The Wizard of Oz (Part 1 - The Cast): Everything You Didn't Know - Too Much Information

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome the Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the little known details, behind the scenes,
history behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more.
We are your flying monkeys of facts, You're overgrown munchkins
of miscellany, you're anti EM's of ephemera, your men behind
the curtain of arcana. Come your way like twin twisters

(00:30):
of tedium for an episode that is totally packed with trivia.
If I only had a brain, that intro would have
been better.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
My name is Jordan, Run Talk and I'm Alex yu
U Jordan. Welcome back. I feel like we do owe
listeners something of an explanation. You had pneumonia.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I had a nuclear grade.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Don't apologize for it. My god.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's a New England thing is when you get sick,
we kind of view it as like a personal failing.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I mean, well it is, but you don't have to
call attention to it. That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, folks, I'm officially the youngest person I know to
ever get pneumonia, which kind of goes along with my
whole old soul thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It does. The only way it would have been funny
is if it had been like tuberculosis, yeah, yeah, yeah,
or consumption one of those the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I know, I didn't know that, Yeah, diphtheria.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
What else? Did people die in the Oregon trail of smallpox?
I think there's like a racial side to that. Maybe
did you get that blanket I sent you? Though?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yes, folks, I gotta say, be careful out there. This
season is particularly brutal, with lots of nasty stuff going around.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
This is like the realist we've ever got on this show.
Like Jordan was actually very sick. Be nice to him.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
No, I am so excited to get back in the saddle.
It's been like three weeks and I'm finally mostly feeling
like myself. But you know, during the period when my
brain was cooking, I tormented my dear co host Alex
Haigil by texting him a series of random nonsense.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Did you want do you want me to start reading
these off? Did you want to read them? Or should I?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh, you should because I barely remember them. I think
I remember having the idea of incorporating an Orson Wells
soundboard into the show. Yes, which wouldn't be the worst
idea in the world.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
So Thursday, January sixteenth, you were like fevers at one
hundred and four, I'm going to get in the tub,
and then I fell asleep to this with a screenshot
of the Adolph Eichmann trial. Oh yeah, I was watching
a lot of World War Two documentaries and then woke
up to Buffalo Boner to the tune of Bob Marley
playing with lifelike volume. Oh yeah, Buffalo Soldier. Yeah yeah.

(02:39):
I just have Orson Wells interviews on in the background.
I'm thinking of making a Tim and Eric like soundboard.
I was going to clip them.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I was going to clip them and then just like randomly,
instead of the taco bell sound effect, just have him
saying I never met Stalin.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
I never met Stalin, you know, literally tears of rage.
Watched Chindler's List for the first time. Liam Neeson looked
disturbingly like my dad in the nineties, and then a
picture of Orson Welles laughing that says like a mature baby.
He does. He looks like a big baby. I've become
fixated on the idea that you should be dancing by

(03:15):
the begis is incredibly foreboding, an ominous it haunts me.
Capital h It's like Dick York's bagpipes.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Oh yeah, when he was detoxing, he couldn't sleep because
he just heard the sound of the bagpipes.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
And I just heard you should be dancing.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
It's a really scary like now, I'm frightened of it.
It sounds like the Imperial March to me, it's like
really freaky.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Hey man, I wanted to see what God only knows
sounded like condensed into five seconds. So I took the
song and cut it into thirty five five second segments
and layered them all on top of each other. Check
it out. I wonder if Steve Reich ever thought of that.

(04:12):
Next text, Doc says, I have pneumonia. What if waxing
my tips is a thing? Now? Oh yeah my mustache? Yeah,
don't do that. Yeah no, I won't do that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
There was no context to that either.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
No, okay, yeah, you really put up with a lot
that well. I don't know if you would include this.
I just realized that I've combined my buddy Valentine and
my chemical romance into one band. All this time, I.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Will say, to honor our new friend of the pod,
I've been listening to I'm Not Okay over and over again.
I repeat ever since we tape that it's a great song.
So yeah, So now my brain is kind of returned.
But I will say, after a few weeks of being
laid up in bed with my frontal cortex getting poached
like an egg, there's something oddly fitting about tackling a
movie where the plot is the brain damaged dream of

(04:59):
a young girl who suffered a serious head injury. Folks today,
and I slightly belated nod to the world beating success
at the big screen adaptation of Wicked, directed by my
cousin in law, John Chew. We're talking about a little
movie called The Wizard of Oz. If you're not familiar,
let me provide a brief one sentence summary courtesy of

(05:20):
TV writer Rick Poalito. Transported to a surreal landscape, a
young girl kills the first person she meets, and then
teams up with three strangers.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
To kill again. The Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
It ranks high on many prestigious lists of the greatest
films of all time. The American Film Institute ranked at
number ten on THEIRS in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
This, of course is subjective, but what's less subjective is
that this is quite possibly the most recognized movie in history. Yeah.
I mean that's the thing. Who doesn't know about this? Right?

Speaker 2 (05:50):
And that's so crazy to me because it's kind of
a weird movie when you.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Get down to it. Oh yeah, it very much is, dude.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Do in large part to regular airings on network TV
in the side and half of the twentieth century. Heigel's
beloved Library of Congress estimated in the year two thousand
that The Wizard of Oz has been seen by more
viewers than any film in history. In fact, to me,
it's the movie that comes to mind when I think
about the very concept of movies. Yeah, right, Heigel, what

(06:17):
do you think about the Wizard of Oz? I don't know,
because what do I think about the Ocean?

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah? I mean, like it's so big. It was on
TV once a year, and it was one of those
things where it was like everyone would like get together
and it wasn't like a social thing. It was just
somehow like my family would end up just like congregating
around the TV, like time to watch Words of Oz.
And you know, I've since debunked a lot of the
things that you hear about it. Yeah, we'll talk a

(06:45):
lot about that. I've since come to recognize much of
its importance to the gay community. Talk a lot about that.
I just don't really like. Here's the thing, this is
not like an especially interesting fantasy world. To me explain,
It's kind of boring.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Okay, I mean, don't forget the technicolor thing got a
lot of mileage in nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Oh sure. I don't mean anything about like the aesthetics
of it. I just mean, like, the guy who wrote Wicked,
Gregory Maguire, has written eight books in the OZ universe. No,
I lied, I lied, I lied whatever I said, plus
one because he also wrote a short story of the
life story of the Scarecrow. But that is not a

(07:29):
part of the Wicked years, which are all the ones
that focus on the Wicked Witch of the West.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
And that's not even counting all the original Frank Baumb books,
which are like fourteen or seventeen or something.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yes, and I get, I mean, I don't know. I
can't say anything about this without sign a misogynist or
like or at least very like like a straight white
guy like I get, like Star Wars, Star Trek Dune.
If we're looking for a female lead fantasy world. I'm sorry,
there aren't any really, No, there's hunger grams. I'm being

(07:59):
PHYSI yes, there's obviously hunger games. But yeah, dude, I
don't know. People were like, Okay, explain this world to me.
What's so crazy about it? I don't know. There's little people,
and some animals can talk, but not all of them,
and the dictator in the world is a guy from
Chicago who came to a place where people can sometimes
do actual magic and there's talking animals. But still all

(08:21):
of the residents of this world were completely hoodwinked by him,
and he was able to amass power because he was
from Chicago and a dickhead. And that's it, right, Like,
and the magic isn't especially impressive, Like that's the whole thing,
right and wicked They make this enormous deal out of
magic and it's just like, okay, so you can fly,

(08:42):
that's cool. But Glinda has a bubble? What am I missing?
What is gripping about this? Hey, everybody, this is Jordan.
A few days after we tape this.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Now everyone knows that my dear friend Alex Heigel has
some thoughts about a lot of things sometimes these thoughts
can be less than positive. Yes, he can be a
tad dour, a little hard to impress. We read the
show reviews and it's been commented upon once or twice.
These moments happen so often I thought it was necessary

(09:17):
to come up with a little theme tune to signal
when Highgel's about to go full Highgel. It will serve
both as a warning and also remind everyone why we
love him so dearly.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Here take a listen.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
He walks in with a frown on his face, rolls
his eyes like we're out of place. Every movie he's
just a waste of times. His TV he's a crime.
No show can climb. Every tune just greats. His ears,
our favorite.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Bring him close to tears.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
He's the king of disdain in our little room, and
his judgment's like a cloud of doom. All Lexagle's got
no long spare for movies, music, TV. It's glad ab
his lance make the show so fun.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
Our rum be co host is seconds and no, we've
got trivia.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
He's got trends. Every question fills him with lead.

Speaker 5 (10:23):
He can't stand the pop and the flash thinks ever
replies pure trash, but seep down. We know the scar
that's when we keep him on him full.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
He's crows are gold.

Speaker 5 (10:39):
Pure complain turns every episode into rest. Oh, Alexigle's got
no long spare for movies, music, TV.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
He's gladby France.

Speaker 5 (10:54):
Make the show so fun. Our crumb be co host
is second.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Thank you so much, and now back to our regularly
scheduled program. Okay, I have some things to say about this,
and I hear what you say.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Go on. I was always.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Drawn to the Wizard of Oz to the degree that
I was because it's weird in a non fantastical, non mystical,
non mythical, non Celtic, non Tolkien, non scipia.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Since what I said, it's completely boring.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Well, all the fantasy stuff you like, I don't like.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
But it's the white bread of fantasy.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
No here, okay, hear me out to me, those worlds
of dragons and monsters, that's all cliche stuff to me.
The Wizard of Oz is weird in like a Lewis Carroll,
like allis in Wonderland sense.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
How dare you bring Lewis Carroll's name into this.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
It's like creepy whimsy and I like that. I like
how ordinary secular stuff becomes imbued with supernatural significance to
craft this weird fever dream of a surreal modern myth.
I always like that because I feel like it highlights
the absurd and the extraordinary in everyday life. You have
this random Edwardian and Victorian items and characters that suddenly

(12:18):
become strange and weird.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
To me, It's like a magrete painting or something. I'm
fascinated by that.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
I will grant you that. But you know, look, I've
never read the books, and I don't This is a
knock against the movie either. I'm just saying I don't
understand the people who are like, no, this is my thing.
I'm gonna write thirteen books about this.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Oh yeah, I don't get that either. But I mean
I don't get that about anything.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Especially when you get into the like the Gregory maguire,
Like he's a good writer, like the sentence to sentence,
the writing's very good. But then it's like, I don't
know whatever linguistic template he picked up from Frank Elbaum.
But it's like they get to the school and it's
named shiz f. Do you want me to do with that? Dude?
Come on. At least at least Dune is like Lawrence

(13:02):
of Arabia and space cocaine, Like I can get that,
you know. And there's worms, and there's like fantastic creatures
and space travel and this one. They're like, yeah, the
horses are different colors. Isn't that up? My twisted imagination
conjured a blue horse? Like, okay, man, it's sick. It's

(13:26):
a different class of fantasy you took. You took the
infinite tradition of all that stuff that you casually discarded.
You're like Celtic fairy tales, you know, like ancient English
back like the Hero's Journey all that. And he's like, yeah,
I don't know. A horse is blue and this chick
travels around in a bubble and then the other one
can fly, you know what it is? To me, the

(13:47):
Wizard of Oz doesn't.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
And I'm sure there's some historians or English professors listening
right now that can prove me wrong on this, But
to me, I feel like the Wizard of Oz doesn't
borrow as heavily from classical myth. I feel like it's
its own self created new thing, and that is fascinating
to me. Sure we're mythologizing Kansas, you know what I mean, Like,
there's something fun about that to me.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, I'm just trying to go back into like Frank
Elbaum's like brainstorming for this. Oh wait, we got we
got a whole we got a whole thing. You got
a whole thing on that. Okay, Anyway, those are my
thoughts on the Wizard of Oz. It's fine, and I've
seen it many so many times, and I like I
especially like you know, I like I see, I get

