[Eerie music]
♪♪♪
Producer: What have you heard about the legends
surrounding the making of "The Wizard of Oz"?
- Um...
- I mean, there's just so many rumors in general
about "The Wizard of Oz".
- Oh, we could talk about that all day.
I mean, I've researched this stuff
since the time I was a little kid,
- I'll get you, my pretty.
[Cackles loudly]
- Definitely heard about the burning of Margaret Hamilton.
- Yeah. Oof.
- You know, she caught fire once unintentionally.
[Flame roars]
- I definitely know of the makeup situation
that happened with the Tin Man.
- Heard about the Munchkin hanging.
- I've heard that a small person hung themselves on set.
- The list goes on and on and on and on and on.
I think it's a part of the legacy...
♪♪♪
Adam: I think that when some people look at films
that are super beloved
and they hear stories about the difficulties
or the tragedies that happen on set,
they then go on to ascribe that production as "cursed",
[Reflective sigh]
because it's hard to hear these stories of tragedy.
And you want to believe that at least someone
or something is in charge
because the reality is no one's in charge
and the universe doesn't care about you,
but that is too crushing
to encompass with our minds.
So, we come up with ideas like that production is cursed,
'cause it makes us feel a little bit better
about the terrible things that might have happened on the set.
John: When I was five,
I sat down and watched "Wizard of Oz".
Everybody had a great night,
but I had the life changing experience.
[Angelic choir singing]
The characters and the fantasy and the songs,
but I just kind of bought into all of it.
You don't choose these things, they choose you.
And that's a statement that I think anybody watching this
who has any kind of passion for anything can...
can comprehend.
Adam: What "The Wizard of Oz" is about
is not a question I have actually considered.
And that's amazing to me.
- There are lots of theories.
People thought that the Yellow Brick Road
was something to do with the gold standard.
Society had been through some really difficult times
with the depression
and then the war.
People were forced to move all over the place.
And then we still had lots of first-generation immigrants
who'd come in in the 1910s and 20s.
They had to leave their homes
and knew they would never be able to go back.
Here was Judy.
She was disrupted.
She was off in a whole 'nother world,
just like the population of the country.
And the whole tension was "she couldn't go home".
- Close your eyes
and tap your heels together, three times.
- But suddenly through magic,
she is able to go home
and she is sort of like a surrogate
for the American population.
- There's no place like home.
Hamilton: They went out of the movie
with some sense of redemption.
At least Judy got home.
Adam: I think it's about the way
in which human beings trust each other
to lead each other through the world.
Yeah.
'Cause the Wizard's not inherently a bad guy,
but he has a lot of power.
And power corrupts.
That's absolutely true.
Jane: It was made in 1938
and it opened in August 17th, 1939,
and America was at the cusp of a World War.
- Go, fly! Fly!
♪♪♪
- Fly! Fly! Fly!
Jane: And that dark energy,
it was part of the air they were breathing at that time.
That beat of war was going on in the background.
I mean, and they so much made it real
with the Winkies marching like Nazis.
"The Wizard of Oz"
was a hopeful outcome of that dark energy
because the witch is dead.
Dorothy gets back to Kansas.
Ryan: The objects themselves associated with the production
still have that power over people
and an object like the Ruby slippers
is a perfect example of that.
I've seen people just break down in tears,
coming into this room
and seeing the ruby slippers in real life.
You know, Dorothy Gale is a stand-in for anybody
who's ever thought about wanting more out of their life
or being unhappy with their circumstances,
seeking something over the rainbow.
Having an object in front of you
that represents that,
it's actually very powerful.
John: "Wizard of Oz" was a very difficult shoot.
There were conflicts and re-castings
and accidents and script problems.
- They wanted to make a realistic film
that was a fantasy.
All of the characters suffered through the costumes.
Dad had to eat every meal through a straw.
The lighting was so intense.
They were dying under those costumes.
John: There was a fire marshal on the set at all times
with a light meter going around to make sure
the set wasn't going to catch on fire
from the heat of the lights.
There were 14 writers and five directors
and three choreographers
and a potentially fatal accident,
a potentially fatal reaction to makeup.
Stephen: I would imagine you'd have to ask
any number of the cast members
who worked on "The Wizard of Oz"
if "The Wizard of Oz" was cursed or not.
