Saturday, January 21, 8PM @ Morrison Center
Sunday, January 22, 2PM @ Morrison Center
Come watch the classic Oscar-winning movie accompanied LIVE by Maestro Robert Franz and the Boise Philharmonic. Judy Garland's original 1939 studio recordings backed by lush, live orchestration will transport children and adults alike.
PURCHASE TICKETS - SATURDAY
PURCHASE TICKETS - SUNDAY
The Honorable Steve Trott will be hosting Musically Speaking, our pre-concert lecture series, for Wizard of Oz on January 21st and January 22nd. This will begin at 7:00pm on January 21st and 1:00pm on January 22nd. More details here.
Boise Sponsor - 
Grantor - Morrison Center Endowment Foundation
Family Series Sunday Sponsor - 
Robert Franz, conductor
The Wizard of Oz
Music by Harold Arlen
Lyrics by E.Y. "Yip
Musical Adaptation by Herbert Stothart
Behind The Music
This film opened nationally on August 25, 1939, after premieres over the previous two weeks in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin; Hollywood, California; and New York City.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Can we really honor the Wizard’s wishes when the story behind The Wizard of Oz is just as interesting as the film? Released in August of 1939, this legendary movie has become an inseparable part of most children’s early memories. Produced for only $2.8 million, the movie earned $3 million – the equivalent of $44 million in 2011 dollars – in its first release. Most Baby Boomers remember the annual December or February broadcast of the film on CBS which ran from 1959-1998 (except in 1963 when its scheduled December broadcast was abandoned in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination). A little of Oz resides in all of us, but this is only a small piece of the rainbow.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the rights for L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz from Samuel Goldwyn in 1938 for $75,000. Although the story had floated around Hollywood for years (an earlier film version starring Laurel and Hardy had already been made), the impetus to move forward with a high-profile children’s film came from the success of Walt Disney’s 1937 animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which cost nearly as much to make as The Wizard of Oz. MGM recognized the opportunity to profit from a children’s film.
The Wizard of Oz, officially known as Production #1060, went through four directors in its six months of shooting. Richard Thorpe, a respected director who later went on to create The Great Caruso, shot the first twelve days of the picture, which included many of the scenes inside the Wicked Witch’s castle. Thorpe saw Dorothy as a doll – blond-haired and with rouged cheeks. After Thorpe was fired, the legendary director George Cukor, who had already made such films as David Copperfield and Greta Garbo’s Camille, took the helm and gave Dorothy her now-iconic brown hair and gingham dress. Cukor lasted only three days.
The bulk of the film was directed by Victor Fleming, whose name appears in the credits. Fleming was known as a director of westerns and swashbuckling action films and seemed an odd choice for this children’s fantasy. However, his reputation was solid and the actors were eager to work for him. With only ten days of shooting remaining, Victor Fleming was called away to replace George Cukor, the same director he replaced in The Wizard of Oz, in the film that would beat Oz for the Best Picture Oscar in 1940 – Gone With the Wind. The final ten days were directed by King Vidor, an artist known for his individuality and independence. His task was shooting all of the sepia-tone (they are not actually black and white, but are brown and white) Kansas scenes, including “Over the Rainbow.”
Although modern audiences have grown up with Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, and Margaret Hamilton in their familiar roles, early negotiations indicated the possibility of a very different cast. The original plan was for Shirley Temple to play Dorothy and W.C. Fields to portray Professor Marvel/The Wizard, a role that went to Frank Morgan. Margaret Hamilton, who was only thirty-six years old at the time, was the second choice for the Wicked Witch of the West after the role was turned down by the glamorous Gale Sondergaard, who later stated, “I was not about to make myself ugly for any motion picture.” Billie Burke’s fairy-like performance as Glinda the Good Witch would have been very different if producer Mervyn LeRoy’s choice of Fanny Brice had become reality.
