the wizard of oz

james choice · 2026-05-06T11:52:20.573461-07:00

fact 1: there isn't a single black person in the film; the only ones who could even count as black are the monkeys alongside the witch, and they represent evil anyway. for this reason, some argue that the film is racist. fact 2: the yellow brick road that dorothy walks on is seen as the road that led farmers to `washington`. in fact, in some circles, oz itself symbolizes washington. fact 3: `kansas` was the last state to incorporate `newton's laws` into its school textbooks, and it was once home to the most conservative segment of america. whether it's a coincidence that the film is set there is anyone's guess.

if we flip the medallion to its other side... our sweet little dorothy, judy garland, endured 6 months of filming with a painful corset to make her belly look flat and bandages wrapped around her chest to make her look younger. throughout this time, she was bound by a harsh contract with mgm, which kept her on diet pills and a strict diet program to lose weight, energy pills so she could work longer hours, and sleeping pills so she wouldn't lose sleep. as a result of all this, judy garland ended up addicted to pills. her drug-dependent metabolism would crash by the age of just 49. but the blame here shouldn't fall on mgm alone; it should also fall on judy's mother, because she pushed her daughter way too hard so that judy could achieve what she herself couldn't. years later, judy garland would say of her mother: she was the real wicked witch of the west.

there's more: the actress who played the wicked witch of the west suffered second- and third-degree burns to her face and eyes during one of the scenes where she vanishes in smoke, due to a timing error by the people operating that infamous trapdoor mechanism.

the actor who played the tin man was hospitalized because he was allergic to aluminum dust (as mentioned above, he didn't die). no compensation from mgm, not even a "how are you doing," just bam, fired from the project. they searched for a new actor and found one. but mgm never gave any explanation as to why they parted ways with the previous actor. they pulled every dirty trick in the book.