial prosthetics forced its actor to undergo a liquid diet, since he could eat with a straw – if he ate a solid meal, the makeup was ruined and he had to redo it all over again. Bert Lahr’s lion costume was very heavy (90 lbs) and very hot, which under the studio lights was a big problem. It was basically a sauna in there, and to avoid the actor going into a heat stroke, the crew prepared two lion costumes – Lahr acted in one until it became fully drenched in his sweat and too hot for him to continue, then he removed the costume and put on the second one to continue acting, while the sweat-filled one was dried out in front of a fan so he could repeat the “costume switch” process later. (Lahr himself also had to stand in front of a fan, out of costume, between each shot, to dry himself). As for the “scarecrow mask” of Ray Bolger, it was a rubber thing that prevented his face from getting both air and moisture, and as a result when he removed it, he tended to find his skin cracking (or even bleeding in some cases). And when he was done shooting, he realized that the mask had imprinted a pattern on his ACTUAL face, and these lines took one whole year to fade.

# The big incident everybody knows about by now is how Margaret Hamilton, the actress for the Wicked Witch of the West, got badly burned. As it turns out, having a witch-character playing with fire isn’t a good idea when your pyrotechnics are unstable. The reason that the Witch’s leaving Munchkinland through teleportation seems a bit fake (you see the smoke appearing out of the ground too early, and you can see the witch being lowered by a hatch beneath) was because this was a rehearsal take – when it came time to shot the actual scene, the lowering-platform got stuck somehow, and Margaret Hamilton took the giant burst of flames right in the face. The fact her green makeup included COPPER in it (which was also why she wouldn’t eat while the makeup was on) made her burns even worse – she had to stay in the hospital for weeks to heal up, and afterward she refused to do any scenes involving fire, despite the crew making a specifically fireproof costume for her. And it was apparently a good decision, as when her body-double did some of the missing “fiery scenes”, she too got badly burned out of faulty pyrotechnics. And even after finishing the movie, Hamilton had to wait for months until finally the greenish color left by her makeup disappeared from her skin…

# Fascinatingly, Margaret Hamilton came to regret her role as the Wicked Witch of the West after the release of the movie. She did enjoy playing the part and had fought for it – but she was also a kind woman who loved children and worked as a school teacher between her acting times, and she came to dislike how she had helped to scare so many children across the world, as well as her part in creating a true bogeyman of the early 20th century. This “half-rejection” is most notably seen in Margaret Hamilton’s appearance in “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood”, where she explained clearly how the Wicked Witch was a make-belief character and that children didn’t need to be afraid of her, the actress behind the mask.

# Judy Garland had a long story of misfortunes and sadness – her life was one tragedy of heartbreaks, abuse, body dysmorphia, drugs and suicidal thoughts. And many point out her experience on “The Wizard of Oz” as the start of this dark path she walked onto… Mostly because of how badly it went for her. You will find lots of tales and claims about sexual harassment or abuse of Judy Garland on the set by various actors – but these tend to be, at best false, at worst unproven. To be fair there is a lot of real-life incidents on the set that got exaggerated through gossips and talks: for example you might have heard that Judy Garland was physically abused by Victor Fleming, the director, and as a proof someone will say that she got slapped in the face by him for ruining a take. Well, it is a real incident that got out of text: during the introduction scene of the Cowardly Lion, Judy Garland got caught in a hysterical laughing fit. She tried to hide it at first (in the scene you can see Garland covering her face to hide the fact she is laughing), but soon couldn’t contain it. To snap her out of it, Victor Fleming slapped her, but since she continued giggling he sent her to her dressing room to have her calm down – and afterward, he felt ashamed of himself enough that he ordered crewmembers to punch him in the face for how stupid he was, but Judy refused to slap him back and just kissed him (note that Judy Garland apparently had a big crush on him at the time, so that explains a lot of things). Another story you might have heard was how the studios forced Judy Garland to constantly watch out of her weight and forced her through a terrible diet of “only coffee, chicken soup and cigarettes” to have her keep her petite figure, and that this terrible “diet” was the start of Judy Garland’s lifelong body dysmorphia. This is an exaggerated account of what truly happened – Judy Garland did not smoke at the time, so the cigarette part is false, and she never had any food restriction whatsoever, so the strict liquid diet was also invented… But due to being a sixteen year old girl playing a younger character, she was asked to keep her weight to a minimum to avoid having too mature curves show up – and this was done by rather a strict set of exercising (regular natation and hiking séances, and regular games of tennis and badminton). Plus also binding very tightly her chest to avoid her breast to show up and keep her “youthful” look. In general Judy Garland’s filming experience was painful physically – for example the ruby slippers hurt her feet so much she couldn’t wear them for too long, and in shots where her feet were off screen she wore more comfortable boots or just walked with socks on (when Dorothy and Scarecrow back up from the apple-tree, you can glimpse the socks on her feet without the ruby slippers).  And while the abuse stories might have been exaggerated and invented afterward (especially since most of them come from third-parties or came out after Garland’s death), one thing that is certain sit that Garland actually felt apparently increasingly lonely on the set, as she didn’t made any friends among her cast members (most notably the actors playing Dorothy’s companion apparently didn’t get along very well with her, due to them not liking much Garland’s perceived attempt at “upstaging” them and stealing the spotlight, and so never truly included her in their social group). With perhaps the exception of Margaret Hamilton, who apparently was the only one of the actors of the movie who actually was genuinely nice and cared for Garland.

