FAQ

A bunch of 'em!

A dance stand-in would have been used when Garland was not available for rehearsals and would have stood in for her so that everyone else could run through the scene. A dance stand-in would also have been used to block scenes (to help get the lights ready and the cameras positioned to film the scene) and may also have been used for re-shoots or additional shots (such as shots of feet or long shots and shots from behind).

It has been confirmed that in this interpretation it was a dream, despite the fact that the books suggested more that it was a real place.

In the books there is little to no mention of her parents, except that her mother had died, but there is no mention of her parents in the film.

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When a cyclone carries Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland), a teenaged orphan living on a Kansas farm with her Auntie Em (Clara Blandick) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin), to the magical Land of Oz, she meets a brainless scarecrow (Ray Bolger), a heartless tinman (Jack Haley), and a cowardly lion (Bert Lahr), all of whom agree to accompany her to the Emerald City in hopes that the great and powerful Wizard of Oz (Frank Morgan) can find a way to send her back to Kansas. Unfortunately, the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) is stalking Dorothy in order to obtain her ruby slippers, which Glinda (Billie Burke), the Good Witch of the North, has warned her to never take off for any reason.

Yes. It is based on the novel 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (1900) which was written by American author L. Frank Baum (1856-1919). Baum also wrote 16 sequels: 'The Marvelous Land of Oz' (1904), 'Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz' (1905), 'The Woggle-Bug Book' (1905), 'Ozma of Oz' (1907), 'Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz' (1908), 'The Road to Oz' (1909), 'The Emerald City of Oz' (1910), 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz' (1913), 'Little Wizard Stories of Oz' (1913), 'Tik-Tok of Oz' (1914), 'The Scarecrow of Oz' (1915), 'Rinkitink in Oz' (1916), 'The Lost Princess of Oz' (1917), 'The Tin Woodman of Oz' (1918), 'The Magic of Oz' (1919, posthumously published), and 'Glinda of Oz' (1920, posthumously published).

Whether it really happened or not, Dorothy having seen Miss Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) in the tornado turn into the Wicked Witch of the West (or East as it is open to interpretation) is meant to be metaphorical. For one thing, if Dorothy really did see Miss Gulch, she didn't really turn into the Witch but rather died in the disaster. Thus, Dorothy imagined her turning into the Witch or applied it as a coping mechanism to witnessing a death. To go about with death to a different aspect of the scene, Miss Gulch turning into the Witch is intended to represent her either changing form or crossing over from one world to the next (whether it be from life to the after life or Kansas to Oz). All that aside, with the Witch's death and Miss Gulch's absence in the end of the movie, the problem is meant to be solved and that goes along with the idea that one world mirrors another. Thus, a problem in one is solved leading to the solution of the reflected problem in the other.

Watch closely and you'll notice that the carriage Dorothy rides in follows the red brick road. The road leads right up to the front steps of Munchkin City Hall.

No to all three. As Dorothy, Scarecrow, and the Tin Man set off down the Yellow Brick Road, we see a large bird stretching its wings. There is no stagehand on the set, no one hanging himself, and no one falling out of a tree. The website devoted to urban legends, Snopes.com, has a more detailed explanation.

Audiences have claimed to hear various lyrics to the "Winkie Chant" performed by the Wicked Witch of the West's guards. They include "All we own, we owe her"; "Oh we love the old one"; and "Oh we loathe the old one." The screenplay shows that the correct lyrics are "O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!." The chant acts as a sort of audio inkblot.

After kissing the tinman, the lion, and the scarecrow goodbye, Dorothy clicks together the heels of her ruby slippers three times while saying over and over 'There's no place like home', as directed by the Good Witch of the North. In the final scene, she awakens in her own bed with Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, farmhands Hunk (Ray Bolger), Hickory (Jack Haley), and Zeke (Bert Lahr), along with Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) standing around her. Dorothy tries to convince them that she actually visited the Land of Oz and that they were there, too, but she is assured that it was just a bad dream. Although not convinced that it was just a silly dream, Dorothy expresses her happiness at being back, because there's no place like home.

The Kansas scenes are sepia-toned, not pure black-and-white. In sepia tone, a brownish layer is placed over a black-and-white photo or film scene in order to give it a certain quality. The dramatic change to color as Dorothy goes through the doorway was accomplished by having a stand-in, dressed in a sepia-toned costume, open the sepia-toned door. As the camera comes closer to the doorway we lose sight of the stand-in; then Dorothy appears in a full-color costume. Before the film received its 50th anniversary restoration, the Kansas scenes were always shown on TV in regular black-and-white. This is because, when the film was re-released to U.S. movie theatres in 1949, ten years after it was made, the Kansas scenes were printed on the film that way, not in sepia. The sepia was not restored to the film until 1989. This means that moviegoers, not just TV audiences, had not seen the Kansas scenes in their original sepia tone for many years. The 1998 re-release of the film to movie theatres marks the first time that the Kansas scenes were seen in sepia in a movie theatre since just after World War II, when the film was still opening in parts of Europe and Asia.

There's no evidence that Pink Floyd intended their album "The Dark Side of the Moon" to be a soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz. Whether the album makes a good soundtrack for the movie is a different question. Aficionados claim more than 100 instances of the album matching the actions on screen—assuming one begins playing the album at a certain point early in the movie. "The Great Gig in the Sky," in particular, matches up well with the tornado sequence. Proper synchronization is tricky. You may want to rely on a copy of Dark Side of the Rainbow, which is a DVD of The Wizard of Oz with "The Dark Side of the Moon" as its soundtrack. See also: Dark Side of the Rainbow.

As of July 2017, these are the known/suspected surviving members of the cast of The Wizard of Oz: Priscilla Montgomery Clark, child munchkin (can be seen on the yellow brick road); Joan Kenmore, child munchkin (can be seen in the background outside of one of the little huts with the other munchkins around her); Ardith Dondanville Todd, child munchkin (can be seen in the background); Betty Ann Kai'ihilani Bruno, child munchkin (she can be seen waving from one of the huts); Jerry Maren, lollipop guild munchkin (wearing the green outfit, can be seen in many sections of the munchkin scenes); Dorothy Barrett, Emerald City manicurist (she can be seen opening the door as the group is exiting the Wash and Brush Up Co., she had dark hair); Caren Marsh-Doll, Judy Garland's stand-in (she was Judy Garland's stand-in for some of the dancing, she cannot be seen in the actual film though): and Ambrose A. Schindler, Winkie Guard and Jack Haley's stunt double (he can be seen holding onto the Cowardly Lion's tail as they climb the mountain up to the witch's castle to rescue Dorothy). See also: Most-Recently-Deceased People Credited in The Wizard of Oz. Note: Shep Houghton, Ozmite/Winkie Guard (he can be seen in the crowd when the Wizard is in the hot air balloon), died after this FAQ entry was created.