And if you asked Buddy Ebsen,
he might tell you, yes.
His participation was cursed.
Ryan: Originally Buddy Ebsen was cast to play the Tin Man.
And he was a very popular film actor of the time
known as the song and dance man.
And he would've been a perfect fit for the film.
John: The makeup was pretty basic.
They used clown white
and then they dusted it with ground up aluminum.
He found that he was starting to have cramps
in his fingers, or in his feet.
And then one night it spread to his arms
and his legs and he could not breathe.
- They were putting silver paint on him
and they didn't realize it, you know,
he was being poisoned.
John: He had been inhaling the aluminum particles,
you know, that floated around.
They had coated his lungs.
- He went home one night. Couldn't breathe.
Ended up in the hospital
with pneumonia in an oxygen tent.
Stephen: Unfortunately, his participation in the film
was cut short.
And it ended up being a film
that kind of scarred him in a way too.
Um, literally scarred his lungs
uh, because he had a tendency toward bronchitis
for the rest of his life.
- In the early 2000's
I had a show called "MythBusters"
and we were doing a story we called "The Goldfinger Myth".
And it's about the actress, Shirley Eaton,
who got painted gold in the James Bond film,
supposedly got suffocated by the paint.
Which she didn't.
But as part of the research for that myth,
we came across the famous story from "The Wizard of Oz"
that Buddy Ebsen was originally slated to play the Tin Man.
And couldn't because he was poisoned
by the silver paint that they put on him
to play the Tin Man.
Adam: When we first started to look at doing a story
about "The Wizard of Oz",
there are a few avenues to that negative affect
and one is poison.
So, if Buddy Ebsen was poisoned by lead in the paint,
we-we can't test that on ourselves.
But the other main reason given
for the difficulty with the paint
was that it cut off the oxygen
that you breathe through your skin.
And if you paint your whole body
um, you will somehow suffocate.
That is testable by us.
The suffocation is something that we can creep up on.
We have an EMT on set.
We can make sure our pulse oxygen levels are up to snuff.
And that is the aspect of the story that we tested.
- This is the exact stuff that they were using on the Tin Man.
Which was just pure aluminum powder.
Adam: Now, why are you guys feeding her oxygen?
- Her heart rate's gone up.
Adam: When most humans think about being Buddy Ebsen
in that moment, oh, you get to play a Tin Man.
so, they're gonna build this elaborate costume around you.
And then they're gonna paint you silver.
These are all the activities of like,
the best day ever for a 10-year-old.
And I think every one of us intersects with that of like,
that sounds incredible.
And when you add on to that, the idea of being poisoned
by effectively the highest level of play, um,
that's exactly the kind of juxtaposition
where people wanna keep telling that story.
Adam: I think it is certainly plausible
that Buddy Ebsen could have had lifelong effects
from the makeup on "Wizard of Oz".
On every single story we did on "MythBusters",
we were working with chemicals
that could affect us in a negative way
and we had to be able to talk to the insurance company
about how we were going to do it safely.
That's definitely not something
that I think was going on in the 30s.
John: The snow in the poppy field sequence
was made of some derivation of asbestos.
Nobody thought that this was damaging.
They were doing things the best way they knew how,
80 years ago.
And they were doing them as safely
as they thought they could.
Stephen: A lot of the special effects that were used
in "The Wizard of Oz" were experimental.
They were put into "The Wizard of Oz"
for the first time on film.
- Buddy Ebsen was a guinea pig for a new kind of makeup
and it cost him the film.
Aljean: There was another rumor
that the Munchkins were all drunkards.
Woman: During the filming of "The Wizard of Oz"
most of the Munchkins stayed together at this hotel.
The rumor is that while they were here,
they carried on in a less-than-civilized fashion.
Stephen: This hotel will always be known
for the residence of most of the little people
when they made the movie uh, in 1938.
It's strange, but I can almost hear
the Munchkin sounds
because more than a hundred of them stayed right here
in this hotel.
I'm sure there were a few parties.
Larry: There have been stories for years
that there were wild sex orgies,
that the Munchkins went crazy.
I used to hear this as a kid.
- Come on here, Larry, let me tell you. [Laughs]
- You can tell me.