(14:31):
what you're saying, Like I hear that cell. You know,
it doesn't carry any weight with me because you already
had Lewis Carroll and you already had all this other stuff.
And you know when was this written nineteen Yeah, so
Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis were somewhat contemporary with this.
Well no, sorry. C. S. Lewis was two years old,
so he had not. But you know, I'm just saying,

(14:53):
I guess, yeah, I don't know. That's my only knock
against it is this, like as a fantasy world, I
don't understand why it has the legs that it does.
And I think the movie is such a huge part
of that, and it's such an intrinsic part of American
culture period, full stop. That's fine and good, you argue.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Is just by constant exposure as opposed to being a
good text.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, as like a concept. This is sub Hunger Games
like sub I just any thing, man, this is sub
Logan's Run, Like come on.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
I mean, this isn't an intellectual argument, but I mean,
to me, I like it because I find there to
be something very deeply haunting about this film. And I'm
not just talking about the ghost of Judy Garland's murdered childhood. Yeah,
I think this is something just wildly unsettling about this movie.
And I kind of like that. It's not like Haunted
Carnival vibes to me.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yes, you know, and I like that.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I mean Wicked, which to the West is probably one
of the most terrifying figures in the Western collective unconscious.
I would argue maybe it connects with people more not
because of the whimsical stuff, but because it's so creepy
and unsettling and at points even terrifying. Maybe it's more
a kid to a horror movie than a fantasy movie.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
I think I also have a soft spot for this movie.
Because in high school I was in the musical version
of it and it was really fun.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
It was a good time.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, I was the I was the horse of a
different color driver.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
They had me to do this really weird Cockney accent
for it, which I don't think was in the movie.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Oh but you love that, like very Dick Van Dyke talk.
He probably does. It's the only line I remember.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, my good friend Chris Fleming, a comedian of some
renown on the Internet, he was the scarecrow.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
That is apt for him. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, yeah,
I mean again, like Man the movies, I agree with
everything you're saying, and I kind of like that sinisterliness.
I mean, and if we're going like English major on it,
like there is a certain with the distance of the
entire twentieth century, there is a certain resonance to this
idea that like, oh, it's this magical, unspoiled world that

(16:55):
you can be transported to. But the guy who runs
it was transported here by a mistake, and he's just
a Chicago con artist, and he took over this whole
place and enslaved people and ruined it. So sure, man,
story for our time. I know, yeah, like, there you go,
but I don't believe that in my heart of hearts.
Flying monkeys ooh ooh, what a twisted one. We imagine

(17:19):
what I could think of next, Yes, maybe a crow
with man arms. Ooh yeah, that would be kind of funny.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
But this was forty years before Star Wars, fifty years
before Dune, and.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Like one hundred and seventy thousand years after Beowolf or whatever.
Bearwolf still slaps like this, a guy rips off a
monster's arm. Whatever.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
All right, he had all the horror movies, he had
all the universal horror movies that I guess preceded all this.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
But no, the movie. Sure, but I mean, like again,
I just don't see the appeal in ODZ as like
a place.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
And yeah, you're the only one of the two of
us who went to see Wicked in the theaters.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, and I will. I'm proud of at that. Songs go.
Cynthia Arrivo is a treasure Arianna. She's also good actually,
I mean the first time I saw her on SNL,
I was like, oh, she actually has like comic chops
and she's very funny in this movie. And obviously she
can sing her ass off. So yeah, and you know, grinted,
I'm sorry. I've never read the book or the thirteen others,

(18:20):
so maybe I'm missing a lot more nuance.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
All right, So with all that in mind, I think
it's time to dive in. This may be very well
be our longest episode yet.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Or we may divide it up into two.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
We haven't figured that out yet, but let's get to it.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Here is everything, and I do mean everything you didn't
know about the Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
I call this section He's the Bomb. Well that's good.
That was pretty good. It was good.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, The Wizard of Oz a cinematic reputation is so
huge that a lot of people forget that was actually
based on the best selling book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
which was published in nineteen hundred by L. Frank Baum.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Bomb came from a.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Rich family and was decidedly something of an indoor kid.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
His parents tried.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
To cure him of this by sending him the military
school at age twelve, or he suffered a heart attack
that the school officials believed to be psychos somatic. I'm
guessing this whole episode was what we currently understand to
be a panic attack.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
But that's my non medical opinion. But I was led
to believe that they were so much tougher back then.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
No, this guy has a very interesting origin story. He
was sent back home, and I want to read this
next line directly from his Wikipedia page. At twenty Bomb
took on the national craze of breeding poultry. So twenty
years before hitting it big with the Wizard of Oz,
L frank Baum made a living breeding quote a fancy
breed of chicken known as the Hamburg. This chicken breed

(19:57):
actually was the topic of the first entry in El
frank bombs storied literary canon.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
His book was called the Book of.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
The Hamburgs, a brief treatise upon the mating, rearing, and
management of the different varieties of Hamburgs.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
And this is the guy who's crafted this indelible magical
world a chicken.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
And then he got the theater bug after this, the
natural corollary to poultry breeding.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I suppose it.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Started when he dressed up as Santa at family gatherings,
which at this point I'm just picturing tobias.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
From arrested development. Unfortunately, poor L.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Frank Baum, he was something of an easy mark and
he was frequently exploited by various theater troops and agents.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
The that isn't new and I'm going to make this
a personal reference for Frank. That is a new low
on the pecking order. If you're being bullied by theater kids. Now,
they can be mean and caddy and I do know that,
but like, come all on one.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Theater company convinced them to pay for all a bunch
of new costumes under the pretense that he'd be given
leading roles, and then this just never happens.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Let mean, get against Tobias. So this kicked from pillar
to post by everyone from the chicken breeding community to
the theater troops of the early nineteen hundreds. My god,
they had.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Such high hopes were setting in the military school that
didn't work out, and then he just fell even further
after this, after getting bullied by the theater community, his
father stepped in and built him a theater in the
appropriately named Richburg, New York, where Bomb began writing his
own plays. After a time, he and his new wife

(21:42):
moved to South Dakota, which I think then was known
as Dakota Territory, and Bomb's description of Kansas and the
Wonderful Wizard of Oz is believed to be based on
its experiences in the drought ridden South Dakota. It was
there that he opened a store called Bomb's Bizarre and,
in another direct quote from work, that I just find wonderful.

(22:02):
His habit of giving out whares on credit led to
the eventual bankrupting of the store.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
From there.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
After that venture went under, he made a living editing
local paper, which also failed, and then he left to
Chicago and founded a magazine called The Show Window, which
covered the wide world of window displays.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
He started a magazine about window displays.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yes, I can't even my point. My job here is useless.
Just punch me in giggling because like, I can't even
mock this guy anyway I did.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
I'm picturing David Crosses Tobias as this entire guy.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Man, Oh my god, the wide world of windows, The
Show Windows, Show Windows, which is the Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
He got kicked out of drama school and then he
started arranging shop windows in his father's store. So the
failed drama student to store window pipeline, and I guess
was a very real thing. One of his early editorials
in this magazine stressed the importance of mannequins for drawing
in customers. Shockingly, this whole window display magazine thing was
actually a successful venture. The magazine is still in existence,

(23:15):
though it's now known as VMSD. You can google that
acronym yourself. This all leads us to the book. Balm
had written a collection of mother Goose rhymes in prose
called mother Goose in Prose before hitting on his big idea, A.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
But before we go any further, we have to sort
one thing out. Where did the name Oz come from?
Heigeld You know, don't re.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yourhead, Australia.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's actually a good guess, because that's probably was like
the most exotic place for most Americans at the turn
of the century. But no, not true. It was actually Again,
this is what I like about him. He takes the
mundane and ordinary and weaves a whole fantasy around it.
It actually came from his filing cabinet. According to the
extensive war around the creation of this book and movie,

(24:05):
The Wizard of Oz the official seventy fifth anniversary campaign
and claims that Bomb got the name from his filing cabinets,
one of which was labeled A through N and the
other was labeled O through z oz. Anything inspired, I
see it's to me, it's like it's taking something so ordinary,
mundane and making something whimsical out of it.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Doug, that's literally the p tier Griffin joke from like
the first season of Family Guy, when he needs to
give a fake name and he looks and sees a
p on the table, a woman crying, and the actual
historical cryptid the Griffin like serious, he was just like, ah,
what do I need to call this? Well, Tolkien will

(24:46):
be constructing entire elaborate languages in a couple of decades.
You know, the Doune will have some cool Arabic words
filing cabinet. That'll do it. Failure, failed, son God, the
rich gets so oh many chances in this stupid country.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Well, we already talked about how Bomb drew inspiration from
the drought.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Rabemophiliac too. No, I can't make that joke. They're disabled.
I was gonna say something about being like an inbred
wan little like Royal's son running was his nose always running.
I'm imagining that too.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I'm picturing him as blue Boy I.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Was getting like a little the snitch in recess.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Oh my god, I just was referencing that.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, Randall, Yeah, that's my image of Francobom.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Let's see, let's see what I actually don't know what
he looks like.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Oh, he's actually he's a handsome guy. He's a stately gentleman. Okay.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Well, actually, when he was a little younger, he kind
of looks like David Cross, kind of dead on.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
He looks like if David Cross became a magician. Uh yeah,
yeah he does. Wow, you had a heart attack because
of school.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I mean I kind of did too. I would hide
in the bathroom and sent my friend in after me.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Okay, you were bullied by theater kids. I wasn't bullied
by theater kids. Now I'm looking at that picture and
just saying that to that guy I did the bullying.
Oh good, that was a drama president. I bullied no one.
Oh boy. Well, okay.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
As we touched on earlier, Bam drew inspiration from the
drought ravaged plains of South Dakota for the setting of
Dorothy's Kansas home, but the story behind the heroine Dorothy
Gail is unfortunately a very sad one. The character was
named as a tribute to BAM's late niece, Dorothy Gage,
who died when she was just five months old of
the incredibly named nineteenth century ailment known as congestion of

(26:47):
the brain, which is maybe what happened to me. Bamb's
wife was deeply distraught since she looked upon her niece
as the daughter they never had, and at cheers wife up,
I guess Bomb decided to memory their niece in the
book he was writing, and he ended up dedicating The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz to his wife. The baby's gravestone
now has a statue of the character Dorothy placed next

(27:10):
to it. The inspiration for the scarecrow was kind of
equally traumatic.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
As a child, Oh you'll love this.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Balm apparently had a recurring nightmare featuring a scarecrow who
aggressively pursued him across a field. Moments before the scarecrows quote,
Ragged hay Fingers tweeted us. At Ragged hay Fingers gripped
his neck, it would fall apart before his eyes, and
then presumably he would wake up. For reasons that I

(27:37):
assume a therapist would have a lot of fun with
bamb decided to integrate his childhood nightmare into his fantasy novel.
According to Baum's son Harry, the tin Man, known in
the book as the Tin Woodsman, which is a thing
that does not exist, was inspired by Bomb's aforementioned passion
for window displays. For one such storefront display that he designed,

(28:00):
he crafted a crude figure out of metal pieces. The
body was a boiler, the arms and legs were stovepipes,
A saucepan was the face, and a funnel served as
the hat, just like the one we know in Love
in the film. The yellow brick road that led to
Oz was apparently something he remembered from his brief stint
at the Peakskill Military Academy prior to his heart attack

(28:22):
slash panic attack. The Emerald City, also known as Oz,
is believed to be an amalgamation of several locations, first
and foremost the famous White City Steady that was constructed
for the eighteen ninety three World Spare in Chicago, which
is completed soon after the Bombs moved to the city.
Some say that the Emerald City itself, a big crazy

