The Wizard of Oz

Oz the Great and Powerful will be released in theaters in March. And there are other productions (like Wicked) in the works that deal with Oz. One look at these productions should convince you that they owe just as much to Frank Baum's original story as to Victor Fleming's 1939 version.

The Wizard of Oz travels through time unhindered, and still remains a holiday classic favorite. There are aspects of the film that you may not know.

Much as been said about the fact that the famous Over the Rainbow sequence was almost cut from the picture at the last minute. Fortunately, it was decided otherwise. However some scenes, although filmed and edited, were indeed deleted from the film.

Every time Dorothy meets a friend on her way to Oz, he gets to sing "If I only had ..." and then goes into an extended dance routine. From the very first meeting with the scarecrow, the dance was drastically cut short. Originally Scarecrow was to interact with a crow which stole some straw off him, and he was to fly through the air with the help of a (slightly visible) cable. The sequence was preserved and is featured in That's Dancing! which was directed by the Tin Man's son Jack Haley Jr..

Buddy Ebsen and cast

Jack Haley was not the first choice for the part which was originally played by Buddy Ebsen. The latter was poisoned by the aluminum makeup used on his face.He was in such a bad shape that the production had to change the actor as well as the makeup. But Ebsen had pre-recorded his tracks and his voice can still be heard in choruses. Even Jack Haley's take was also shortened, as was Ray Bolger's.

For good measure, the cowardly lion's song If I Were King of the Forest was also cut short.

Haven't you ever wondered what the witch meant when she says she sent a "little insect" to take care of Dorothy and her friends? This line of dialog refers to a deleted musical sequence called the Jitterbug named after an insect which attacked our heros. The full soundtrack has been preserved although the track presented on the DVD is the rehearsal track with Dona Massin standing in for Judy. (She was the film's choreographer and appears as the woman grooming the lion in the film). The footage is now lost, however the scene is presented in the special features of the Blu-ray illustrated with color home movies of a camera rehearsal by composer Harold Arlen. 

Dorothy, when trapped by the witch, was originally supposed to sing a reprise of Over The Rainbow while crying. Unlike other musical sequences, and due to the nature of the scene, the track was not pre-recorded but Judy sang live with a piano accompaniment to favor her acting over the singing. And she does give an extraordinary performance although we can only judge by the preserved soundtrack, since the footage is now also lost.

A reprise of Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is dead was appropriately planned near the end of the film but here again, only the final soundtrack remains and a snippet of the scene is visible in the original trailer.

Finally, there's an alternate track available for the short end titles on the soundtrack which reveals that many key sequences were longer when they were scored. These include the cyclone, the appearance of the Witch of the West, her return on the rooftop (where she used to turn the Tin Man into a bee hive) the spell in the poppy field, etc.

You may not know this, but the off-screen voice of Juliet singing "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" during "If I Only Had A Heart" is Adriana Caselotti, who had recorded the voice of Disney's Snow White only two years earlier.
Anyway, the restoration is quite beautiful and you want to see this on Blu-ray!

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A Star Is Born Again

I mentioned a restoration technique that I thought was interesting when I discussed Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. A complete soundtrack was still extant but whole chunks of footage were missing. Instead of discarding the soundtrack, the restoration team opted to replace the missing parts with appropriately placed still pictures.

Mason in costume

When the time came to restore A Star Is Born, a similar problem occurred. Even before the film’s premiere, many scenes were removed to tighten an already long story. Scenes of Norman Maine shooting a pirate film on location are now only remembered through a few stills.

Mason in a pre-premiere outtake

But this can be considered part of the making of the film. However, soon after the premiere, Warner Brothers decided that the film was too long and an intermission was inappropriate. So under the pressure of local distributors (who wanted a shorter film to allow more showings per day) the film was heavily butchered in several places without the assistance of director George Cukor. Since the idea was to shorten the film only through editing, no reshoots were planned to explain missing plot points or to sweeten awkward transitions.

Deleted picnic scene

That meant that once it was decided that the first scene of Norman Maine’s extensive search for Esther was gone, the rest of the scenes had to go too. And indeed it did, along with two musical numbers (when there weren’t that many to begin with) and many other scenes.