# Speaking of how these “abuse stories” of Judy Garland have to be taken with a grain of salt, let’s look at common one: the idea that Judy Garland was sexually harassed or even abused by the actors playing the Munchkins. This idea actually came due to the memoir published after Garland’s death by one of her ex-husbands, Sidney Luft (he was husband number 3, I think she had five in total?). He claimed that she had been sexually harassed by the Munchkin actors… But again, as I point it is Luft’s testimony, published after Garland’s death – and the reason why Garland divorced Luft? She claimed he was abusing her… When talking about the Munchkin actors, Garland herself had some things to say yes, but no real “sexual harassment” stories. She did say that the Munchkins actors were actually drunks who partied and drank all night long, overall a quite rowdy bunch – and she did report that one of the Munchkins actors asked her out, despite him being in his forties. But Luft’s claim seems to have been mixed up with the testimony of one of the producers of the movie, Mervyn LeRoy, who talked of “sex orgies” that the Munchkins actors organized and that ultimately the police had to be involved in the hotel they stayed at… But this whole accusation of chaotic sexuality has been countered by the testimonies of Munchkin actors themselves (notably some of those who were just teens at the time of filming), and they explained that these tales were actually greatly exaggerated accounts of the bad actions of a handful of them – more specifically a group of young men from Germany that had the bad habit of drinking beer at every meal and wanted to use their time on the movie to meet girls, even if the girls “didn’t want” to meet them. But this just caused a “little trouble” according to these counter-testimonies, and there was certainly no “orgy of depraved dwarfs” as some might have reported.

Overall it is a very dark and complicated topic to talk about what abuse Garland might have received during the movie, notably because tend to confuse things together for the sake of sensationalism. Did Garland’s drug addiction started out with this movie because the studio gave her “pep pills” to keep her thin and energetic, or is it a lie and did it start earlier due to her own mother giving him these energy drugs? Was she truly sexually harassed on the set of the movie, or is it just a confusion with other sexual harassments Garland received outside of the movie by big heads of the MGM studios? I obviously can’t answer those questions with my limited knowledge of it all… But one should know that these questions exist and have to be answered.

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The Muppets Go to the Movies (1981)

[eternamenteaudreyhepburn]

Audrey Hepburn photographed during a hair and wardrobe tests for Green Mansions at MGM Studios in 1958.

[fromville-divorce-lawyer]

Under the Bottle Tree: A Fromville Christmas Miracle

Stranded in a small town on Christmas, two unlikely allies discover that sometimes love is the strongest force of all.

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Joan Crawford - Dancing Lady (1933)

[travelinglikethelight]

BOOP! Blink Twice (2024) | Dir. Zoë Kravitz

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

I was bored so I thought I'd make a little something....

Vincent Price MGM logo...

[the-myrna-loy-blog]

Myrna Loy peruses an MGM movie magazine! Late 1930's.