(28:43):
art Decawee buildings, was inspired by a castle like structure
and the upscale community of Castle Park in Holland, Michigan,
where Balm lived during the summer, and other legends suggests
that the inspiration came from the Hotel del Coronado near
San Diego, California, which still exists. For not the last
time this episode, you're milad.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
You might vary. Oh, here's a little uh, here's a
little Peak Skill trivia for you. Oh yeah, God, it
was eighteen sixty eight, so he was definitely a racist. Yeah, okay.
There was a road in peak Skill named West Street
that led from the waterfront uphill to the school made
of stone blocks that have a lemonee hue, and the

(29:22):
theory goes that young Bomb arrived by a steamboat as
some of the way to the academy and received the
catchy reply follow the yellow brick road. Oh but former
Peakskill Mayor John Testa wrote in twenty fourteen to Roadside America,
Frank Baum spent about eighteen months at Peak Skill Military
Academy when he was twelve to thirteen years old. That
is the history. There was never any conversation for him

(29:43):
to follow the yellow brick road to Peakskill Military Academy.
The railroad was in place by the time he came,
so there was no road to the dock. He probably
arrived by train anyway, So there are actual yellowee brick
roads in Peak Skill. But I don't think anyone would
have said that phrase to him, at least that what
the mayor thinks.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Isn't Peak Skill where a friend of the pod and
the man who wrote and performed our theme song lives
south Appabam.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, not to dox him, but yeah, Peak Skills lovely.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Well.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
It was in nineteen hundred, at the age of forty four,
that L. Frank Baum finally achieved his first success, finally
did something right.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
The book was published in nineteen hundred, and it was
the best selling children's book for two straight years. Its
initial print run was ten thousand copies, but by the
time it became public domain in nineteen fifty six, it
had sold more than three million. And folks, don't ever
let him tell you that cash grab sequels are a
modern phenomenon. Even though Baum was kind of done with
the whole idea, he was persuaded by Filthy Lucra to

(30:46):
crank out eleven more novels based in and around the
land of Oz and a further too, that were published posthumously,
and then three other short story compilations and comics. There's
an OS extended universe. There is it really is Yea,
quoting directly from Baum's hilarious Wikipedia page. Several times during
the development of the Oz series, Baum declared that he

(31:07):
had written his last OZ books and devoted himself to
other works of fantasy fiction based in other magical lands,
including the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and Queen
ZIXI of Ix. However, he returned to the series each time,
persuaded by popular demand, letters from children, and the failures
of his new books. But books were just the start.

(31:29):
The money from Oz allowed Baum to revisit his early love,
the Theta. He adapted the Oz story into a stage play,
which opened on June sixteenth, nineteen o two, at Chicago's
Grand Opera House. A year later, a New York production
became one of the most popular Broadway shows of its time.
And then the movie versions began rolling in. And actually,

(31:51):
this is good Bart trivia. Someone says, when was The
Wizard of Oz first made into a film? It is
nineteen ten as a silent fifteen minute silent version, and
is so old no one knows who is actually in it.
I love that. That's so cool. Some guy and maybe
a lady or two, probably a like a real lion

(32:12):
back at that point, right, I think there were real
animals in it. I think yeah. So In this version,
Dorothy is friends with a cow named Imagen and is
chased by mule named Hank, and Toto is transformed into
a giant beast to protect Dorothy riveting. She also decides
that the whold no Place Like Home bit is for
Rubes and decides to stay in Oz. There were three

(32:35):
more short silent spinoff films throughout the nineteen tens, made
by Bomb's own production company. Bomb died in nineteen nineteen,
not a minute too soon, but the remix continued. His
weak little heart would not have taken the Roaring twenties.
It was right there in the name. He was not
built for that. There's a live action version made in

(32:56):
nineteen twenty five starring a young Oliver Hardy of Oral
and Hardy fame. There was an animated short film from
nineteen thirty three, and so by the time MGM got
around to the nineteen thirty nine version, that was the
tenth cinematic adaptation of Oz. This just goes to show
that I don't know what I'm talking about. Man popular stuff.

(33:18):
It's popular stuff. How about that.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Wow Wow.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
In nineteen thirty nine, it's fair to say that MGM Studios.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Was at a crossroads. Producer Louis B.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Mayer a real true monster of the twentieth century. I
wanted to create a dazzling children's movie that would compete
with Walt Disney's first full length Snow White and the
Seven Dwarves, which had been released the year earlier. So
we decided to shell out for the Big Guy, The
Wizard of Oz, the Harry Potter of its day. Apparently
Disney had been trying to make it before MGM snatched

(34:06):
up the rights. Movie mogul Samuel Goldman had bought them
in nineteen thirty three before selling them to MGM in
nineteen thirty eight. I read that Bam received seventy five
thousand dollars for the film rights, but considering he died
in nineteen nineteen, I'm assuming that went to his estate
that seventy five thousand dollars is worth roughly two million
dollars today, but it was a steal considering all that

(34:28):
was to come. The final movie pays tribute to Balm
and kind of a macabre way. When the Muschkin coroner
pronounces the wicked Witch of the East, the one who
had the house dropped on her, really most sincerely dead,
he holds out a death certificate dated May sixth, nineteen
thirty eight, the nineteenth anniversary of Baum's death.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
That's the tribute. They just put his death date in
the movie, and it has is not a significant anniversary.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yoh, all right, Yeah, Jim really went big on the movie,
shelling out three million dollars or roughly fifty five million
dollars today, in their bid to match the commercial success
of Snow White. The final script features three credited screenwriters,
plus a jaw dropping seventeen uncredited writers, including the poet

(35:16):
Ogden Nash, who wrote an early draft. Oh, it's unlikely
that any of his work was used. Another contributor I
didn't realize this was Herman J. Meikowitz, who later wrote
the screenplay for Citizen Kane and is the subject of
the David Fincher biopic mank all In almost really sets
the tone for the cavalcade of directors who cycled through

(35:36):
during this thing, which we'll talk about a little later.
Tank of the film, the studio needed a Dorothy, and
it's a well worn bit of movie trivia that Shirley
Temple was actually the first choice for the lead. It
makes sense considering she was in the midst of her
golden run of Kloying children's classics and was therefore a
much bigger star than Judy Garland at the time. Plus

(35:58):
she was closer to the characters, which was roughly around twelve. However,
it's something of a myth that Shirley Temple was the
first choice OZ producers Arthur Freed and Mervin Leroy.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
That's a great name.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Irvin Leroy always wanted Judy Garland because they felt they
needed an actress with vocal chops. But MGM studio chief
Louis B. Mayer had his heart set on Temple. Not
like that, or maybe like that.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I don't know. He's dead. He can't sue me.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
When Uncle Louie won something, he usually gets it, but
not this time. Unfortunately, Shirley Temple was under contract to
twentieth century Fox, who was not about to loan her
out to a competitor, at least without getting a little
something in return. Not like that, or maybe like that,
like that, maybe like that, maybe like that. Yeah, twenty

(36:48):
century Fox planned out doing a little trade with MGM,
swapping out Shirley Temple for two of their huge stars,
Clark Gable and Jene Harlow, which just gives you an
indication of how big Shirley Temple was at the time.
She was worth Clark Gable and Jean Harlow combined.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
That's wild.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
But the deal fell apart when Jean Harlow unexpectedly died
of liver failure at the age of twenty six.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Recent report suggests that the toxicity of.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Her blonde hair dye may have been partly to blame
for her premature death.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Did you know that? I sure didn't showbiz. What were
they using?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
That's a great question. Let's let's look that up right now.
I'm sure there's an episode of You Must Remember This
that deals with it.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
They just cracked open into old timey thermometers. Throw this
mercury under hair.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Her platinum blonde color was reportedly achieved with a weekly
application of ammonia, clorox bleach, and lux soap flakes.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, so ammonium comma, chlorox bleach, ammonia commachlorox bleach. Yeah,
so that's a chemical weapon. Have you never cleaned a toilet,
like an old toilet by dumping chlorox in it?

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Not specifically chlorox, Now you'd.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Remember because if you've ever dumped chlorox into like old
stale pe, it creates ammonium chloride, which is a toxic gas.
And if you do it in like a mobile home
or something with like a septic tank, you will immediately
get an enormous blast of a toxic chemical in your face.
And people like do this in their mobile home bathrooms
and like collapse and fall in there. So, yes, she

(38:23):
actually was pouring toxic cats on her head once a week.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Oh my god, I don't know if that actually is
what killed it, because urine breaks down into ammonia.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Eurine breaks down into ammonia. Oh yeah, so you're dumping
bleach in there. Maybe people were just pissing on her
head left and right.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
She was severely bloated, and she smelled like urine on
her breath, both signs of kidney failure. So yeah, maybe
that's horrifying. Wow on the leaven it we just traveled down.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Showbiz movie magic. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
It's Ultimately, Shirley Temple missed out on the part of Dorothy,
but she was cast as the lead in a truly
bizarre Wizard of Oz ripoff movie nineteen forty is The Bluebird.
Temple plays against type as a truly nasty little girl
living in Germany during the Napoleonic Wars, and the whole
movie is this elaborate dream sequence where she sent to

(39:22):
discover quote, the Bluebird of happiness. A series of bizarre
adventures ensue, including a visit to their dead grandparents in
the past, a terrifying forest fire, and a my personal favorite,
a visit to a land of yet to be born children.
It's it's weird, it's really bizarre. Interestingly, it co stars

(39:44):
Gail Sodonguard, who is up for consideration to play an
early sultry version that's in quotes of the Wicked Witch
of the West in The Wizard of Oz, which we'll
talk about later.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
They decided to go a different direction. Anyway.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
After Shirley Temple was passed over, MGM approached Diana Durbin,
who was unavailable, so they went with Durbin's former co
star and semi rival slash frenemy, Judy Garland.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
We got to talk about Judy Garland. Yeah, we have to.
I mean, if only because of my fixation on the
Holiday special. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I maintain
that's like half of David Lynch's formative media experience. Oh wow, yeah,
Judy Garland born Francis Ethel Gum. It sounds like a

(40:31):
serial killer, no, because Jamee Gumm is from Silence of
the Layoffs.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Oh nice. Her parents, Ethel and Frank, were two vaudevillians
who owned the theater in their hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Naturally,
show business was a pillar of young Francis Ethel Gum's life.
She was two years old when she and her older
sisters sang jingle bells during a christmin pageant. Trio formed
a singing troupe called the Gum Sisters, who toured the

(40:57):
country over the next few years. That's like Buddy Rich,
you know, like Buddy Rich was playing drums in like
vaudeville and tents by the time he was like three
or four. No, but it made so much sense. Prodigy. Yeah,
whoa traps the drum Wonder or something like they called him.
This has been your Buddy Rich thirty seconds of the

(41:17):
show Clams and Clams All Night. Go check out the
tape of Buddy Rich yelled his band folks, it's a
real real hum dinger.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Oh yeah, just to keep the Buddy Rich segment going
a little longer. Buddy Rich was known for his just
florid displays of obscenities and just screaming at his band,
and then one day somebody in his band secretly taped
one of these explosive outbursts and then leaked it to someone,
and it just got copied and circulated in the underground,

(41:52):
first through the musicians and then with a lot of
the comics that they would share bills with, and then
it became this legendary thing in median circles in like
the I don't know seventies and eighties. Jerry Seinfeld and
Larry David were huge fans of them, and there are
a lot of quotes from Seinfeld taken from these tapes,
things like that guy is not my kind of guy,

(42:14):
and let's see how you do up there without all
the assistants, and I think I will step outside and
show you what it's like from George. I believe it
is also from that too. I think those are the
big three.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
That's an amazing deep cut. You think is gonna work
on that clam over this joint? What you think you're
playing from me?

Speaker 3 (42:38):
I'm a band fan. I'm up there, work on my balls.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Well, I'm trying to do somebody your favorite, your mother.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Joint.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
You gotta be kidding me. I dare you call yourselves professional?
Play like children up there? I hear what plan from anybody?
You had it?

Speaker 4 (42:57):
One clam and.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Night try me off, not gonna do and you're probably
not play this for me.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
I gotta be as I've been the musicians in the world.
Dame play like.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Dame.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Trying to play like that for me?

