1. The Movie - Preproduction
1.1. How did The Movie get started? Why did MGM make it?
1.2. Who was the producer of The Movie?
1.3. What was the MGM studio production code for The Movie?
1.4. How much did the movie rights cost?
1.5. Was there any hidden meaning to the film?
1.6. Who wrote the screenplay?
1.7. Why is The Movie so different from the book?
1.8. How did the screenplay change as different scripts were written?
1.9. Where can I find a copy of the script?
1.10. What are the words to "Over the Rainbow," or any of the other songs?
1.11. How much did it cost to make The Movie?
Up until 1937 Hollywood rarely made fantasy movies because movie studio executives thought the public wouldn't accept them, and the few they made generally didn't do well. But that year Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it became the biggest money-making film up to that time. The other Hollywood studios took notice, and scrambled to make their own fantasy projects. MGM songwriter Arthur Freed, who wanted to break into producing, was looking for a vehicle for Judy Garland. A fan of the Oz books, Freed found out that independent producer Samuel Goldwyn owned the film rights to The Wizard of Oz and convinced MGM to buy those rights, beating out four other studios. Mervyn LeRoy was a producer that MGM had just hired away from Warner Bros., and he, too, was interested in making The Wizard of Oz. As a studio, MGM also wanted to make The Wizard of Oz a full-color, special effects spectacular so that they could show off what the studio could do -- it was a "prestige" project.
Since Oz was felt to be too big a project for a first-time producer like Freed to manage (see the previous question), LeRoy was named producer, with Freed as his assistant. (Freed received no credit in the finished movie, but he would go on to become a producer of some of MGM's biggest musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, including Meet Me in St. Louis and Singing in the Rain.)
Officially, it was MGM Production #1060.
MGM paid $75,000 to Samuel Goldwyn for the rights. This was an unusually large amount for the day. By comparison, David O. Selznick paid Margaret Mitchell $50,000 for the film rights to her book Gone with the Wind, also a larger-than-usual sum for its day.
Some folks, looking back with over sixty years of hindsight, seem to think that there was some deeper or hidden meaning to The Movie, such as a call for American isolationism in light of the troubles going on in Europe at the time, or a parable on the benefits of President Roosevelt's New Deal policies. Any message is there if you look hard enough, but it is extremely doubtful that any one particular message was ever intended. The film was made merely to entertain. (It's possible that some people, erroneously hearing that there is some special meaning to the story but only knowing about The Movie, have created a meaning for The Movie, not realizing that this theory originates with the book.)
A number of writers had a hand in developing the screenplay. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf were officially credited for it (and Langley with the adaptation), and most of what appeared on screen is their work. But Herman J. Mankiewicz (who would win an Oscar two years later for writing Citizen Kane), Ogden Nash, William Cannon, Irving Brecher, Herbert Fields, Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz, and Sid Silvers all worked on Oz at one point or another, John Lee Mahin did some uncredited clean-up writing and quick scene rewrites during production, and lyricist E. Y. Harburg provided some of the segues into the songs and other bits of dialogue, including most of the Wizard's speech to Dorothy's friends as he gave them what they wanted.
That's Hollywood! Baum's book contained a number of scenes that just couldn't be done by the special effects of the time, or they would have made The Movie too long, or cost more than even MGM could afford, so they were not included in the script. Other changes were made (combining the Good Witch of the North and Glinda, the Good Witch of the South into one character, for instance) to simplify the story for the screen, the Wicked Witch of the West was brought in much earlier as a unifying thread for an otherwise episodic plot, and the whole story was made into Dorothy's dream because it was felt that audiences wouldn't believe the story any other way. And the book's silver shoes became ruby slippers because Oz was one of the few films made at the time in color, and MGM wanted to show off the color process. Considering how many odd ideas were proposed at one point or another (see the next question), it could be seen as a triumph that the final results are as close to the book as they are!
The writers often created new incidents to liven up the story. The original idea was to turn the story into a slapstick musical comedy, so there were a few deviations from what was written in the book. Some of the earlier scripts included a son for the Wicked Witch of the West whom she wanted to put on the throne of Oz, a stuck-up niece for Miss Gulch, a rescue from the Wizard's balloon by the Munchkin fire department, a singing princess and her cowardly suitor who gets transformed into a lion, a rainbow bridge that the witch constructs as a trap for Dorothy, and a romance between Dorothy and one of the farmhands. When the script got too bogged down, however, Langley, Ryerson and Woolf would turn to Baum's book for inspiration, and the results were generally an improvement.
In 1989, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of The Movie, the screenplay was published by Delta Books, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. This book includes a number of scenes not in the finished film, and complete lyrics. Although it's now out of print, the book can be found at many libraries, or bought from IWOC. At least two other editions of the script have been published, and one was also included in the 1993 collector's set, "The Ultimate Oz," and the gift set edition of the 1999 video and DVD releases. It can also be read on the WWW at http://www.westol.com/~wizardoz/script.htm.
I get asked this often enough that, if I could, I would include lyrics in this FAQ -- except for one problem. The Movie, including the song lyrics, is still under copyright, and I cannot legally put the lyrics in this document without permission. However, they can be found, if you're willing to do a little work. First, the lyrics are available in the published editions of the screenplay (see above). Second, not only the words, but the music as well are available in a song folio from your local music store (if they don't have it, they should be able to special order it), or you can find them on the WWW at the official website of The Movie at http://www.thewizardofoz.com/cmp/r-lyrics.html, or at http://www.westol.com/~wizardoz/writlyric.htm, or http://www.angelfire.com/pa/maryanne/lyric.html.
For it's time, The Wizard of Oz was an expensive movie. The final tally came to around $2.77 million . Most headlining feature movies, by comparison, cost around $1 million at the time. The Wizard of Oz, however, was not the costliest movie of the year: Gone with the Wind cost a whopping $4 million to make.
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