John: There were roughly 124 little people
playing the Munchkins
and the stories about the orgies,
the drunken parties,
the misbehavior,
tend to be painted in the broadest strokes possible
and incriminate 124 people.
There were maybe a half a dozen or 10 who were rowdy.
And there were things that did happen.
- One of the Munchkins brought a gun to the set.
A sort of a notorious little guy
by the name of Charlie Kelly.
He was jealous over his ex-wife
and she was dating another little person.
He didn't get fired though.
They just made sure he didn't return with uh,
another pistol.
Woman: I have to ask you about - Of course.
- all the rumors that have come out
and the rumors are that all the little people
got drunk every night.
- Nah, that's so... - No.
- That's stupid, really. They didn't.
- Where do you think these rumors came from, then?
- The great Judy Garland.
[Audience claps]
John: On a TV special in 1967,
Judy Garland said the Munchkins
on "The Wizard of Oz" set were-were drunks.
Stephen: There was nothing like the drunken stories
that Judy Garland sort of pinned on them
in one of her inebriated moments
on the "Jack Parr Show".
- They were drunks. - They were little drunks?
[Audience laughs]
- And they put them all in one hotel room.
Not one room, one hotel in Culver City.
- Yeah.
- And they got smashed every night.
And they'd pick 'em up in butterfly nets.
[Audience laughs]
Stephen: Because it came from Judy Garland,
I think people may have thought,
well, she was there. She would know.
As much as they loved Judy Garland,
and they really did,
the Munchkin actors had to suffer with that story
over the years.
Um, and they-they weren't happy about that.
- As much as I love Judy,
when she made that statement on "Jack Parr Show",
Judy had a couple of bells in her,
and she was trying to be funny.
And when you're trying to be funny,
and you don't know what to say,
you're gonna pick on the little people.
- Now I've heard stories... - Don't you believe it.
- Really? - That's what they all hate,
them, them stupid stories. - That was not true.
- You mind if I say somethin'? If I were 6-foot-tall,
I'd-I'd go to every one of those guys
that wrote those stupid things, you know, it was awful,
I'da grabbed up against the wall and said,
"You know what you did?" Bam!
- The Munchkins got really irritated
by questions like that.
Woman: Rumors of sex orgies. - Oh, that's a load of BS.
- While there probably were parties,
it was nothing like
what was portrayed in the movie, "Under the Rainbow".
Gregg: "Under the Rainbow" is a great, great, great movie
and very misunderstood.
But true movie buffs know the truth about it.
- Hey guys, this is Gregg Turkington
with the Victorville Film Archive.
- And I have five copies of that, but I brought one.
This is "Under the Rainbow".
This is sort of the definitive making
of "The Wizard of Oz" movie.
If you like Chevy Chase, this is one of his best movies.
And of course, Carrie Fisher,
we all love her as Princess Leia,
but she shone bright, not only in "Star Wars" movies,
but also here, in "Under the Rainbow".
The true story of the Munchkins.
Steve: I'm Steve Rash.
I'm director of a film called "Under the Rainbow".
The film turned out to be about um...
[Sighs] the Munchkins tearing up the Culver Hotel
during the filming of "The Wizard of Oz"
with a story overlaid
about a secret service agent,
a paranoid duke and duchess,
an assassin,
a Japanese spy,
a German little person spy.
- I, I didn't think people would believe
that the Munchkins would be swinging from the chandeliers,
and would tie up the hotel manager,
and run amok.
They probably thought
that it wouldn't perpetuate it that much,
but it did.
Steve: I had not seen "Under the Rainbow"
in at least 20 years.
This last 12 or 14 hours
since seeing it again after 20 years
has kind of shaken me.
I thought we were more advanced
in 1980 than this.
I was quite disappointed at how racist,
how sexist,
how elitist
it conceptually was.
Probably some other "-ists" as well.
Did that bother me
the day that I shot it?
I don't think so.
It bothers me like Hell today.
♪♪♪
The only fabulous thing about the whole experience
was meeting and working with
over a hundred little people.
In retrospect, looking at the way
we were portraying them,
um, they should have revolted.
Siskel: This film seems to believe
that anything a small person does is funny,
and of course, that's not true.
- You know, I agree with you.
And one of the things that bother me
about the use of the little people in this movie
is that at no point were any of them,
except for Billy Barty, as the spy,
dignified by being made into characters
who had personalities.
