Wizard Of Oz Coloring Pages

Interesting Facts about Wizard of Oz

• The movie was directed by four different people. The first, Richard Thorpe, was fired after less than two weeks. George Cukor was brought in next, but he was summoned away to go work on Gone With the Wind. Then Victor Fleming stepped in, until he too was called over to assist Cukor with Gone With the Wind, and King Vidor was hired to complete the movie.
• Nine days into production on The Wizard of Oz, Ebsen found himself in the hospital, unable to breathe from the aluminum-powder makeup he wore as the Tin Man. “My lungs were coated with that aluminum dust they had been powdering on my face,” Ebsen explained.
• The ruby slippers weren't always red. The famous sequined shoes were originally silver, like they are in the Oz books. But MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer wanted to show off Technicolor, so he did.
• L. Frank Baum originally wrote the Emerald City as “no more green than any other city.” It achieved its green look only because its residents were required (by the Wizard, of course) to wear green spectacles to protect their eyes from the “brightness and glory” of its green glow, hence tricking them into believing their city was made of emeralds.
• During the Wicked Witch of the West’s exit from Munchkinland in the first color sequence of the film, the fireball of smoke that ascends from the ground concealed a secret elevator that took Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch, below set. She was severely burnt but the cameras kept rolling.
• The Tin Man was s supposed to shed machine oil when he cried, but that didn't photograph well. The solution? Chocolate syrup is what's really streaming down Jack Haley's silver face.