The restoration began when the complete monaural copy of the soundtrack was located in the vaults of Warner Brothers. This gave the restorers the hope that, if the missing footage could be located, the world could once again see the original edit of the film. Their goal was to show it to George Cukor who could never sit through the film again.

At the time the decision to cut the film was made, Warner requested the cuts of the copies already in circulation to be shipped back to the studio. It soon became apparent that they had not only tossed away these cuts, but had also cut the original negative and thrown away the outtakes.

With apparently nothing to work with, they went on an extensive search for uncut copies. Except for the missing musical sequences that they got from the vaults of the studio or from a private collector who had stolen the “Long Face” sequence long ago, the all important dramatic scenes of the first third of the film could not be located in their entirety. The decision was taken to use the bits of film found in the department that stored stock footage (the bits and pieces that were considered usable for other films like streets, cars, locations, etc.) and the studio stills over the soundtrack in place of the cut scenes.

The main problem with this was the fact that, to save on costs, and unlike the regular studio practice of the time, very few studio stills were taken on this production (one only per scene average). So they sometimes had to recreate a still by combining several unrelated ones or by completely photographing new scenes (The tenant of the Oleander Arms is an actress from the eighties).

In spite of that, two dialog-heavy scenes still had to be shortened for the restoration, the complete version of which are offered as bonus features on the Blu-ray.

However, the result looks marvelous and even though the appearance of the stills intercut with live footage can seem weird to some, it does help to raise awareness to film preservation. Unfortunately George Cukor died before this restoration was completed and screened.

As a matter of fact, according to this article, at least one complete copy of the film (and even some scenes cut prior to release) still exist in the hands of a private collector named Michael Arick, which seems believable enough considering how the "Long Face" sequence was recovered. However, due to a conflict about a previous collaboration with Warner over a complete print of A Streetcar named desire (among other things), Arick does not wish to deal with them again. Let's pray that the film will some day be complete.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

The Blu-ray also offers other versions of the very famous Man That Got Away sequence, because it was filmed to playback several times before everyone involved was satisfied with costumes, lights and the overall look of it.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

I strongly suggest you to buy the soundtrack CD if you like the film. After all, it IS a musical. Also, a great book called “A star is born, The making of the 1954 movie and its 1983 restoration” was written by Ronald Haver, who is responsible for this restoration. The first part tells the fascinating story of the film at the time of the making which helps to explain the decisions made at the time regarding its fate (it was the first Warner Cinemascope picture), and the second part is about the epic restoration.

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Lost Hair

In my article about Leslie Caron, I briefly mentioned her An American In Paris co-star’s habit of wearing a cap to hide his bald scalp: Gene Kelly almost never appeared without a wig or a cap. But there are a few pictures out there of him going “natural”.

Some other actors also lost their hair at a relatively young age. For most of them, it was a well kept secret outside of the industry. Others occasionally appeared without their toupee in public.

John Wayne even once joked about the fact that his hair was real, not his, but real. He appears on this picture signing autographs for soldiers. The war is indeed a time when stars often stop bothering about “trifling” matters like their appearance. During most of World War II, Fred Astaire gladly got rid of his wig, which he didn’t like much. The latter was designed with a visible receding hairline anyway.

Bing Crosby wore a similar kind of prosthesis and you can see him without it on this picture.

Other stars in the same condition include Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Tony Curtis,…

Even though Sean Connery set the trend for a more natural look, to this day, actors like John Travolta show their scalp only on stolen paparazzi pictures.

 Women, of course, rarely encounter the same problem. However, filmmakers can be very demanding with their actresses. Vera Miles, among others, had to shave her head for the filming of 5 Branded Women. Consequently, she had to wear a wig for her next film and most famous role: Lila Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

But there is another area where women tend to use artificial hairs.

Lana Turner

It will come as no surprise to you if I tell you that Mae West or Jean Harlow had shaved their eyebrows which they used to replace by a stylized and quite unrealistic stroke of makeup pencil. In those days, it was all the rage.
Most stars of the 1940s and 1950s who started as starlets in those days did the very same thing. Trends changed later and actresses like Ingrid Bergman launched a more natural look that was soon adopted by all.