Steve: It felt a little bit like a train wreck,
but I was the conductor.
This is probably rationalization
because so many little people
had a wonderful experience
and made a lot of money.
I hope that makes up for the fact
that we really didn't deal with them
in a truthful way.
We tried to do it in a fun way and you know,
some people think it's hilarious.
Um, I don't anymore.
Producer: Are you a "Wizard of Oz" fan?
- Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Some of the people who made it in retrospect
may have felt bad about it.
Everything that can happen on a film
happened to that film.
Aljean: The joy you see on the screen
in "The Wizard of Oz",
that was an illusion created by
an awful lot of people working awfully hard.
The studio really was a factory.
There were 500 carpenters,
15 plumbers,
two dozen blacksmiths,
one barber,
one shoe-shine boy,
and one man in charge of the lions.
The actors and actresses
were workers in that factory.
♪♪♪
Hamilton: Mom was born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1902.
She taught in the Boston public schools
while she pounded the pavements in New York.
"The Wizard of Oz" was casting.
They had thought of looking for a beautiful witch.
She said, well, that does it for me,
but subsequently they changed their mind
and they wanted a quote, "Ugly witch".
And mother said, "Well, of course
they would've thought of me."
And she got the part.
And the-the rest was history.
People are shocked to realize
that Mom was on the screen in "The Wizard of Oz"
only 12 minutes.
Of course, her presence
dominated the whole film.
- I remember being incredibly scared
of the witch.
They knew what they were doing
when they cast Margaret Hamilton.
Maybe they didn't realize
just the impact that she would have though.
Hamilton: A big concern of hers
was that the kids would believe it.
- How nice to see you, Mr. Rogers.
- I'm so glad to see you.
I'd like you to know my television friend,
Miss Margaret Hamilton. - How do you do?
Hamilton: And so, she spent a lot of time
trying to convince kids
that she was a kind old lady
and that was a witch on the screen.
And that was make believe. And they shouldn't be afraid,
- Would you try on a dress like the one you had on?
- Yes, I'd-I'd love to. - To show us?
- I think that would be fun.
Stephen: But she tried to stress,
especially on "Mr. Rogers",
that it was just an act.
- There's your old friend,
the Wicked Witch of the West.
- How did s-- how did she talk?
- Well, she talked like this.
It's very nice to see you. [Cackles]
Hamilton: In the 30s and the 40s,
safety conditions were not so great.
And uh,
Mom was badly burned in the picture.
It's a scene where she has arrived
in the Munchkin Village.
- When you see her entrance into Munchkinland
in the smoke,
[Smoke whooshes, panicked screams]
it's not Margaret Hamilton.
It was her double, Betty Danko.
But they wanted Margaret to do the disappearance.
They wanted to get it in one shot.
They wanted to make it look real.
So, they weren't using her double for that.
And it was a complicated shot.
Margaret Hamilton was talking to the Good Witch and Dorothy,
and she had to deliver her line,
"I'll get you and your little dog, too."
- I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!
[Cackles]
John: And whirl around
and get to that elevator platform.
The elevator was very small.
So, she had to hit her mark, exactly,
pull the broom straight up,
pull her elbows in
so that she could drop cleanly through the floor.
Say the line, back up just the right amount,
get on the platform, pull everything in.
The smoke came up and she dropped down,
huge burst of real flame,
[Flame roars, panicked screams]
John: But they let the fire effect go too quickly.
And the broom caught on fire
as did the hat.
She was severely burned.
She was immediately smothered with blankets
to put out the fire.
What she ultimately ended up having
was third-degree burns on her hand
and second-degree burns on her face.
Now compounding that,
her green makeup was copper based,
and heated copper
could begin to eat into her skin.
They had to take her off to the side of the set
and clean her face, her pores completely,
of that green makeup.
And they used rubbing alcohol
and they had to press down on these fresh burns.
Uh, Margaret Hamilton said
she could never, ever forget that pain.
And the doctor salved her up,
wrapped her up like a mummy,
and they sent her home.
Hamilton: She was very concerned
what my reaction was going to be.
I was three years old at that time.
She called ahead to my nanny and said,
"Look, I'm coming home.
Tell him that I have a new costume.
I'm gonna look just like a mummy.