The Wizard of Oz was fraught with accidents. The original Tin Man was Buddy Ebsen, a veteran song and dance man who would become a household name as Jed Clampett on the television series, The Beverly Hillbillies, in the 1960s. Ebsen was forced to leave the production after he accidentally inhaled the aluminum dust used in his makeup and suffered an allergic reaction. During his two weeks in the hospital, LeRoy hired Jack Haley for the role. The makeup was reformulated to include aluminum paste, instead of dust.
The worst accident on the set involved Margaret Hamilton receiving severe burns after her copper oxide makeup ignited during the Munchkinland scene where she disappears in a burst of fire and smoke. Hamilton’s face and right hand were badly burned and she was forced to be away from the set for six weeks.
One other accident has become an urban legend. For years there have been rumors that either a Munchkin or a stagehand was hanged in the rigging in the “We’re Off to See the Wizard” transition after the Wicked Witch throws the ball of fire at the Scarecrow. Like most urban legends, this story is apocryphal. The activity in the background is actually the movement of a large bird seen earlier on the same set.
Producer Mervyn LeRoy’s assistant, Arthur Freed, a well-known songwriter who had co-written “You Are My Lucky Star” and “Singin’ in the Rain” with Nacio Herb Brown, was given the task of hiring the songwriters for The Wizard of Oz. Freed knew exactly who he wanted and he engaged them with no problem whatsoever. Composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg had worked together for nearly a decade. Their experience in Hollywood was largely in writing for Al Jolson and Dick Powell. On Broadway, they had already collaborated on five shows.
For The Wizard of Oz, they were paid $25,000 for a fourteen-week contract. The songs were largely written at night, as Arlen was an avid tennis player and Harburg put the same passion in his admiration of horse racing. They first wrote what they called “lemon-drop songs” – those that had nothing to do with moving the plot, but elaborated on moments in the story. Among these are “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” and “We’re Off to See the Wizard.” For “If I Only Had a Brain” they turned to a number they had cut from their newest Broadway show and simply changed the words.
Perhaps the most unusual moment of inspiration came as Arlen was struggling to create a song for Dorothy in Kansas. The tune that became “Over the Rainbow” occurred to Arlen as he was riding down Sunset Boulevard with his wife. They pulled the car over in front of the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy, the celebrated haunt of movie insiders, and Arlen wrote down the melody. Harburg added the lyrics a few days later. Unbelievably, the song was removed after the first preview because the producer thought Dorothy should not have been singing in a barnyard. After all other creative parties protested, the song, and consequently a major dramatic point of the movie, was restored.
There were two songs that never made it to the picture. The first was entitled “A Horse of a Different Color,” and was not completed after the songwritersdetermined that there was enough music in the movie without it. Arlen and Harburg did complete a song for a production number called “The Jitterbug.” Five weeks of filming and $80,000 were invested in shooting this elaborate song and dance number that took place in the haunted forest outside the Wicked Witch’s castle. In the end, studio executives felt that having a song based on a popular dance might make the movie seem dated upon release if the dance waned in popularity before it hit theaters. They cut the scene and destroyed the footage, but an audio track was preserved.
It is important to remember that Arlen and Harburg did not score the film. They wrote the songs, but Herbert Stothart wrote everything else. Stothart already had over sixty films under his belt by the time he joined this project. For the incidental music, he used a combination of new material and classical themes. Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” is used throughout the film to give a character of childish simplicity and innocence. Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain” can be heard in the Wicked Witch’s castle as an emotional backdrop conveying fear and trepidation. Stothart won the Academy Award for The Wizard of Oz, but it could be argued that it was Arlen and Harburg’s songs that were being honored.
When everything came together on the screen, there was a magic that has outlasted all of the actors in the movie. Many generations have loved The Wizard of Oz and nearly every parent has experienced the joy of sharing it with their children for the first time. This film keeps giving after more than seventy years. It is still a perfect way to spend an evening for grandparents, parents, children … and your little dog, too.
©2011 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com
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