Speaker 5 (43:23):
You try one the next set and when you get
back to the off, you'll mean another up pad on it.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Anyway. Budville christ Yes Ethel Gum the Elder was the
pro two typical stage mom mamager. She took her daughters
to auditions and dance lessons. She traveled with them on
the road. Ethel was quite happy to be on the
road because her home life was not particularly stable, and
uh this may have had some resonance on the soon

(43:56):
to become Judy's life because Ethel started something of a
multi gen nirational trend among the Garland women for marrying
men who probably weren't super straight all the way. Judy
did this when she married one of her directors, Vincente Minelli,
and then again in the sixties with her fourth husband,
Mark Herron. Heron ended up having an affair with Judy's daughter,

(44:19):
Liza Minnelli's new husband, Peter Allen, which she discovered on
the night of their wedding in nineteen sixty seven. So,
just a quick rephrasing, Liza caught her stepdad in bed
with her new husband on her wedding night. Garland and
Heron divorced seventeen months after the incidents. Liza and Peter
Allen held on until nineteen seventy four. And so this

(44:40):
all goes back to Judy's dad, Frank Gumm. Yeah, well
he was a gum and something oh too easy was
rumored that while his wife and daughters were away, Frank
Gumm made the moves on the young boys working at
his theater. After one of these encounters went south. Oh, well,

(45:01):
you capitalized south, by which i'm they traveled to the
distinct part of the country known as the American South.
They didn't. There wasn't a little downstairs business. Maybe probably God.
After one of these encounters went lowercase south, the family
relocated to Lancaster, California, or Lancaster, California in Pennsylvania, to Lancaster, Massachusetts. Lancaster,

(45:25):
you guys don't count. Despite this, Judy remained extremely close
to her father, probably because he was the only parent
she had who didn't treat her like an employee. So
when Frank Gumm died in nineteen thirty five, when Judy
was just twelve, the loss exacerbated a psychological wound that
would continue to fester throughout her life, leaving her looking
for a homosexual father figure in directors and romantic partners.

(45:50):
Judy would later say, the terrible thing about it was
that I couldn't cry at my father's funeral. A terrible thing.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
And now now I'm doing some combination of Katherine Heath,
a little bit of.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Paul Yeah, some pig humbo. Never mind. The terrible thing.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
About it, You reading this line through laughter is going
to be great.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
I just like to give Judy Garling getting up at
her dad's at the age of twelve, just going humble up,
some pig pig, Oh God, got that. The terrible thing
about it was that I couldn't cry at my father's funeral.
I'd never been to a funeral. I was so ashamed
I couldn't cry, so I feigned it, but I just

(46:34):
couldn't cry for eight days. Then I locked myself in
a bathroom and cried for fourteen hours. My mother left
Judy little time to grieve and began driving her even
harder to perform. Judy spent much of her tween years
singing in venues that were deemed as biographers as inappropriate
for young children, which is a colorful phrase. Ethel Gum was,
by all accounts, a hard task master. Judy painted a

(46:56):
vivid portrait of her mother during a nineteen sixty seven
interview with Barbara wall As. She would sort of stand
in the wings when I was a little girl, and
if I didn't feel good, or if I was sick
to my tummy, she'd say, you get out and sing,
or I'll wrap you around the bedpost and break you
off short. So I'd go out and sing. It is
worth noting that Judy was fond of exaggerating the truth,

(47:19):
especially in later life when she was more or less
composed of gin and uppers. She also told all of
these you know, there's a lot of tales about the
Munchkins on the set of The Wizard of Oz, but
you know those were maybe also probably exaggerated, definitely exaggerated,
and probably her fault anyway. On the flip side, though,

(47:39):
On the flip side, ethel Gum, real piece of work.
It was a real bitch, a piece of fat eppele Gum.
That name is son Funny. Numerous biographers, including Time magazine
journalist Jered Clark, who wrote what Jordan considers to be
the definitive Judy bio, Get Happy. It's really good. I'm

(48:00):
really sad.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
I lent it out and never got it back, so
I could not consult it for this episode, but it's
an excellent book.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
So Clark claims that Judy's mother was the one who
first got her on hooked on pills as a ten
year old on the club circuit. This kicked off the
nightmare cycles of uppers and downers that would play Judy
for the rest of her life and would ultimately kill
her in nineteen sixty nine Nice Nay Suck. In later life,
Garland remembered her mother as the real wicked witch of
the West. So there are numerous contradictory stories of how

(48:28):
young Francis Gumm acquired her famous moniker when version states
that Garland was borrowed from Carol Lombard's character in the
film Twentieth Century, and other theories that it was honor
of or to curry favor with noted drama critic Robert Garland. However,
Garland's daughter, the equally nominally gifted Wan Left, believes that

(48:50):
she chose the name. When actor George Jessel declared that
the Gum sisters quote looked prettier than a garland of flowers.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
That's a nice compliment, I just want to especially coming
from a man in the early twentieth century, it could
have gone south.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
In a really bad way. That's a nice compliment, sure
is for those gums. Steady story behind Judy is a
little bit simpler, and it was just inspired by a
popular Hoogey Carmichael song of the era, which was I
assume it was called Judy.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
I actually sweet.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Judy Blue eyes. Now. We don't know the name of
the song though. It is just called Judy. Okay, it's
just called Judy. I'm just sading hearing. I'm getting my
ear right now. It's just called Judy. Yeah. The newly
christened Judy Garland ultimately signed with MGM in nineteen thirty
five in a class that included Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner,
and Ava Gardner, and Judy somewhat understandably felt like the

(49:44):
ugly duckling in their midst feeling exacerbated by the ever
charming studio head Louis B. Mayer, who referred to her
as my little hunchback, which was supposedly due to the
fact that she was four feet eleven and had a
curvature of the spine. Still not quite fair, and Judy
would later admit from the time I was thirteen, there
was a constant struggle between MGM and me whether or

(50:06):
not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat.
I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood.
Oh yeah, and she was still so mean to herself.
Later on in life, she would say of that period,
I was frightful. I was fat, a fat little pig
in pigtails. God, that poor woman just really never had

(50:27):
a chance, did she.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
No.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
I remember when we were doing the Christmas Songs episode
telling the story when young Brenda Lee who just had
a hit with rocking around the Christmas Tree at age.
I forget how old she was, but she was a teenager.
She grew up worshiping Judy Garland and when she was
playing Vegas, she ran into Judy at some hotels she
was staying at and mustoo up her courage and went

(50:50):
over to Judy and said, you know, hi, Judy, I'm
a young singer like you.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Do you have any advice for me?

Speaker 2 (50:56):
And Judy looked her in the eye and said, don't
let them take your child childhood.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Said it was just like Bud Chilling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
One of Judy's first feature film roles was alongside fellow
MGM classmate Mickey Rooney, Friend of the Pod Mickey Rooney.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Folks, Mickey Rooney's no friend of mine, No yet, No,
he's not.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
As we will touch on, the film is called Love
finds Andy Hardy, and this movie was spun off into
a highly successful franchise that made them both stars. Ask
your grandparents about it if they're still around or say
at this point, no, no, this is a great Grandparents territory.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Now.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
It was a pretty big franchise, although unfortunately it exacerbated
Judy's fundamental insecurity because her role in the Andy Hardy
movies was basically that of the girl next door with
an unrequited crush on the titular Andy. And that's more
or less what happened in real life, and Micky Rooney
broke her heart repeatedly.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
He even admitted.

Speaker 6 (51:56):
In a great quote for The Ages, I began to
meet my obligations to a good many of the gals
in town who were dying to meet me, who wouldn't
want to go out with me.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
I had my own car, I had some nickels in
my pocket, and I was somebody. He was four foot eight.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yeah, folks, to yourself a favor right now and google
Mickey Rooney and he's also do you know he was
married like literally eight times, which caused him to lose
all his money on multiple occasions.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, I mean, I he looks like a bunch guy. Yeah, well,
we can't say it looks like he looks like Lon
Cheney as Phantom of the Opera. He has that like
foot pushedbag note. Wow. Wow, Yeah, he's not a good
looking guy. No, I'm sorry, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
My favorite fact about him is that he separated from
his wife of thirty four years in twenty twelve when
he was ninety two. He just you couldn't hack it
for those last few years before you went to the grave.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Just no. Yeah, life, short journey. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Well, Judy Garland's adult approved drug intake increased as she
entered the studio system. She later told biographer Paul Donnelly.
They had us working days and nights on end. They'd
give us pills to keep us on our feet long
after we were exhausted. Then they'd take us to the
studio hospital and knock us out with sleeping pills. Mickey
sprawled out on one bed and me on another. Then

(53:25):
after four hours they'd wake us up and give us
pet pills again, so we could work seventy two hours
in a row. Half the time we were hanging from
the ceiling. But it was a way of life for us.
That's torture, that's psychological. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Wow, I just can't believe that they were like, well,
I mean when she signed thirty five Yeah, yeah, okay,
so they knew that we were giving Gis speed too.
There was no plausible deniability in any of this. They're like,
just take these pet pills. That are the vitamins our
boys used to give Jerry. What give Jerry the old boot?

(54:04):
Good lord. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
The psychological mistreatment and pharmaceutical abuse continued unabated on the
set of The Wizard of Oz due to her heavy workload.
Judy was quote under heavy medication, as the euphemism went
most of the time. In one representative incident, when Judy
got the giggles during the scene where she's supposed to
terrify the cowardly Lion, director Victor Fleming reportedly slapped her

(54:29):
across the face embarked at her to go in there
and work. The torture was physical as well as emotional.
To create the illusion that Dorothy was twelve, which did
not need to be the case since Bomb never cites
her actual age in the books.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Sixteen year old Judy was forced to wear a.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Painful corset that flattened her chest and made it difficult
to breathe during filming. Her blue Gingham dress was chosen
since it appeared slightly blorry on camera, which further obscured
her figure out of clear up, a common misc exception.
Her shirt is actually light pink and not white. Apparently
white looked underwhelming and technicolor. On a similar note, the

(55:07):
original yellow brick road looked green on the screen before
the tint was adjusted. Well, a little funny colored tricks.
Because of the weird they called three strip technicolor. I
think that's what it was called.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Do you have a technical section on technicolor A little bit? Yeah? Okay,
good god, I know that's all for you. Baby. Movie magic, Oh,
there's a lot of movie magic in here. Well, it
has the ultimate movie magic, which is chowd abuse. Yes.
Adding to Judy's dysmorphia, the studio placed.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Her on a strict diet of chicken soup, black coffee,
four packs of cigarettes to curve her appetite, and slimming
tablets their words every four hours. Again, she was sixteen years.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Old, although this was back when like cafeteria food in
the mg mcfeteria would be like fried chicken, lobster, thermidor
griv yeah, c casino, Yeah, an entire rack of lamb
coated in heavy cream. Ah.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Perhaps most criminal. Young Judy was banned from having even
a single bite of candy. That's sad, adding insult to injury.
Judy was also severely underpaid compared to her co stars,
of course she was. While the tin Man, the Scarecrow,
the Lion, and the Wizard all made three thousand dollars
a week, Judy got five hundreds a sixth is correct.

