the making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz

'It has stood the test of time,' said Harmetz, whose book will be released in a new edition this fall - in time for the movie's 75th anniversary.

'I know they can never make another movie like that,' said Duccini, who played one of the Munchkin villagers when she was 20. 'The reason that scene is so good is because we really did enjoy it,' Ruth Robinson Duccini, now 95, told. Maren, who was 16 at the time, said Garland was 'an angel.

Now 93, he even sang a few bars of the 'Lollipop Song.' 'It was wonderful,' Jerry Maren, the Munchkin in the middle who famously welcomes Dorothy to Munchkinland by handing her a lollipop, told. It was the early days of Technicolor, which had only been around three years.'įor two of the three surviving diminutive actors who played Munchkins, it was one of the best experiences of their life. They were creating characters that had never been on the screen before. 'They were creating new techniques to do the special effects. 'There were problems all along, but mostly because this was uncharted ground,' said Aljean Harmetz, author of 'The Making of the Wizard of Oz,' the definitive book on the film. And 'Over the Rainbow,' which became the film's iconic song, almost didn't make it in. Though released to much fanfare, it lost money until 1956, when MGM leased it to CBS, which began showing it on television every year and turned it into a cultural phenomenon.Įven more surprising: Judy Garland, who played Dorothy and went on to become a huge star, was not the studio's first choice. The 1939 classic took more than a dozen screenwriters, three directors, six soundstages, 23 weeks to shoot and cost nearly $3 million - MGM's most expensive film that year. March 8, 2013— - intro: As yet another spinoff of 'The Wizard of Oz' arrives in theaters, it's almost hard to believe that the original film, which premiered 74 years ago, was, in many ways, a near disaster.

The making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz