10 Things You Never Noticed About The Wizard of Oz

[PalJoey]

By the Oz experts Jay Scarfone and William Stillman, authors of (among other books) The Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion, The Wizardry of Oz, and (with John Fricke) The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History.

The question is: Are these 10 things you never noticed about the Wizard of Oz also 10 things Reginald Tresilian never noticed?


Huff Post: 10 Things You Never Noticed About The Wizard of Oz

[DottieD'Luscia]

I'm wondering if the stork in the background is what I misstook for a person. I noticed that as a kid. It looks like a person is in the background walking between two trees (behind the hut) during one of the yellow brick road sequences.

[Reginald Tresilian]

#2, 5, and 9 were news to me.

[Marianne2]

I recall noticing a bird in the background of the 1 scene. But, what they are talking about here seems to be too far away to be that bird.

Okay, I see what I was thinking of in that scene with this clip. I noticed the bird when he was by that shack. Did not realize it actually moved by the time they started singing and going down the yellow brick road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV7i94fWpPU

[DottieD'Luscia]

Yep, what I was referring to was the 2nd part of that clip, "what's in the background." I never noticed the stork before in the earlier part of that sequence.

[best12bars]

Just to add to the freakiness of the "hanging Munchkin" myth, here is a clip supposedly taken from a 1980s VHS release.

The footage is clearly different in the background. Compare it to the earlier clip posted, which is definitely a bird spreading it's wings. This is not. Something is hanging from the tree in the same position as the bird.

The footage was doctored. Whether it was doctored fairly recently to ADD the hanging Munchkin in, as a hoax, or whether the hanging Munchkin was removed to add the bird, who knows?

I do know that tracking shots like that, digitally removing and substituting a background, while foreground characters pass in front of it wasn't possible (at least not successfully fooling people) until around 1992 or so. It's gotten much easier to do with today's technology.

Still, it's possible.

But there is no denying that the footage seen in this clip is not the same as the footage in the earlier clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8YVeMwhDNI

[Marianne2]

Yeah, for the longest time I did not notice it either. I forget how I finally noticed it. But, it still never looked like it after the witch leaves. I will have to see how that part looks on my tv. It looked like a bird on my dvd on my laptop. But, yeah, my sister claimed that the munchkin hung himself and there was a person directing them there to go the way they did so they wouldn't see. But, it makes no sense as the road does go that way.


Editing again for Best12bars footage. Yes, that's what I recall seeing originally. My parents had taped it off the tv for me, so I never had an official copy of the movie until the 2009 dvd. And now I'm annoyed that my sister hated the movie and taped it over with some garbage show because I want to see what that looked like now. But yeah, I remember noticing that bird and it seems strange now that it was suddenly gone when the witch came and now like a few feet back right where that hanging thing is.

[Jungle Red]

I didn't notice the bird until I saw it in 3D. The bird scene isn't even this scene, it's another one.

Wouldn't the actors, crew, directors see this? I call fake. The edges of the hanging body don't look right to me.

[PalJoey]

And when the YouTube user says "This clip is a direct capture from a 1980's VHS tape of the Wizard of Oz bought as part of a video lot from a collector" why should we possible take his word for it?

HAve other copies of this 1980s VHS tape surfaced?

This is obviously a forgery.

[Reginald Tresilian]

It's funny to see the actual fabled hanging Munchkin, since it only ever looked like a bird to me, whether watching it on broadcast, VHS, or DVD.


But yeah, it's fake.

[PalJoey]

Here's another YuTube user proving it's fake. You can actually see him put the 1980s VHS tape in his machine and play it.

http://youtu.be/H0P7bZZEL4g

No hanging Munchkin.

Someone should throw a pail of water on the YouTube user SuicidalMunchkin who made the forgery.

[Kad]

It's amazing that small details are still being discovered over 74 years after the film was released.

[Jungle Red]

We discussed this in the 3D release thread, but here are some things I noticed:

- Dorothy's freckles
- The Witch holds the Golden Hat when she tells them to fly
- The old lady is petting her cat in the cyclone

I can't remember when it happens, but I remember there's a glaring continuity error regarding the Scarecrow.

[best12bars]

Still my favorite movie of all time.

[landryjames2]

Me too!

[landryjames2]

And the continuity in Scarecrow's "If I Only Had a Brain" may be Dorothy's every changing length of hair throughout the scene (actually, throughout the movie--but most noticeable here).

Also, a VERY tiny continuity error which my brother caught when he was 10: When the four run down the stairs as the witch's army is chasing them and then the big door close on them trapping them in--the order of the four change in one split second to the next. As the doors are closing the order is from left to right: Tin Man, Scarecrow, Dorothy, Lion. The very next frame, the Scarecrow is first and then the Tin Man. I imagine they made this change as the Scarecrow and Tin Man needed to be in that order for the Scarecrow to brilliantly use the Tin Man's axe to bring down the chandelier.

[best12bars]

I love the pigtail change in the Scarecrow scene. It's pretty funny when you know to look for it. They grow and shrink and grow and shrink about 5 inches (not a subtle change at all). It's because the song was reshot when they edited out the Scarecrow's dance, and somebody was asleep in the continuity department when they first shot the scene. The change first happens when Dorothy is waving goodbye to the Munchkins. In the next shot at the fork in the road with the Scarecrow, her pigtails are 5 inches longer. She must have been walking for about 10 months. Then, as soon as the Scarecrow trips and falls over the fence climbing down, her pigtails are short again. Then the crow comes along to take some straw, and they're long again! The song starts? Short again. LOL

I'm surprised Garland herself didn't say something, because it was such a change from her pigtailed hairdo in the rest of the movie. But then again, she'd been through about 300 hairstyle tests (and colors) prepping for Dorothy anyway, so who could keep track?

Apparently the answer was no one.

[beautywickedlover]

They do not realize that at #10 Oz was a dream. It sadly could not have been real because if Dorothy had been gone for "days and days", then her family and friends would have known that. Also, Dorothy's hair was in pigtails again rather than her long curly hair and the house had no damage to it at the end of the movie. The producers apparently decided to make Oz a dream because fantasy movies were not successful at the time. They believed that the 1939 audience was too sophisticated to believe that everything that had happened was a straight-ahead fantasy.

[TheatreDiva90016]

And the ALW came along and completely changed that, with his production...


The tag on ALW's WOO made me want to stand up in the theatre and scream obscenities.

[CarlosAlberto]

What was the tag they added? Anyone care to share. I don't know much about the ALW adaptation.

[TheatreDiva90016]

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!




The very last scene, in Dorothy's bedroom, is pretty much like the film, but then everyone but Dorothy leaves ('Gotta get back to work') and she sings a reprise of 'Over The Rainbow' as the doors to the cabinet in her room pop open to reveal the red ruby slippers, twinkling under a red light.

Makes me want to punch him in the throat.

[CarlosAlberto]

OH. NO. THEY. DI'NT!!!!

UGH!!

LoL @ wanting to punch him in the throat. That's gangsta!

[best12bars]

Maybe we could all wake up and discover that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a dream.

[TheatreDiva90016]

More like a nightmare

[Jay Lerner-Z]

I, for one, could never accept it was all a dream. If anything, that kinda ruined it for me as a child and made me sad. I so wanted it to be real, which is why the ALW ending described above makes me smile.

[best12bars]

A lot of Oz book fans (and there were a lot more people who grew up on them in 1939) were not happy that it was "only a dream" in the movie. That was one of the biggest criticisms at the time.