And I'm really excited to show him this costume.
And as soon as we get home and I get in bed,
you have to bring him in so he can see this."
And I still remember being brought into her room.
And here was Mom...
bandaged everywhere,
particularly all over her face
with this couple of slits for her eyes.
And she said, "How do you like my new costume?"
And I said, "Gee, that was kind of neat."
And she handled that whole situation
so that it was never any trauma for me.
John: When she did go back six weeks later,
the first thing they wanted her to do
was a flying scene on the broom
with the smoke coming out behind.
Hamilton: They said, "Maggie, we just have this broom
with a little gasoline engine on the back."
Stephen: She was filming a sky riding scene
and they positioned a...
a pipe that would blast fire,
right beside uh...
where she sat on the broom.
- The wardrobe man brought up a costume to her
and said, "This is your fireproof costume."
- She went, "Whoa." - She just refused.
She says, "I'm not gonna do it."
- So, Margaret Hamilton's stunt double,
Betty Danko, agreed to do the scene.
John: Betty Danko got in the costume, the makeup,
put her on the broom, started the wind machines.
Told her "All right, action,
push the button, Miss Danko."
And she pushed the button and the smoke mechanism
at the back of the broom exploded.
- That thing blew up.
- She went one direction
The broom went the other direction.
There were flying metal pieces that embedded in her leg.
And she was in the hospital for a while.
Any kind of legend, good or bad,
is going to travel.
The important thing though is to separate the legend
and the myth from the truth.
The only way in which the film is cursed now
is the way all of that
has been expanded upon,
and enlarged, and lied about.
And this has been going on for decades.
I think it's yellow journalism to the max.
If I were just somebody who sat at home
and watched "The Wizard of Oz" for my own pleasure
and heard the legends, I would say,
"Well, gee, maybe those are true.
Gosh, did that really happen? Fuck!"
The most famous of all "The Oz" legends
is one of the earliest ones
that there is a Munchkin
who hung himself on the set,
and you can see him in the background
hanging and swinging.
Steve: I've got some curses for you if you...
if you wanna know.
Someone showed me a um,
a couple of feet of film
that was allegedly once part of the cut
of "The Wizard of Oz"
that had been removed when they learned
that that dark spot
up in the upper right-hand corner,
is a Munchkin who hanged himself from the lighting grid.
Um, I saw the black blob
that was supposedly the dead Munchkin.
[Laughs] Producer: When was this?
- During the filming of "Under the Rainbow."
I wasn't interested enough to get out a magnifier
and-and check the validity. I bought it.
Good story.
- It went from being a stagehand caught on camera,
to a stagehand who was depressed,
and hung himself on camera,
to an MGM executive
who was so despairing of how much
"The Wizard of Oz" was costing
that he hung himself on camera,
to an actress who hung herself
because she didn't get the part of Dorothy,
to a Munchkin who hung himself
because Judy Garland wouldn't date him.
I get this from grade school kids
and I don't mind it from grade school kids,
but it's when adults who come up to me
to say, "You know, there's a man hanging." [Mumbles]
And it's like....
[Clapperboard claps]
Gregg: Basically, one of the Munchkins hung himself
on the set of "The Wizard of Oz".
Fortunately, it was very far in the distance
and it wasn't even noticed at the time of the release.
It wasn't until some real true blue film buffs
who watched the movie enough times
happened to notice it one day.
- There's a conspiracy within "The Wizard of Oz"
that a Munchkin, um,
hung himself in the background
during one of the scenes.
Gregg: You see it right there on film, on certain copies.
- Like what the fuck's goin' on over there?
Gregg: It's not on every copy.
You have to have the collector's editions.
This is the one you wanna own,
because this is the only place to actually see
the original hanging Munchkin footage.
And of course, uh, it's priceless,
so, I was very, very glad to acquire it
uh, from this uh, dealer.
- Oh no, he didn't know what he had!
If he knew what he had, he wouldn't have sold it to me.
That, that, that we know to be the truth.
Now, this is an edition that collectors love, also.
It's the 50th anniversary edition.
Unfortunately, with this,
they did find the alternate footage with the,
the bird from the LA Zoo
and they replaced uh,
the-the hanging Munchkin footage with that footage.
- We tried to get uh,
like, the original copy.
