The behind-the-scenes nightmare of The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Originally published at: The behind-the-scenes nightmare of The Wizard of Oz (1939) | Boing Boing

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Louis B Mayer hated unions and government regulation of business for a reason.

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one of the most iconic and influential films in cinema history

That’s just like your opinion, man.

oz

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Kate Rowe’s videos are always a treasure trove of curious information, wonderfully presented.

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“Flying Monkeys”, that wasn’t CGI?

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Potentially missing out on the lucrative asbestos movie tie-in toy business:

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It would have made a great addition to Irwin Mainway’s product catalogue.

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The Wizard of Oz: Young girl and friends terrorized by an old lady over shoes.

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I’m old enough to remember when Margaret Hamilton pitched Maxwell House Coffee.

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Doesn’t that also describe The Devil Wears Prada?

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That kinda works; the Stanley Tucci character would be parallel to Glinda the Good Witch, although there are no parallel characters for the Tin Man, the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion.

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Still is:

trump-asbestos-1000
(Click pic for link.)

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I’m fully behind TFG publicly endorsing this product - it’s like they were made for one another.

And Toto was never — EVER! — leashed!

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At my first employer, Rocketdyne, our department had a tech, named Otto. He was near retirement then. He was a ‘little person’ who was among the many ‘little people’ who answered the Oz production’s casting call. Many came, but – according to Otto – a few stayed to work in the aeronautical (soon to be aerospace) industry. His size permitted him to, for example, run cabling in otherwise inaccessible areas; such was his role in the airline industry before jumping to Rocketdyne. Seemingly always moody, it was difficult getting any juicy tales of his time on Oz and seemed only happy(?) when fabricating cables, setting up data collection equipment, and tracking down noise sources. He was a curmudgeon, but also fine tech. Anyway, the most we could get out of him re Oz was, “Why do you have to know?”, “They fucking made me hop around”, and “It was all shit.” all delivered with a German accent. (He had immigrated from Germany to NYC during the rise of Nazism, you see. Considering all, he lived a challenging life.)

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There’s a reason labour laws are referred to as “written in blood”

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