S03E07 — The Wizard of OZ

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The Wizard of OZ.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

We’re off to see the wizard—and unpack a century’s worth of chaos along the way! With tin men who literally chop themselves apart to witches who melt faster than you can say “Technicolor,” we’re breaking down The Wizard of Oz like you’ve never heard it before. Join the family as we wander down the yellow brick road comparing Baum’s bizarre original to Hollywood’s sparkly fever dream. Expect laughs, trivia, and just a pinch of flying monkey trauma.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The book spins a darker, more episodic fantasy about courage and freedom across a vividly strange land, while the film simplifies the journey into a dazzling Technicolor dream of home and heart. One’s an adventure tale for curious minds; the other, a cinematic masterpiece that made “there’s no place like home” eternal.

Donna: The film was better.
– Book Score: 8/10
– Film Score: 9.5/10

Rebekah: The film was better.
– Book Score: 8.5/10
– Film Score: 9.5/10

Josiah: The film was better.
– Book Score: 8/10
– Film Score 10/10

Tim: The book was better.
– Book Score: 9/10
– Film Score 9/10

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Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Tim: Some where.

[00:00:16] Tim: Birds fly.

[00:00:21] Tim: The

[00:00:52] Josiah: welcome to the book is Better Podcast. Podcast. 

[00:00:59] Rebekah: Is that all you know [00:01:00] about us? 

[00:01:01] Josiah: A family of four reviewing book to film adaptation. 

[00:01:05] Rebekah: Spoiler alert, we are that spoiler alert for the Wizard of Oz. We are covering the Wizard of Oz today and. You know, I feel like the fact that it’s been out since most of us were alive, both the book and the film means that we don’t even really need to give a spoiler alert.

[00:01:21] Rebekah: However, it is the polite thing of to do most of 

[00:01:25] Tim: Listen. You see, most 

[00:01:26] Rebekah: of us, 

[00:01:26] Tim: the book came out in 1900. If you haven’t read it, it it’s a little own 

[00:01:32] Rebekah: fault. I met all of us. I know all of 

[00:01:34] Donna: us totally. Wait until a week ago, I had not read the book. I have seen the movie. I’ve 

[00:01:39] Josiah: read the book. 

[00:01:40] Donna: Mm-hmm. 

[00:01:41] Rebekah: Have you read the book now?

[00:01:43] Rebekah: Mm-hmm. 

[00:01:44] Donna: Oh, okay. 

[00:01:44] Josiah: There was traffic. 

[00:01:46] Rebekah: I read it yesterday as well in one sitting. Uh, well, we are releasing this, I believe, the weekend that Wicked For Good comes out and at the end of [00:02:00] this episode, we’re gonna record When that comes out, we’re probably gonna record a quick, like. Five minute thing to let you know what we think of the new movie.

[00:02:07] Rebekah: Uh, but that is not today ’cause it’s not out in the present that we are recording this in. So, woo, we’re coming to you from the past. Um, I’m coming 

[00:02:17] Tim: from the future. 

[00:02:19] Josiah: Listen, all podcast. 

[00:02:23] Rebekah: Okay. You know what, that’s true, but I don’t need you to point it out. Uh, mom, quick, quick pop quiz. Why are we not covering Wicked on the podcast, which is also an adaptation.

[00:02:36] Donna: So I started to read the book and, uh, Josiah had started, I think he was reading it sometime right around the, the same time and not far into the novel. There’s this super inappropriate scene and it didn’t last super long, but I didn’t understand it. It was, it just was such a random [00:03:00] insertion of this, this.

[00:03:03] Donna: And I was like, what in the world? And so I thought, well, maybe it was just a one-off. He just wanted to include it for some reason. So I kept reading and a little farther in, there’s another super inappropriate scene. And about that time, Josiah reached out to the, to our group text and said, you know, maybe we shouldn’t cover this because there’s a lot of stuff in here, a lot of graphic stuff.

[00:03:28] Donna: So we chose not to do that. The, you know, what we found about the first Wicked and, and the way they portray it, it’s, those things aren’t in there. There’s some things maybe where you could draw the parallels, but, um, didn’t get there in the film. But yeah, the book was pretty out there. 

[00:03:52] Rebekah: Our rule for the podcast is, as far as whether or not you should listen to this episode with a child, is generally if you would let them [00:04:00] read the book and watch the film, it’s probably.

[00:04:02] Rebekah: Um, we’ll talk about some heavier content during the trivia section in particular. Um, and this is definitely a middle grade book, 

[00:04:10] Josiah: garlands Sad Life. Yes, 

[00:04:13] Rebekah: yes. A lot of it is. Um, so you may wanna just kind of be aware of that if you are a parent listening, but in general, obviously the book and film here are meant to be maybe for older children.

[00:04:25] Rebekah: There’s a little bit of scary stuff in there that I might not expose the youngest ones to perhaps. Mm-hmm. But that is your call is mom or dad. Alright. So as we say hello today, our fun fact is what is a classic film that everyone should see that you have not seen? So my answer is I finally recently watched Gladiator, which Gladiator and Braveheart tend to be kind of lumped together.

[00:04:53] Rebekah: I finally watched Gladiator about six months ago. Still never watched Braveheart. I know it is a classic, it’s not that old, [00:05:00] but. That is the one that Josh keeps going back to is like, why have we never watched that? So it’s just never feels like a, a good time, you know? 

[00:05:08] Donna: So I’m really dating myself to give this answer.

