
Wizard of oz dog movie#
“Nobody on the movie ever saw her or heard of a munchkin assaulting her,” says Harmetz. Harmetz says it’s true that the actors would go drinking near the Culver City hotel where they stayed, but she says their interactions with Garland did not rise to the level of what Luft described. In a memoir by Judy Garland’s third husband, Sid Luft, published posthumously in 2017, he writes that, after bar-hopping in Culver City, the actors who played the munchkins “would make Judy’s life miserable by putting their hands under her dress.” Probably false: Judy Garland was molested by actors playing munchkins Terry did recover and returned to the set a few weeks later. The dog (a female Cairn terrier named Terry) sprained its foot, and Spitz had to get a canine double. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.Īn actor playing one of the Wicked Witch of the West’s soldiers accidentally jumped on top of Dorothy’s Toto, Carl Spitz, the dog trainer on set, told Harmetz. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. Unlike Ebsen, she didn’t get fired because they could live without her on the set for several more weeks.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Margaret Hamilton - who played the Wicked Witch of the West and was the one tipped who Harmetz off to the turmoil on set more than three decades later for her 1977 book - got burns, and the makeup artists had to rush to remove her copper makeup so that it wouldn’t seep through her wounds and become toxic. He did develop an infection in his right eye that needed medical attention, but it ended up being treatable. This time, instead of applying the aluminum powder, the makeup artists mixed it into a paste and painted it on him. When he was not getting better fast enough, the filmmakers hired Jack Haley to be the Tin Man instead. Nine days after filming started he was hospitalized, sitting under an oxygen tent. the Tin Man, but he was essentially poisoned by the makeup, which was made of pure aluminum dust. Here’s what’s real and what’s myth in some of the most popular theories: True: the makeup made actors sickīuddy Ebsen was originally cast in the role of the Tin Woodman, a.k.a. “I think it had a basis in truth and it was magnified,” says Anne Edwards, author of Judy Garland: A Biography. Stars and lesser players were indentured servants studios.”īut not everything you may have heard about problems on the set is true.

“Some of these special effects had never been done before,” says Aljean Harmetz, a former New York Times Hollywood correspondent who wrote The Making of The Wizard of Oz, which revealed the disastrous filmmaking process. There were so many serious accidents on set that those Oscar-nominated special effects almost cost cast members their lives, from the two actors playing winged monkeys crashing to the ground when the wires that hoisted them up in the air broke, to the Wicked Witch of the West’s stunt double Betty Danko injuring her left leg when the broomstick exploded. television.” The movie had made Garland a “national legend,” the magazine continued.īut despite its commercial success, The Wizard of Oz is seen by some as cursed. By 1967, TIME could declare that it had become “the most popular single film property in the history of U.S.