(56:26):
Despite this, the male leads all resented the hell out
of Judy because they felt like they were being upstaged
by some young teens. So not only were they making
six times that she was making, they also hated her
were mean to her as a result. The only adult
friend that Judy had on the set was the Wicked
Witch herself, Margaret Hamilton, who, as we'll discuss in a moment,

(56:48):
was a saint of a woman and also had a
lot of bad things happened to her. The only individuals
on the set with lower salaries than Judy were Terry
the Dog aka Toto, who made twenty five dollars a week,
and in the residence of munchkin Land, who made fifty
dollars a week. According to Judy, as we touched on earlier,
the Munchkins got their revenge by sexually harassing and assaulting her.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
In an interview with.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Jack Parr in the early sixties, Judy spoke at length
about the munchkins poor behavior after they drank to excess,
famously claiming that they needed to be rounded up with
butterfly nets for shooting the next morning. As we also
touched on and we'll touch on more later, most of
these rumors were falls, but in a memoir by Judy
Garland's third husband, Sid Lufft, who by all accounts was

(57:33):
not a nice man, he wrote that the actors who
played the Munchkins quote would make Judy's life miserable by
putting their hands under her dress. However, film historian Aljean Harmetz,
who wrote the groundbreaking nineteen seventy seven book The Making
of The Wizard of Oz, insisted the quote nobody on
the movie ever saw her or heard of a munchkin

(57:54):
assaulting her.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Your mileage mayvary, so now, oh, yeah, from sexual assault,
let's talk about footwear.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah, there was really no good transition there.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
I'm sorry, Yeah, no, I'm sorry. The famed ruby slippers
of the film. Fans of Bomb's book and also Wicked
will know that they were originally silver slippers, which obviously
has a nice alliterative ring to it. But since Louis B.
Mayor was shown out for glorious technicolor, he ordered the
shoes changed from silver to ruby so they'd really pop.

(58:34):
The slippers were designed by the legendary Gilbert Adrian, MGM's
chief costume designer. A garish early version was made in
a so called Arabian motif, with curling toes, high heels,
and elaborate jewels, which were used in costume tests but
ultimately discarded, probably because they were somehow more racist than
they sound. Ah, they're really ugly too. The second design

(58:56):
was closer to the version that we know and love,
but with one modification. The beads that were initially used
were too heavy, so they replaced with approximately twenty three
hundred sequins per shoe.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
That's a great bart trivia right there.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Well, even weirder, these sequins were made of gelatin, or
the stuff that they grind up horses to make right. Jordan,
horses of different colors, horses of every color. Well, it's
really just their hooves that they grind up to make right.
It's not the rest of the bones. Yeah, but they're dead.
I was just checking. Yeah, and so This is a

(59:31):
nightmare for people who would be actually trying to maintain
these things because they don't react well to cleaning, So
restoration texts for the Ruby slippers have to clean each
sequin individually with cotton dipped in ice water. We prioritize
a lot of weird country man shoes were just not
very elaborate. Though they were simple white silk pumps made

(59:54):
by the Innis Shoe Company. They were then dyed red
with burgundy sequined organs overlays attached. The film's technicolor process
made things a little screwy with the colors. Bright red
sequins would have appeared orange on screen, so they had
to use something a little darker in real life. And
if you've seen those at the Smithsonian, you will know
that they are underwhelming. Yeah, according to those who worked

(01:00:18):
on the film, somewhere between six and ten pairs of
size five Ruby slippers were made for the production. No
one knows the exact number since the studio destroyed those
records many many years ago. And I wouldn't be surprised
if half of them just ended up on the feet
of another beaten child star.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, actually, probably right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
And so some of these were actually meant to be
used in close ups and summer were the ones that
Judy actually walked and danced in, and those actually had
orange felt a fixed on the soul so that they
didn't make as much noise on the yellow brick roads set. George,
do you want to take this? I feel like you
want to take this. Sure, We're going to cut to
Jordan for a quick little it belongs in a museum segment.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Actually, I don't think it's gonna be that quick. This
is probably the most elaborate it belongs to the segment
we've ever done, and I am excited. Four screen used
ruby slippers are known to exist today, and that's largely
thanks to the effort at the humble costumer named Kent Warner.
As we alluded to, for many decades, studios really didn't
care about their old movie props. The memorabilia market wasn't

(01:01:18):
really a thing yet, and the studios were either unaware
of their potential value or they simply had other things
to deal with and just didn't care. As a result,
truly priceless pieces of film history often went missing. Members
of the production crew would just walk off with stuff
as souvenirs, fully aware that the brass.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Didn't care at all.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Whatever remains was thrown into warehouses, basements, or barns on
the lot, in many cases never to be seen again.
But one person who did care was the aforementioned costumer,
Kent Warner. He worked for MGM in nineteen sixty nine
when the studio had just been sold and they were
basically doing some house cleaning. Warner was tasked with helping

(01:01:59):
clear out the arcis and one day he was given
a pile of stuff to burn. One of the first
things he saw on the pile was an overcoat. When
he examined it, he discovered the name Bogart stitched inside,
and it turned out it was the Casa Blanca overcoat.
And that's around when he started to realize what they
were sitting on. Since no one at the studio seemed

(01:02:21):
to care, he set up a lucrative side hustle dealing
movie memorabilia to folks in Hollywood. Eventually people started to
come to him. Actress Debbie Reynolds became a frequent customer
and a major MEMBERBILIA collector.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
She would contact Warner asking if he could find old.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Props and costumes from things like her breakthrough role and
singing in the rain, and then Kent would go digging,
and then he'd meet her in a parking lot behind
the right Aid in Fairfax and Sunset and do the.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Handover from the back of his car. Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
He also sold her the Arabian style prototype ruby slippers.
Many of his dealings were purely sentimental. For example, when
Betty Davis was on the lot making an appearance on
the Smothers Brother's Comedy Hour, Warner brought her a gift
the Queen Elizabeth costumes she wore for nineteen fifty five's
The Virgin Queen, for which she'd won an Oscar. So

(01:03:09):
all in all, we like Kent Warner. He's like a
memorabilia Robin Hood. After a while, the new studio Brass
began to realize what they had, so as a cost
cutting measure, they held a gergantuan auction in May of
nineteen seventy featuring hundreds of thousands of props and costumes.
Kent Warner was one of the people tests with finding
and cataloging the goods, and he was the one finally

(01:03:31):
found the fabled ruby slippers. It took a months of
pawing through four hundred and fifty thousand costumes before you
discover them in what I've seen alternately described as a
dusty old barn that used to exist on the MGM
lot or in a disused MGM basement, but in any case,
they were not being cared for. He also found I
think the witch's broom and the lions pelt, which we'll

(01:03:54):
talk about later. And it was they were like literally
being rained on, like it just was like all mildewy
and gross.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
For Kent Warner's efforts, he was handsomely rewarded. He discovered
three pairs of ruby slippers.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
But only turned one pair over to MGM. Yes, that
became a centerpiece of their auction. He sold another pair
on the side to make a little money himself, and
then he kept a third pair for himself as a souvenir,
the most beautiful and elaborate.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Version, which was the one that was used for close ups.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Here's a quick rundown of the providence and present whereabouts
of each.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Pair of ruby slippers, so the MGM auction. The slippers
sold at that auction in nineteen seventy and were bought
for fifteen thousand dollars by a lawyer acting for an
unidentified client. This is believed to be the pair on
permanent exhibition at the Smithsonians Museum of American History in Washington,
d C. Since nineteen seventy nine. Since then, they're referred
to in OZ the OZ fandom as the People's shoes

(01:04:50):
so good. I don't know if i'd refer to anything
kept behind glass in PUCM, in our nation's most heavily
belized metropolitan city, the people's anything, but Okay, we'll might
to take that away from the OZ heads.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
It's the only one we can easily see, or we
could easily see for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Sure. The attraction is so popular that the carpet surrounding
the case the museum has been replaced multiple times due
to wear and tear from a constant influx of visitors,
and eagle eyed visitors will notice that the shoes on
display are actually mismatched. Two pairs got jumbled, presumably back
the MGM lot, and to this day they have never
been reunited. It's sad.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Yeah, it was a moriy episode waiting going to happen.
For many years, Kent Warner kept the pristine version used
for close ups himself They're known as the Witch's shoes
because they're the ones seen on the week of Witch
of the East, feet sticking out from under the house.
But eventually he sold them through Christie's auction House in
nineteen eighty one for twelve thousand dollars, and he tragically

(01:05:50):
died three years later of a's related complications. These shoes
changed hands a number of times before most recently being
acquired for an undisclosed price by a consortium that includes
Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg to be donated to although
I think they've already been donated to the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum in Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Oh, this sex One's great. X one's my favorite. There's
another pair that wasn't acquired by Kent Warner. On the
MGM backlot. A Tennessee woman named Roberto Bauman was awarded
a genuine pair of screen used ruby slippers after competing
in a name the best movies of nineteen thirty nine contest?
You know one of those. I mean, this was a

(01:06:31):
time when they were making like what hundreds? Well, so
what best? What is best? Critics? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
I actually don't know when this contest took place either.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
How do you have a contest to name the best
of anything? Anyway, they were the second place prize in
this contest was first house. I don't know, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Think the memorabilia stuff was really like, no one considered
that to be a valuable thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Yeah, man. So they were sold in nineteen eighty eight
for one hundred and fifty thousand to a man who
worked for the Walt Disney Company, who had plans to
place them in the entryway for their Great Movie Ride
in what was then known as MGM Park. These were
sold again in two thousand for six hundred and sixty
six thousand dollars, which lol, lmao to la memorabilia dealers,

(01:07:22):
who have reportedly not displayed the shoes. They're using them
for weird sex stuff. Then they are not the people's shoes.
They're the pervert shoes. So that's perhaps for good reason.
When you hear about what happened to the fourth and
final pair, Oh yeah, this is nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
So the final pair of ruby slippers. They were the
ones that Kent warn Or sold on the side in
nineteen seventy to earn a little pocket money. They're the
mates to the mismatched pair at the Smithsonian. For many years,
they were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in
Grand Rapids, Minnesota. But then on the night of August
twenty seventh, two thousand and five, a thief broke in
under cover of darkness, smashed the plexiglass case with a hammer,

(01:08:00):
and made off with the famous shoes. An anonymous donor
offered one million dollars in exchange for information leading to
their recovery. The FBI got involved, and a thirteen year
manhunt ensued. They searched an old mine pit and even
dredged a local lake after getting a tip that the
ruby slippers were stored in a waterproof lock box. They

(01:08:22):
were finally recovered in twenty eighteen, and five years later,
a federal grand jury indicted a Minnesota man named Terry
John Martin on one count of theft, for which.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
He pled guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
This man had a long history of burglary and receiving
stolen goods, and his lawyer claimed he wanted to pull
off And this is a quote one last score.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Yes right, yes, wait, it gets so much better. I
love that the FBI took thirteen years to find yes,
and then and then oh my god, this is the
whole story is incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Part of the reason that this guy went through all
this trouble and really wanted to make this his last
score was because he mistakenly believed that the ruby slippers
were adorned with actual rubies. Oh honey, and not party
city sequence Terry, but dissolving water Terry, you sweet sweet idiot.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
So once he realized that he basically believed the shoes
were worthless, which again lol, and he just sat on
them for years. The shoes were ultimately returned to the
museum and the thief Terry, who was now in his
late seventies confined to a wheelchair and living with supplementary oxygen,

(01:09:40):
was sentenced the time served in January twenty twenty four
due to his poor health, meaning he kind of got.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
Away with it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
But uh yeah, this was in literally he was like
months ago. But about that whole worthless thing. These ruby
slippers were put up for sale in December twenty twenty
by Heritage Auctions, who believed they would earn somewhere in
the ballpark of three million dollars. The bidding reached that
amount within seconds, and it tripled in minutes. More than

(01:10:10):
eight hundred people would place bids, but eventually the ruby
slippers went to an unknown buyer who shelled out thirty
two point five million dollars for these shoes, making it
the most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold at auction,
absolutely smashing the previous record held by the white dress
that Marilyn Monroe wore on the Suburay Great for the

(01:10:31):
seven year itch that sold for five point five to
two million. We are a nation of pervs and foot fetishists.
These prices are very funny to me because in nineteen
eighty nine a pair of real ruby slippers with actual
rubies were made to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the
Wizard of Oz movie and they were only worth three million, depressing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
So dogs from shoes to dogs. Toto Terry, the smarter
of the two Terry's that we've discussed in this story.
Toto was played by a female Cairn terrier named Terry
who belonged to famed movie dog trainer Carl Spitz. And

(01:11:15):
you read that he got Terry from a customer who
couldn't afford to pay his bill, so they paid in
their dog which is sad. It is sad, deeply, deeply great.
What's the dog exchange currency?