Unfortunately, you may not know that once shaved, eyebrows do not always grow back. The most famous story is that of Lana Turner who, in one of her early screen roles in The Adventures of Marco Polo, not only had to wear a very uncomfortable wig, but also had to shave her eyebrows, as producer Samuel Goldwyn insisted. For the rest of her life, she had to design her eyebrows with makeup.

and in 1938 in Marco Polo

Turner in 1937 (They Won't Forget)

A not so renown story is that of Judy Garland. Makeup artist Del Armstrong, who worked with both ladies, remembered : "With Judy, there was one problem - it was the same problem Lana had - no eyebrows. Because in the early days of glamor, they used to tweeze them quite a bit so they could make exaggerated shapes, and if you tweeze your eyebrows too much, then they just don't grow back. So I had some hair lace, like for a mustache or wigs, and I had some eyebrows made for Judy for this picture (A Star Is Born). You couldn't just pencil them in, because there's no dimension. A pencil is flat. Penciling is fine for a still picture, but for a motion picture, people are turning their heads and you can see that it's flat. So I put these eyebrows on Judy."

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Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun is a feel-good movie. Yet it hides so much pain and unhappiness. What should have been a high point on the stars' careers became their doom.
MGM hired Judy Garland and Frank Morgan to reunite in this musical, but he died early in the filming and her health made it difficult for her and she felt wrong for the part.

She recorded all her songs, and the shoot started. Soon, she had to stop because she just did not have the strength. So MGM imported the blonde bombshell Betty Hutton from Paramount.
Along with Judy went director Busby Berkeley who was replaced with George Sidney, and some of the cast.

Betty Hutton was much more appropriate for the part, but the cast and crew hated her simply for being Garland's replacement. She later insisted on interviews that she had a miserable time on the set and that she was disgusted with the film business because of it.

Betty Hutton was a major star in the forties and her fame was consistently rising. She was voted most popular female star by Photoplay magazine in 1950. Today, she is only remembered for this film and the next one (Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show On Earth), afterwhich she disappeared into oblivion, and I'm not sure many people actually know the name of the energetic trapeze artist from the DeMille movie, even though they probably saw it at some point.

I must say I initially did not feel attracted to her personality because I had heard a few interviews and read a few articles which focused on her faith, to which I do no relate at all. I like to hear a film star talk about her career, and occasionally about her personal life if it's of any interest, but I'm sure I'm not interested in hearing them trying to convince me their God is the One for me. And I was afraid it would be the bulk of  Betty's writings.

My brother offered me her autobiography one day and I must say I understood why anyone would need a strong support such as religion with a life like she had. I defy anyone to read the book and not feel sympathy for her by page 50.
Her father left her alcoholic mother, who was a bootlegger. This set the tone for a personal disastrous life.

Incidentally, we learn that Ethel Merman, the star of the Broadway version of Annie Get your Gun, cut Betty's single number out of "Panama Hattie" that they did together previously. The show's song "There's no business like show business" was reused by her in the 20th Century Fox Marilyn Monroe film of the same name.

We also learn that June Allyson, whom Betty had taught to act, sing and dance like her, wasn't exactly the sweetheart that she appeared to be.

And last but not least,  this is one more candid testimony about Cary Grant being bisexual. And you can bet Betty is not a liar.

After "Annie" and except for a few come-backs, Betty stayed out of the public eye and lost all of her money. Her children left her when the money ran out and her mother burned to death. She eventually became a cook in an institution where she met her mentor Father Maguire. In the 2000 TCM interview by Robert Osborne, Betty says she was under the supervision of the state because someone had tried to steal money from her.

Judy as Annie

One of Betty's number was also cut from Annie Get Your Gun. You can hear and see some of the deleted numbers (Betty's and Judy's) on the excellent soundtrack CD and DVD. And if you're interested in Betty Hutton and the Hollywood of the forties, I very much recommend her autobiography called Backstage You Can Have. Her official website is satinandspurs.com


One shot from Annie that I always felt was very sad was from Judy's outtakes were the director yells cut in the middle of her line and she raises her head with surprised eyes and starts complaining but the camera cuts and she disappears from the screen. I'm probably seeing too much into it, but knowing the fate of the film and of these two great actresses, I can't help but to see a symbol of doom in that one shot.

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