It's the oldest copy we found.
It's literally VHS.
And like I said, this is the re-mastered version,
that now, they say it's a bird.
And in the original version,
it straight up looks like a Munchkin.
Like a Munchkin. - Munchkin.
Gregg: I'm gonna show you both versions
of "The Wizard of Oz",
of the, of the hanging Munchkin scene,
which is one of the most iconic in
"The Wizard of Oz" history,
if not motion, picture history.
Okay, here go, we're off to see the Wizard now.
You see that? That's a, that's the bird.
♪ The Wizard of Oz is one because... ♪
Let me freeze this.
You see what is obviously an exotic bird, like an emu.
They found a big, exotic bird.
I don't know what the breed was,
but it was a similar size to the Munchkin.
They put that bird in the same corner of the room.
This was, is sound stage number two.
And they shot the same scene,
but with a bird flapping around
and replaced it in most prints,
except for the print that leaked out.
And this is the one collectors wanna see.
This is the suicide of the anonymous Munchkin.
Never been identified. Never will be. Um.
[Wicked Witch cackles]
- There!
Pfft! Dead.
His neck, neck is snapped instantly in a hanging, so.
♪ Because, because, because, because ♪
Look at that, swinging back and forth. Dead.
Gregg: People have shared the footage on YouTube,
and some of these sorts of bootleg sites.
[Video tape rattles]
John: Because of the times in which we are our living,
there is a very "worthy" soul
who has doctored the footage
and posts it on YouTube, as if to say,
there, you can see it is a hanging Munchkin
and this is what it used to look like.
And when the rumors started to go around,
MGM took this out and dropped in a-a bird.
Now it really is a bird.
- That's the bird they photoshopped in, man.
I have no problem debunking a conspiracy theory.
Like, the whole Keanu Reeves being a reptilian.
You know, I've pretty much debunked that one.
But this one, I'm telling you guys, man,
it's-it's for real.
- If you watch the original, it's for real.
- The bird is not in the...
original copy.
The bird is in the remade copy,
and they put the bird there
to make people say, you know, oh, it's a bird.
It's hangin' right there.
Now, that is not a bird.
There's no wings,
and it's rockin' back and forth.
I mean, it's there.
John: I think there is a great danger,
not only because it's inaccurate or disproportionate,
but because it is omnipresent in today's world
of looking for dreck and dark.
There is just an essential purity
about the "Oz" story
and the "Oz" film.
It was at a time when Judy was so excited
about making that picture
and so delighted to be making that picture.
She was thrilled.
It was well known on the set
that if Judy cracked up at something,
you had to take five minutes to let her laugh it
out of her system.
And when it came time to do her first scenes
with Burt Lahr in the movie,
these were the scenes where they meet the Cowardly Lion
in the forest and he goes after Toto.
[Barking] - I'll get you, anyway, Peewee.
John: And Judy rescues, Toto - picks up Toto
and slaps the Lion,
- Wah! [Hand slaps harshly]
- And Burt Lahr starts to cry.
- What'd you do that for?
- Well, they could not get this take.
They did it two or three times.
And every time Burt Lahr started to cry
with the waterspouts built into his wig,
and the water pouring down
and him doing his whole cowardly lion bit.
She would crack up.
- She would break up every time.
It is in the film.
She picks up Toto,
and she's starts to laugh,
and she pulls the dog over in front of her face.
It is heaven,
and it's in the film.
- She couldn't stop laughing,
take, after take, after take.
- It was an expensive picture.
You know, they were running, they had to get the scene done.
And finally, after three or four takes of this,
Victor Fleming took her behind the set
behind one of the trees
and he gave her a smart, little smack across the face.
[Bulb snaps]
Stephen: If that's how he handled things,
well, it's too bad he had to slap her.
John: He didn't punch her. He didn't beat her.
It was just a sharp, little, you know, "Come on.
Come to. Get with it here".
- Well...
if-if that's what happened, that's what happened.
Um, you know, um...
I don't know what else to say about that.
John: Was it the right thing to do?
Well, no,
probably not, but what are you gonna do?
You've gotta get the picture made.
It was coded into her to want to please,
to try to give out all the love she had inside her
in hopes that it would come back to her.
She said, I always felt unwanted.
And she wasn't being overly dramatic when she said it.
