The Making of "The Wizard of Oz"

1977, 1989 Delta edition
Aljean Harmetz
The Making of "The Wizard of Oz":  Movie Magic and Studio Power in the Prime of MGM-- And the Miracle of Production #1060
Bought new for $12.95
Worn paperback
B

Originally released the same year as The Oz Scrapbook, this covers some of the same territory of course, but with the focus on the 1939 movie.  Harmetz was able to interview many of the survivors who'd worked on the film, many of whom would die in the dozen years before this edition came out.  The content seems mostly unchanged, except she updates some of the statistics and acknowledges the passing of, among others, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, and Margaret Hamilton.  (I'm not sure if he was the last of the cast to go, but I remember a couple years ago when Meinhardt Raabe, the Munchkin Coroner, himself became "really most sincerely dead."

Not only does Harmetz look back to Hollywood's Golden Age, but reading the book now evokes that period in the early '70s when the studios literally threw away much of their history, and Debbie Reynolds was the only movie star to bid on the Ruby Slippers at the MGM auction.  (One pair was offered for $2 million last December but didn't sell, so it's funny to read of Debbie not being able to match the winning bid of $15,000, an astounding amount in 1970.)  Such issues as overtime and risk, comparing the 1930s to four decades later, come up, as when MGM didn't seem to care about the injuries to, among others, Hamilton and Buddy Ebsen (the original Tin Man, who had an allergic reaction to the make-up).

My favorite parts are about the Wicked Witch, with Hamilton's no-nonsense attitude a hoot.  (She points out that legally the Witch should've inherited the slippers from her sister.)  It's also fun to read the sometimes overwrought earlier drafts of the script.  (For years, my ex-husband and I would deliberately misquote the line of the Tin Man's love interest, Lizzie Smithers, as "I should've stayed in bed with the Tin Man," but honestly, the real line, "Why did I ever leave the Tin Man?  Oooh, I wish I was home in bed!" isn't much better.)

As with The Oz Scrapbook, the book is generally even-handed, although I think she's too harsh on the later Baum Oz books.  To her credit though, she does see the turning of Oz into a dream as a weakening of the book's realistic fantasy.  She offers different versions of some stories, letting readers decide which interviewee is most believable.  There are many illustrations, including some in color.  The book overlaps a little with John Lahr's biography of his father, but includes some information on Bert Lahr that that book from eight years before did not.  Harmetz and the people she interviews, including songwriter Yip Harburg, seem less enthusiastic about The Wiz than Greene and Martin were.

Harburg's biography, Who Put the Rainbow in "The Wizard of Oz"?, will come along in 1993, and as the title suggests, The Wizard of Oz ended up being the greatest legacy in the careers of nearly everyone who helped make it.