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
It's the Great Depression. So that was a high premium.
So like the price of steak, it was a good trade.
Terry was a very good girl and did ultimately over
a dozen movie roles Oz was the most famous, and
after the success of the film, Spitz changed her legal
name to Toto.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
You are no longer Terry. You are Toto now. I'm
so sorry you were Now Toto. I gave you a
name and I'm taking it away. Terry Toto was that
sounds like one of Judy Garland's other daughter, lorda luffed
Terry Toto. Toto. Terry was paid one hundred and twenty
five dollars a week, which is hold the phone, equivalent

(01:12:09):
to twenty seven hundred dollars just two years ago, more
than the Munchkins made.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah, my significant margin, I think, like more than double.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Imagine how that felt. Yeah, find it out the dog
made more than you. Yeah, but wait, it gets worse. Yes,
it was also more than what the average American was
making at that time, but in a way kind of
earned it. Yeah, Terry Toto did their own stunts and

(01:12:39):
was seriously injured during the filming when one of the
Flying Monkey Winkie guards accidentally stepped on her paw and
resulted in gout sprained her little paw for weeks. They
used a double before Terry Toto was well enough to return,
which is a sweeter deal than one Buddy Ebsen got.
As we'll get on to later, Garland formed such an

(01:13:01):
attachment to Terry Toto that when the production was over,
she reportedly tried to buy her from Carl Spitz, who said, no,
you sixteen year old abuse child, get the out of
my face. This dog is going to carry me for
the rest of my damn life.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
It's basically an emotional support animal for Judy Carlin, and
they took it away because.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
He recognized a meal ticket when he had one. Yeah. Yeah.
Terry Toto continued to have an active career in show
business before dying in nineteen forty five at the age
of eleven. And then, of course, this is where it
gets weirder. Carl Spitz buried her on his ranch in
Studio City, California. However, the ranch and her grave were
destroyed in nineteen fifty eight with the construction of the

(01:13:40):
Ventura Freeway. So now Terry Toto is resting peacefully under
the one oh one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Think of that next time you hear Venture Highway by American.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
Fans can pay their respects at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery,
where memorial was dedicated on June eighteenth, twenty eleven. And
all of this could have been avoided because the producers
of the film initially wanted a man in a dog
suit play Toto.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
I believe the total memorial is like steps from Chris
Cornell and one of the Ramones.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
I think d maybe Johnny. I mean that dog was
a rock and roll icon of a sort in a
manner speaking doesn't mean anything anymore. So twenty years people
are gonna be like, what's rock music? As you meditate
on that, we'll be right back with more too much
information after these messages. Now, let's move on to the

(01:14:48):
tin Man, a role that nearly resulted in a man's death,
Thanks Frank. The role went to MGM contract player Ray
Boulger initially, and Bolger wasn't actually that thrilled. He was
known for his physicality and bizarre movements as sort of
his stock in trade, and so he thought he would
be better utilized playing Scarecrow, so he switched roles with

(01:15:12):
the man originally cast as the scarecrow Future Beverly Hi'll
Billy Star, Buddy Ebson, and then things went tits up
for Paul Barty. He was famously poisoned by the silver makeup,
which was made of pure aluminum dust. Hasn't been one
hundred years since this year. People were just like, yeah,

(01:15:34):
throw a bunch of heavy metal on him, Adam, I
know it'll be really finely ground, so we'll get all everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
No, it'll be really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Fine, you're gonna look silver. Are we selling for you?
It's so bad? And he inhaled it, of course, and
it coated his lungs. He would later say production had
been underway for ten days when one night, after dinner,
I took a deep breath and nothing happened. I felt

(01:16:04):
like no air had reached my lungs, as though someone
had coated them with glue, and my breathing was excruciatingly labored.
I wondered if I was dying. It was me when
I had ammonia. You didn't even get to play a
silver guy. Mister Ebbson would later claim that MGM ignored
his complaints and ordered him to keep filming. Then, according
to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, he awoke in the

(01:16:26):
middle of the night, quote screaming from violent cramping in
his hands, arms, and legs. When he had difficulty breathing,
his wife called an ambulance and rushed him to the hospital.
He remained in an oxygen tent for two weeks, recovering
from the pure aluminium he had adjusted into his lungs.
MGM Brass responded in the way that you would expect

(01:16:47):
from the man who had called Judy Garland his little hunchback.
They told Ebsen get the hell back to work. When
the studio was told that Ebsen, whose skin had turned blue,
which is what happens when you don't get enough oxygen,
could not immediately returned, production, simply replaced him. Ebsen would
say in the Making of The Wizard of Oz book

(01:17:08):
that he considered taking legal action against the studio, but
decided that it would be a bad career move. You
didn't just lightly sue MGM, he said, because it was
a capital p power. Yes, there was a certain cohesion
between the moguls. They used to all play poker together
on Saturday nights and decide who the good actors were
and who were the bad. But Ebsen, why did you

(01:17:29):
put a butt in there? It's just funny because you
were like but Thoms turned around for him. But good
news for old buddy. He would later say that missing
out on the chance to be in the Wizard of
Oz his biggest professional disappointment of his entire life. He did, however,
outlive both Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow, and Jack Haley,

(01:17:50):
his replacement of the Tin Man ninety five, when he
died in two thousand and three. Oh, the cowardly lion
Bert Lair was actually the first to go in nineteen
sixty seven. So hey, if any of you influencers out
there haven't tried inhaling pure aluminum dust, this is not
illegally binding opinion, and you can't sue us for this,
but give it a shot. Why not? What was the

(01:18:16):
mother loved God woman? She was ingesting pure amy? Carlson? Oh,
she was mummified, right. It wasn't even that. It was
that she had literally poisoned herself in her last years
by oh, yes, she had been ingesting huge amounts of
colloidal silver. Oh, she was down to seventy five pounds

(01:18:37):
and had seizure's organ failure and also drinking volica that
was her diet, like she was an insane alcoholic and
drinking colloidal silver. So but important to note was not
confectioner's grade aluminum. So again we haven't rolled that out
as a sort of mystery cure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
All buddy Epsence replace as the tin man, Jack Haley
assumed that Epsoen had been fired, or at least that's
what he said to feel less bad about taking this
roll from this poor guy. Jack Haley benefited from the
misfortunes of his predecessor because the production team quietly changed
the makeup from an illuminum dust to an aluminum paste

(01:19:18):
that they painted on him with a layer of white
clown grease paint underneath in order to protect his skin, which.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
I'm sure looked absolutely horrifying.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Even so, despite these precautions, Jack Haley still managed to
get a really nasty infection in his right eye thanks
to his makeup. Also, since the suit was made of
you know, actual metal, he couldn't sit down on the set,
so for relief, he leaned.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Against a specially constructed board. Here's your boy. MGM. Really
took care of me back in the days. They gave
me a board.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
But on the upside, there was plenty of ark with
going around. During the scenes when Jack Haley was supposed
to shed tears as the ten Man, the producers decided
to use chocolate syrup for oily teardrops because the chocolate
syrup streaks showed up better and more clearly on camera.
They really got a lot of mileage out of chocolate syrup.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Back in the sure did famously blood for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Yeah, adorably, I like this. This is a rare sweet
moment here. Jack Haley lived near Ray Bolger later in life,
the Scarecrow. According to Scott Michaels of The Dearly Departed
podcast one of my favorite podcasts, he once sent Jack
Haley a photo to sign and Haley wrote back and said, Hey,
the straw man lives down the street. What't mean he

(01:20:41):
got him to sign it too. I love that they
would just exchange autograph requests. But my favorite az familial connection.
And if you didn't know this high goal or listeners,
this is going to blow your mind.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Go on.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli married Jack Haley's son, Jack
Hayley Junior. So the daughter of Dorothy married the son
of the tin Man. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Nice?

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
They split in nineteen seventy nine, but still they had
a few years there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Do you know about any of the other ones, like
did the Son of the Tin Man and the Son
of the Lion?

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
Some of the Lion became a really famous critic and author,
and he wrote a great book about the playwright Joe Orton,
John Lair.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
Sure man, Okay, what about the other guy? I don't
know the other guy? All right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
No footage of Buddy Epsen as the tin Man has
ever been released, only photos taken during filming and makeup tests,
but his voice is heard on some of the songs.
To keep down production costs, which this we'll discover, was
very important to the studio, Jack Haley only re recorded
The Tin Man's solo spots if I Only Had a Heart,
and the solo lines during If I Only Had the Nerve,

(01:21:51):
the Cowardly Lyons song, and a song that was ultimately scrapped,
the Jitterbug, which we'll discuss later. As such, Buddy Epsen's
voice can still be heard on the remaining songs where
the tin Man was part of the ensemble, namely We're
Off to see the Wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
The voices are easy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
To tell apart because Jack Haley has a distinctive Boston accent.
Oh No, as anyone who has seen The Departed knows,
he failed to pronounce the R in Wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
So that's why you get the Wizard the Wizard. You know,
I wouldn't you want doing that on a soundboard.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
Buddy Epsen, like Judy Garland, was a Midwesterner and pronounced
the R, so you can hear that in those songs.
Another fun fact about the tin Man song is that
it features a vocal cameo from snow White herself. Producers
paid voice actress Adriana Caslatti, who's just blown up playing
the title role in Disney Snow White and the Seven Doors.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
And honestly, in these days of Hollywood, that may not
have been a euphemism.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Yes, yes, MGM pay her one thousand dollars to sing
a single line.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
Yeah, they paid her. With Judy Garland made it a
month good, it's because she was an Italian and not
a Minnesotan.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
When the tin Man sings the song, if I only
had a heart. She adds the line, where far out
there I Can'm not gonna do it, And those five
words earned her a grand.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Good for her?

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
Yeah, that seems she looks like. I actually have no
idea what the real snow white voice looks like. Oh damn,
I would have paid her a grand.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
For one sentence. Her her father, Guido Luigi Emmanuel Cassilotti,
that's racist. Her mother Maria Josephine or Afiice Castelotti. Wow, Oh,
this is actually kind of crazy. Her mom was a
singer in the Royal Opera of Rome and Adriana. Cassilotti's
older sister, Louise was a voice teacher of Maria Callas. Whoa. Wow.