She found out that her mother
had tried to have her aborted
and a doctor friend of theirs warn them against it.
So, the mother tried everything she could
to induce a miscarriage.
This is somebody who didn't have the protection
within herself or in the people
who were supposed to be taking care of her
to withstand the concrete mixer
that Hollywood could be.
Lorna: When my mother started
"The Wizard of Oz",
she was 15, when she started it
and she finished it when she was 16.
Your body starts to change.
The character of Dorothy of course,
was even younger in the book.
And they wanted my mom to look like a child.
They said, "You can't gain any weight".
She had no idea that the studio
had asked some of the doctors
who worked at the studio,
to give her what they called
energy pills and or pep pills,
so that she would keep
that childlike figure.
Man: Pep pills are names for a gradity of barbiturates
and prescription drugs.
The young pill addict can move from sedatives like Doriden,
"red devils"
to amphetamines.
- That would cut her appetite
and that would give her a little bit of energy.
And then when my grandmother said she can't sleep at night,
then they gave her a sleeping pill.
And they didn't go out to harm her.
They didn't what they were doing.
They had no idea about addiction.
They had no idea about how this would harm people.
John: She developed a dependency on them
that nobody knew a dependency was probable.
Lorna: I've never blamed the studio
for what happened to my mom
as far as the addiction
that encompassed her adult life
because the-the studio
would never go out to harm its biggest money maker.
You were a product.
The actors were never really,
truly thought about as people.
They were part of the factory.
We know that the studio did harm.
We know that now.
We know that amphetamines
and we know that sleeping pills,
you don't give that to kids.
We know that.
They didn't know that then.
And even if they did,
would they have cared?
I don't know.
They got around the child labor laws.
They, they did harmful things.
My mother had breakdowns at MGM
because she went from movie to movie, to movie,
to movie, to movie. She never had a vacation.
But again,
I don't think you can blame people for ignorance.
We all now know about the world of addiction.
They didn't.
When I... started to...
dabble in the world of cocaine and alcohol,
I realized that once I found out
about my family history
that I fit right in.
And now that I've been sober 34 years,
I think to myself,
that's why this happened.
It happened to her.
It happened to me.
And it was incredibly fulfilling
to find out that I didn't have to blame myself.
And I didn't have to blame her.
And that I learned to forgive.
But you don't have to learn to forget.
♪♪♪
Steph: You hear all these stories in Hollywood
and no matter how you phrase it, you know,
it is something that is kind of sad.
But part of what I love about Judy is that she,
throughout her life, references this time
as being the happiest that she ever was
and how she constantly was always trying to search
for that kind of rainbow again.
Miles: As far as Judy goes,
I-I know that this was one of her,
you know, her best memories.
But I feel like her experience was
much like Hollywood has always been.
Joe: "The Wizard of Oz" the reason I love it so much,
I have to say that that is because of her performance.
Who she is in that movie draws you in as a child,
and she got me hooked.
So, because of her,
I became obsessed with this movie
and seeing her other films,
I just fell in love with her more and more.
Adam: Do we remove some magic from a narrative
by busting a myth about that narrative?
I submit, no.
I submit that no one ever minds
knowing more about a subject.
You can certainly demystify things
and still celebrate them at the same time.
I take it as axiomatic that humans, as explorers,
are evolutionarily driven
to find the truth of things.
We have always sent our best and brightest
to the edge of the known to report back what they find.
While some people may complain
that in telling the true stories about some narrative
we're somehow reducing some of its magic.
I don't think that's true for most people.
Stephen: I wouldn't necessarily attach
the term "cursed" to "The Wizard of Oz".
There were elements of it
that-that might have been a little cursed,
but the-the blessing that that film
was to the cast,
and to the American cinema,
I just don't think you could call "The Wizard of Oz"
entirely cursed.
It's... that's certain.
- I think if people think it's a sad film,
it might be...
because of what happened to Judy Garland.
Her experience at MGM
led in some sense, at least,
to a life that it ended
in her mid-forties.
And the success I think of "Over the Rainbow"
even now is because it...
has an emotional jolt
that ties it to Judy Garland,
looking up at the sky and wishing
that she were over the rainbow.
♪♪♪
["Rainbow 'Round Me" plays]
♪♪♪