(01:23:59):
Good for her, I say, well, that's crazy. All right,
I'm glad we did that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
Now we're moving on to a section I call the
straw man fallacity. The scarecrow or straw man are used interchangeably.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Now I feel like one of those is more racist
than the other.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Discuss straw man sounds like it. Scarecrow, Well, no, because
that's literally what it's doing. It's scaring crows, scaring crows.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Yeah, well, the.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Scarecrow is a whole quasi scandalous subplot that was xcized
from the final movie. You may recall at the end
of the film that Dorothy says she'll miss the Scarecrow
most of all.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
It's not really clear why this is.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
I just sort of assumed that it was because he
was the first of the characters she met, so they
had a bond. But apparently there's a romantic subplot between
the two that was removed from an early version of
the script. There was even a scene written but never
filmed at the end of the movie where Hunk, the
real world Kansas counterpart to Scarecrow, is leaving for an
agricultural college and he asks Dorothy to write him every day,

(01:25:00):
implying a blossoming romance, which is weird. Twelve she's supposed
to be twelve and Hunk yeah, yeah, was eighteen.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
Oh at least yeah Hunk yeah fuck country.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
Speaking of things that don't totally make sense, After the
Scarecrow gets his brain, he supposedly states the Pythagorean theorem
to prove that he's now wicked smat. Unfortunately, he says
it incorrectly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Apparently actor Ray Bulger had a problem getting the line out,
so director Victor Fleming just went with the best take,
even if the lines weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Perfect movie magic halfassing thing. Yes, yes, we've got this
twelve year old jacked up on speed, and she's only
going to be coherent for so much longer.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Yes, it's possible that Ray Bulger was just completely exhausted
and too tired to recite the line correctly because he
was forced to arrive on set at four am to
have his makeup applied, and often worked fifteen hours or more.
And those makeup wasn't a toxic as the tin man's,
it still sucked. The face mask he wore was made
of rubber, and it was so heavy and tight that

(01:26:06):
it nearly suffocated him. Several times he's quoted as saying
that the mask quote wasn't porous, so you couldn't sweat,
you couldn't breathe through your skin. We felt like we
were suffocating. And it's been said that the facial prosthetics
left permanent lines on him. See it seems false, but
I've also heard versions that the marks took a year

(01:26:27):
to fully disappear, and that I believe. On a similar note,
Margaret Hamilton's copper based Wicked Witch of the West makeup
left her face green for a less than convenient amount
of time. After shooting wrapped, she'd say that the makeup
quote sunk into my skin. It must have been months
before my face was really normal again. Plus, her makeup

(01:26:49):
was so toxic that she wasn't allowed to eat with
it on because they didn't want to risk her ingesting it.
So throughout the entire production of the Wizard of Oz,
Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, had to
live on a liquid diet and consume her meals through
a straw so she wouldn't get poisoned due to the
copper based ingredients. So, in case you're counting, this is

(01:27:10):
the third cast member who was nearly killed or maimed
due to make up related injuries. And we didn't even
get to the Cowardly Lion yet. I gotta say, man,
they're lucky they didn't use like a skin mask. They
keep peeling on and they're like, yeah, put on. You're like, ah, gosh,
why does this smell like tobacco. The only cast member
that producers showed any caution and compassion for was the

(01:27:32):
so called horse of a different Color that the gang
meets when they arrive at the Emerald City. For that effect,
they covered the horse with a different colored Jellow powder
each time they wanted to make a new.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Color made with his friends.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Yes, was made from the hooves of dead horses, which
is perhaps why the horse kept trying to kick the
powder off in between takes.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
Yeah, I mean we're just saying further into hell.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
This is going to keep getting worse. This is why
I was excited to do this episode. It's really something
speaking of animals being treated badly. This leads us to
the Cowardly Lion, a character that has always annoyed me deeply.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
The only thing that I have, like I know Bert
Lar is like he was like famous in England. Maybe
he was in waiting for goodo oh yeah, and then
for a time period. Uh, I would listen to the
recording of him and whoever the other guy in it
is like falling asleep. So I've actually listened to a
lot more of Burt Leiar's voice than you would have assumed.

(01:28:32):
He has a good voice. Yeah, yeah, I forget if
he's laded me your astra gone.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
But well, well, before they cast Burt Leir, the producers
at MGM, whose logo you'll recall, is a lion. We're
considering using an actual real life lion on screen.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Yes, that's the old Hollywood vibes I was looking for.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
They were going to overdub lines by an actor. So okay,
you've got the pilled up sixteen year old. Yep, you've
got the man who was most killed and then replaced
with another guy who's can't sit down and has various
eye and skin infections.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
The guy with the board, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
He've got the other guy whose skin is suffocating, and
you got the woman with poison all over her face
who has to drink her meals through a straw. Really,
adding a lion to the proceedings was really the only
way to up the ante on all this. Instead, they
just decided to torture yet another person per layer. This
was an era before synthetic fur, so he was forced

(01:29:32):
to wear a real lions pelt, which weighed upwards of
ninety pounds.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
I mean, that's quite that's quite regal.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Though, no, no, no, let me finish. This was not
fun under extremely hot Technicolor lights, which caused temperatures on
the set to frequently break one hundred degrees. Sure, cinematographer
Harold Rosson later said, in the making of the Wizard
of Oz, we had enormous banks of lights overhead. We
borrowed every unused arc light in Hollywood. It was brutally hot.

(01:30:00):
People were always fainting and being carried off the set.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
But wait, it still gets worse.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Costomers, you know, normally try to create duplicate outfits to
use throughout the production to swap out, but this was
impossible for the Cowardly Lion's costume because the production were
unable to find lion hides and pelts at an identical color,
swirls and fur patterns.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
So as a result, Burtlair was forced to wear.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
The same ninety pounds costume under one hundred degree lights
every day.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
I know it smelled crazy in there.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
He sweated so much that the cost of had to
be put in an industrial drying bin each night to dry.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
The first person.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
This is also probably as good a time as any
to note that the Tin Man of Scarecrow and Cowardly
Lion were reportedly banned from eating in the MGM cafeteria
because the sight of them in makeup was deemed too
disturbing and disgusting. While other people were eating Yeah, and
probably because of the smell as you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
As you might expect. Even our lengthy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Seven r on the Ruby Slippers, the lion costume was
lost and forgotten on the MGM lot until it was
dug up for the famous auction in nineteen seventy when
it was sold for twenty four hundred dollars. That was
a good investment because it sold most recently in twenty
fourteen for three million. And now we get to, honestly,
the character that I hated the most, but the actor

(01:31:22):
on the set that I love the most, Margaret Hamilton.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Despite the fact that her character traumatized multiple generation of
children and probably adult who weren't used to seeing a
woman with agency, much less one with green skin, Margaret
Hamilton was arguably the sweetest person associated with the movie.
The week of Witch of the West is just a
small role in the original book, but the part was
expanded for the film to give it a stronger dramatic arc,
and interestingly, the character was initially supposed to be less

(01:31:47):
green and more Mortitia Adams. Sleek and sexy is a
phrase that pops up and slinky and seductive with comparisons
to the evil Queen in the just released Snow White,
which makes sense considering that OZ was intended to compete
with the Disney feature. But producers were uncomfortable with the
fact that an evil witch could be beautiful, which surely

(01:32:10):
they had dealt with Elizabeth Taylor. Oh, surely had they
had dealt with Leni Riefenstahl. I don't know what other
reference do you want me to have in there that works?
Surely they had dealt with Judy Garlands, Surely they had
dealt with Ethel Gunn just plug whichever one of those
in their works. So their first casting choice was the

(01:32:34):
glamorous Gail Sonda God and she departed the project soon after.
So the producers went to Margaret Hamilton, who was just
thirty six at the time of casting meeting The Wicked
Witch of the West, is younger than the average listener
of this podcast. I'm so sorry. When her agent told
her that she was up for the movie, Margaret Hamilton
wanted to know which part she might have had the

(01:32:54):
chance to play, and her agent scoffed the Wicked Witch
what else instead of firing him. Margaret Hamilton took the
part partially because she was newly divorced with a young
son to support, but mostly because she grew up loving
the books and was genuinely thrilled to bring it to
the big screen. She was the only person that actually
had any true love of OZ as far as the

(01:33:16):
rest of the cast went. Hamilton was a was a
kindergarten teacher before she became an actress, and she displayed
a great deal of concern for the kids who would
ultimately view her performance and be terrified. Apparently, she successfully
lobbied to have some of her more terrifying scenes cut
from the film.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
Yeah, this makes me feel sad thinking about her famous
Sesame Street episode in the seventies, which aired once and
then never again because it was deemed too scary for kids.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
She then appeared on an.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
Episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood in nineteen seventy five, where
she explained the children that she was only playing a
role and showed how putting on a costume transformed her
into a witch.

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
And by all account, Hamilton was in delight on the
set of OZ, despite the fact that production almost came
as it was a theme. She took a young Judy
Garland under her wing when she was ostracized by her
jealous male castmates, and Hamilton grew so close to the
entire cast that she was reduced to tears while watching
the scene with a Wizard, Get with a Wizard, with
the Wizard with the Wizard Humbo. She grew she grew

(01:34:20):
so close to the entire Hamilton grew so close to
the entire cast that she was reduced to tears while
watching the scene where the wizard gives Dorothy's friends There
gives at the end of the movie, and rather than
harboring fears of being type cast, Hamilton loved being in
this movie and celebrated it every day for the rest
of her life. She used the phrase I'll get you
by pretty as sort of a personal catchphrase in the

(01:34:41):
day to day, and on Halloween, she would hand out
candy at her house while dressed as Louis B. Mayer. No, no,
she was dressed as a witch. While she loved kids,
Hamilton discovered that many were afraid to meet her because
they assumed she either was a literal witch or that
at least she was as mean as her character, But
she got a great sense of humor about her role
in popular culture. In interviews, she frequently said that she

(01:35:04):
hoped newspapers would print the words ding dong, the Witch
is dead in her death notice, and when she died
in nineteen eighty five, many newspapers granted her her wish.
And here's a fun fact for anyone like me who
only perks up their ears at the name Boris Karloff.
The Wicked Witch's crystal ball was previously used in Awe

(01:35:25):
The Mask of Fu Manchu, which is a super racist film.
They do so much yellow face in that. Well, Glinda
the Goodwitch, you know, the boring one. Glinda the Goodwitch's
story is significant less colorful than The Wicked Witch of
the West, and it's significantly more interesting that Billy Burke,

(01:35:46):
the actress, was fifty four years old at the time
of filming and looks incredible for a nineteen thirty eight.
Fifty four year old, she looks incredible. People were like
sixteen back then, and they looked worse than we do.
Fifty four. She looked like in her thirties. My god,
I thought twenties. Well, film is forgiving. But you know,

(01:36:08):
she's a full eighteen years older. That she is a
full legal adult in the US, is older than the
Wicked Witch. It's interesting because the age thing had been
a sticking point for her. A few years earlier, she'd
been married to a theater impress, Arrio Florenz Ziegfield The
Ziegfield Follies review as a Broadway theater, et cetera. It's
just google. Zigfield probably won't bring up Nazi for at

(01:36:31):
least a few more years. When his life was getting
the big screen by somebody criticized this online biopic.

Speaker 7 (01:36:39):
Which makes sense, but it doesn't. It's not easy as musical,
it's not as it's not as tripping off. The time
when his life was getting the big screen biopic treatment
in the thirties, Burke was deemed too old to play herself,
which obviously hard pill to swallow.

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):
Presumably she went to a killer plastic search after that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
Dude plastic surch back this day. It was just like
shoving asbestos under your face and covering you with like
a mentally disabled person's skin that they had bought from
a guy on skid row, Like, come on, is that
too much? No, that's probably right on the money.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
Yeah, And now we got to talk about the wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
If ever there was a whiz there, stop it, if
stop it?

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
If ever there was a whiz there was the Wizard
of Oz is one because because because he was from Chicago,
I forgot he was from Chicago. I forgot about the
whole element that he brought it up.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
It gets worse because in Wicked he date rapes the
Wicked Witches mom spoilers. Oh well, in the book, it's
actually interesting. In the book, Gregory Maguire goes quite out
of his way to point out that Alphabe's mom is
a real hoe, including cucking her husband, who is a
preacher with a literal itinerant glass blower while her husband

(01:38:02):
is home. So the fact that the wizard comes by
and like and it's also like she's also like a
like a drug addict, Like there's like magic berries or
something and take away your pain, and she like eats
a lot of them and drinks constantly. This is a
whole bit in there about like just chapters upon chapters
of Alphaba's mom being like even her grandmother, I guess

(01:38:24):
is like, well, you're kind of a slut, aren't you, dear.
You don't even actually know who the father of Alphaba is, right,
And she's like, no, no, I guess not. I am
kind of a hoe. It's just insane, Gregory maguire, You're
you're crazy for that one.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
How have we made it this far without discussing the
titular Wizard of Oz. He was played by veteran character
actor Dan HIDEA wait, I'm just getting in my ear
that that's wrong. It's actually veteran character actor Frank Morgan.
I can see you liking Frank Morgan. Just vibe wise.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
He's Oh no, I was like, you see the guy
who played the Riddler, that was Frank. Yeah, folks, here's
a handymnic for confusing Frank Morgan and Frank Fortune. No,
I'm kidding, I don't have that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:06):
Frank Morgan shows up a number of times in the film,
playing multiple roles. In addition to the Great and Powerful
Oz and his Kansas equivalent, Professor Marvel, he plays the
Cabby with the Horse of a different color, who was
memorably portrayed by me in two thousand and four and
show of a regional high school, the guard at the
Wizard's palace, and a gatekeeper. The reason they had Frank

(01:39:26):
Morgan play all these different roles is because producers were
originally going after WC. Fields to play the Wizard, and
they wanted to offer a more screen time in order
to coax him into doing the movie. This ultimately failed
and Fields passed. I think I read that MGM couldn't
meet his fee, So.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Yes, WC.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
Fields ended up passing on the role or roles, i
should say, and they were all passed down to Frank Morgan,
who apparently.

Speaker 1 (01:39:49):
Was a real hoot.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
As you mentioned, he showed up to the set carrying
a briefcase that contained a portable mini bar ray Boulder
would recall, no matter how many times retreat it to
the black briefcase. He was never less than a gentleman,
although when he tried to stop drinking, he was short
tempered and irritable. I guess now that I read out aloud,
that's not great among us. There was apparently one incident

(01:40:14):
where director Victor Fleming confronted a grumpy Morgan telling him
to drink more so he'd be more tolerable. Oh okay, Hollywood,
I mean there were feeding pills to Judy Garland, I mean,
what do you expect. One of the most frequently cited
pieces of lore surrounding the making of the Wizard of
Oz needs to be taken with a handful of salt,

(01:40:35):
but it's so good that I feel compelled to print
the legend. The tattered coat that Professor Marvel wears at
the start of the film was purchased by MGM customers
who scoured local thrift stores searching for just the right
blend of shabby chic for him. When they examined the
jacket during a fitting with Frank Morgan, they discovered a
name tag stitched inside the garment reading L Frank Baum.

(01:41:00):
Uction company supposedly contacted Baum's widow and I guess even
his tailor too, who confirmed that the jacket did indeed
belong to the original Wizard of Oz author Wow. The
widow had donated its good will following his death, and
then I guess the Hollywood costumers stumbled on it, but
then the production gifted it back to her once the

(01:41:21):
movie wrapped. Now, in all likelihood, this is probably garbage
spun by the promotional team. This was the era when
producers of like the movie Lifeboat.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
Is that a Hitchcock movie? I think it was a
Hitchcock movie.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
They told the press that the lifeboat used in the
film was taken from the Titanic, which was not true.
They were all hucksters and carnival barkers. These guys, anyhow,
what is true? And this is an equally wild connection.
The carriage driven by the horse of a different color
horse when Dorothy and her friends get to Oz was
originally made for Abraham Lincoln and presented to him as

(01:41:58):
a gift during the Civil War. There's actually a handwritten
note on the frame of the carriage that reads A
Lincoln June eighth, eighteen sixty three.

Speaker 1 (01:42:07):
Isn't that nuts? Damn?

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
Did MGM throw that out too? I think they burned
it for gone with the wind. Actually it's in some
museum I did. I googled it and saw it. I
forget where it might be the Ford Museum, I forget where.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:42:23):
No discussion of the Wizard of Oz cast would be
complete without mentioning the Munchkins, a term that I suspect
is problematic, but I don't know what else to call them,
ladies and gentlemen, the munchkins, the aristocrats. There were one
hundred and twenty four adults employed as Denizen's of munchkin Land,
as well as somewhere between four and a dozen children.

(01:42:44):
Many of these adults were members of the Austrian Leopold
Singers vaudeville troupe known by the extremely outdated name Singers Midgets.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
Uh, he owned them.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
I think they were contracted to work for him.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
Okay, question mark? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:05):
It's worth noting that The Wizard of Oz was filmed
in nineteen thirty eight, when Hitler's regime had consolidated power
in Germany and Austria, and many of the Munchkins had
joined Singer's troop as a way to escape the Nazis.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
And immigrate to the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
As a result of this, many of the Munchins didn't
speak English, and most of their voices were dubbed by
American actors in post sometimes was sped up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
Tape to you know, get the whole Munchkin effect. Actor
Billy Curtis, who is an uncredited Munchkin in Wizard of Oz,
but who also he worked quite a lot, including the
voice of Mayor mccheese when that's amazing, he voiced what
do you want for me? He voiced Mayor mccheese. It's

(01:43:47):
on his Wikipedia page. So he alleged that Singer had
a reputation for quote cheating his employees during the filming
of Wizard of Oz. Singer reportedly kept half of his
performers weekly pay and some of the uh ooh god,
this gets so weird. His troop members often spoke positively

(01:44:08):
of him. Nita Krebs said that he always treated his
people fine, and Grace Williams said, in language that alarmingly
mirrors that of people talking about slave owners, said he
had private tutors to give them an education. He treated
them fine and gave them beautiful hotel suites. Oh that said,
it must be known that a number of Singers employees

(01:44:30):
referred to their manager as Papa. They were disbanded in
the mid forties. Apparently many joined Ringling Brothers, Barnum and
Bailey Circus or returned to Europe.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
How about that? That is quite a thing. I did
not dig as deep into that as you did.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
I just never trust the Viennese, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:44:49):
Well, on the plus side, they really got the full
Golden Age of Hollywood treatment on this production. Each member
of the one hundred and twenty plus group had their
own unique hair and costume design, which rules overall. Customers
designed and sewed three thousand, two hundred and ten.

Speaker 1 (01:45:10):
Outfits for this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:45:12):
Is that insane less awesome. Apparently, one of the Munchkin
actors got stuck on a toilet for forty five minutes
on set, which led to MGM hiring attendance to help
them on and off the toilets throughout the remainder of
the production. Ah yeah, yeah. They were famously put up
at the Culver Hotel near the MGM lot. John Wayne

(01:45:36):
had won the hotel from Charlie Chaplin in a poker game,
and reportedly you can still see the studs on the
floor of his personal suite, where he had a circular
and possibly rotating bed installed, to which I say, gross pilgrim.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
They don't want to take a little light out on
my rotating bed.

Speaker 2 (01:45:56):
I don't understand the rotating bed thing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:58):
Is it just because I'm from New England? It's because
maybe I don't know, you want to get nauseous while
you're us your head spinning, baby, I don't know, dude,
it seems like you would. I didn't have like a
bed larger than a twin until I was like twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
The vibrating bed thing makes slightly more sense.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
Oh yeah, those are just the magic fingers. Never actually
been in a place that had those m on tour.
I feel like you would have we would have. No,
that's luxury. Hotels are luxury. That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
Well, as we mentioned earlier, there are all sorts of
rumors of what the one hundred and twenty four Munchkins
got up to with the Culver Hotel on their own time, benders, carousing, orgies,
et cetera. Many of these tales were stoked by Judy
Garland herself, as she said during an appearance on Jack
Parr's talk show a few years before her death. They
were drunks, one of them. It was about forty. A

(01:46:54):
gentleman asked me for dinner, and I couldn't say I
can't because you're a midget. I just said no, my
mother would like it. The man replied, Ah, come on,
bring your ma too. They put them all in one
hotel in Culver City and they got smashed every night.
They picked them up in butterfly nets. This assessment has
perhaps not surprisingly, been challenged by many of the actors themselves.

(01:47:16):
In two thousand and nine, Margaret pedel GRENI, one of
the last surviving Munchkins, told The Independent there were a
lot of them who'd like to go out and have
a few drinks, but nothing got out of hand. Everyone
was having a good time and enjoying themselves. There was
no rowdiness or anything like that. And those stories are
very upsetting. Judy Garland upset. Margaret Pellgreene, I don't like that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:37):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
By most credible accounts, they behaved with utmost professionalism despite
their lack of experience in Hollywood. But these stories are
persisted for decades, and it even led to a movie,
nineteen eighty one's Under the Rainbow starring Carrie Fisher and
Chevy Chase, which details the munchkins alleged exploits at the
Culver Hotel.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
I've never seen that of you, No, I just want
to let them have fun.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
Sure, yeah, but not assault sixteen year old Judy Garland.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
Well there's that. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
Despite these slanderous rumors, most of the Munchkin performers cherished
their time on the set. For many, it was the
first time they were surrounded by people like themselves, and
it led to the formation of lifelong friendships and even marriages.
Aw According to activist Billy Bardy, this gathering of little
people on set led to the formation of the what

(01:48:27):
was then known as the Midgets of America advocacy group
now known as Little People of America. The actors themselves
went on to lead fascinating lives. Case in point, Myhard Rabe,
who played the Corner of munchkin Land. He went on
to become reportedly the shortest licensed pilot.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
During World War Two.

Speaker 2 (01:48:46):
Oh hell yeah, he was three feet tall when Oz
was shot, but then he grew another foot, which I
don't really totally understand how that works. Okay, I guess
maybe he was god teens when the shot that was
it of Oz.

Speaker 1 (01:48:57):
Oh ok.

Speaker 2 (01:48:58):
He toured the country for thirty years in the Oscar
meyer Wiedermobile promoting hot dogs. As quote little Oscar the
world's smallest chef. He married a cigarette girl remember those,
named Marie, and for fifty years they were married until
she was killed in a car accident in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:49:18):
I'd heard on the Dearly Departed podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
That he accidentally ran her over. I've been unable to
find sources to confirm this. In two thousand and five,
he released a book called Memories of a Munchkin and
illustrated walk down the Yellow Brick Road. He spent his
final years in a retirement home and kept a signed
photograph of Judy Garland near his bed that read four

(01:49:41):
mine heard a perfect coroner and person two.

Speaker 1 (01:49:45):
Oh, that's heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
He died in April twenty ten at the age of
ninety four.

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
Little man, great big Heart. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):
The last surviving adult Munchkin was Jerry Marin, who was
a member of the Lollipop Guild. He was the one
who held out the life lollipop to Judy, hailing from Lynn, Massachusetts, Baby,
he died in twenty eighteen at the age of ninety eight,
and to date, as far as I'm aware, there's only
two actors from The Wizard of Oz who are conferring
to be living. One is Priscilla Montgomery Clark, who is

(01:50:17):
nine years old when she played at Munchkin, and the
other is Valrie Lee Shepherd who is eight years old.
But we also have to give honorable mention to Karen
marsh Dahl, who served as Judy Garland's stand in. Those
are her feet that you see when Judy taps the
heels of his ruby slippers together. She was nineteen years
old during this production and she's currently one hundred and

(01:50:39):
five Good God, and she will turn God willing one
hundred and six in April. Well, folks, that is the
rundown of the cast of The Wizard of Oz. But
we are about two hours in and we haven't even
got to the production yet, so we're gonna save that
for a part two. We're going to take a pitch
from the Wicked playbook and divide it the two parts.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):
Jordan and I are gonna get way too skinny, and
I'm kind of gonna have a kind of will vayre
one't they situation on the red carpet that happening that
you people are really gonna be interesting?

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
Yes, So come back next time for tails from the
set and production and the aftermath of The Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 1 (01:51:18):
Thank you for listening. As always, folks, we will be
back to a regular rhythm. We promise. Jordan don't get
sick again. America doesn't let you do that. We'll see
next time. Thank you, folks.

Speaker 5 (01:51:31):
Ogle's gotten no love to spare.

Speaker 1 (01:51:38):
Music and he's glad about his lands.

Speaker 4 (01:51:41):
Make the show Fu Sack Guns and None.

Speaker 1 (01:52:00):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's
executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):
The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtog
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 2 (01:52:14):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

Speaker 1 (01:52:17):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.

Speaker 2 (01:52:20):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

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The Wizard of Oz (Part 1 - The Cast): Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript

Host

Jordan Runtagh

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Wizard of Oz (Part 1 - The Cast): Everything You Didn't Know