[00:05:11] Donna: Um, but this was, the movie happened before I was born, but it was always considered a classic as I was growing up. It was that movie that, oh, everyone, it was that love story everyone had seen and that tragic, whatever it was. But I’ve never seen Casablanca all the way through. And, um, I, I honestly, I’m not sure.

[00:05:35] Donna: It seems like I’ve started watching it in the recent past at some point and just, I couldn’t finish it at the time or whatever. Um, but I think there’s, I probably have a lot of classics that I, that many, many people say they’ve seen and I haven’t, but that’s the first one that popped into my head anyway.

[00:05:57] Tim: Actually that would’ve been one that, that I said, [00:06:00] um, or the Maltese Falcon or 12 Angry Men. Mm. Uh, those all happened a bit before I was born, but those are supposed to be classics I’ve never seen. 

[00:06:10] Josiah: I’m shy of the brother of this skipping little gang, and I have never really seen Gun at the Wind. I think when I was like six or five, it was on Rebecca might have been watching it while I was in the room playing with a toy, but I don’t remember a single thing about it.

[00:06:31] Josiah: And I was thinking it came up as suggested after I watched Wizard of Oz. So I thought I put it on my list. Maybe I’ll put it on in the next few days on with the Wind Beat Wizard of Oz for Best Picture Oscar that year. 

[00:06:44] Tim: Good grief. It’s very long. Mm-hmm. So it was one of those movies that had an intermission.

[00:06:52] Tim: I, I think it’s an important film to watch, so. So Josiah, [00:07:00] what is the plot of this 

[00:07:03] Josiah: book and film? Wow. This plot summary, y’all. Y’all. This is where a Kansas girl named Dorothy Gale and her dog toto are swept away by a cyclone. The magical land of Oz. Her house lands on and kills wicked witch of the east. I know a house killing a witch.

[00:07:25] Josiah: Oh no. Whoa. Freeing the munchkins to find her way home. Dorothy, find liar to find her way home. Dorothy follows the yellow brick road, the Emerald City, to ask the Wizard of Oz for help. Along the way, she befriends the scarecrow who wants brains? The tin woodsman, who wants a heart? And the cowardly lion who wants courage.

[00:07:55] Josiah: The wizard promises to grant her wishes if they defeat the [00:08:00] wicked witch of the West, which they do. When Dorothy accidentally melts her with a bucket of plain old water, what are they putting in our water when they return? The wizard is revealed as a kind, but ordinary man from Omaha. He’s a very good man, but a very bad wizard.

[00:08:18] Josiah: After the wizard departs in a balloon, leaving Dorothy behind on accident, Dorothy learns from Glinda the good witch that her shoes can take her home. She clicks her heels and returns to Kansas, realizing she had the power to go home all along. Also, realizing that over the rainbow isn’t so much better than home.

[00:08:46] Rebekah: All right. So as we discuss differences today, um, I think discussing characters first makes sense and then we’ll go into plot and then a few, uh, some, some setting changes that are kind of interesting to discuss. And [00:09:00] I will say, um, for those of you who have children, you know, we’ve discussed this a little bit.

[00:09:04] Rebekah: Uh, I remember reading this, like, remember it was yesterday. It wasn’t that long ago. As I was sitting reading this yesterday, I had the thought that this would be a really fun book to like read aloud to my children. It’s like very well-written, like for that kind of context. So anyway, dad, do you wanna kick us off?

[00:09:25] Tim: So as we think about the characters, the. Primary character is Dorothy in the novel. She’s practical, brave, a resourceful child. Um, and she always acts decisively. She shows leadership in the film. Um, she might be a little younger, uh, a bit more innocent, uh, not worldly wise. She’s portrayed as a wistful dreamer who longs for home?

[00:09:55] Tim: Well, initially she longs for somewhere else. Yeah. Besides [00:10:00] home, 

[00:10:02] Donna: actually a really just common trope. I mean, when I really stepped back and think about it that way because you, I almost, I don’t know why I kind of separated this out to this ethereal classic of my youth or whatever, but when I think about, when I really sit, compare it to just art.

[00:10:23] Donna: How many shows, how many movies, how many stories are about this, the, the young person who gets aggravated with their parents over something and wants to get away, you know? So, uh, in Dorothy’s companions, the Scarecrow, the 10 Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. So in the novel, and this struck me because of the way this novel starts, which we’ll get to in plot, but, uh, they have these little backstories.

[00:10:51] Donna: They have their own adventures and how they got to where they are. Um, they’ve got, uh, the, she meets the Scarecrow, she meets [00:11:00] ’em in the same orders, scarecrow, um, he’s like a day and a half old. He was just created, stuck up on this stick in the, in the, out in the field. Um, the Tin Woodsman had been human and yeah.

[00:11:14] Donna: Let’s talk about how violent, yeah, his bad. 

[00:11:19] Rebekah: Stone. 

[00:11:19] Donna: He was so sad. 

[00:11:21] Rebekah: He was so sad. He was in love with a girl and the girl’s aunt that she lived with. Sorry, I I I just, this bothered me. No, it’s fine. This was an, that she lived with, didn’t want the girl to marry the tin woodsman because she, and leave her, she la she, the book says she was lazy and the girl would have to leave her if she got married.

[00:11:41] Rebekah: So she found a witch or a gypsy or something, a witch. And then the, the witch cursed a, an ax and the tin woodsman had to use the ax, and he kept cutting body parts off like his arms and then his legs. Oh my gosh. And then eventually his head, and then they just kept replacing [00:12:00] parts of him with tin. And I was like, all right, well that’s kind of its own dark.

[00:12:03] Rebekah: I need somebody to write a novella just about that horrible thing. Like, but a horror one because it’s not like, oh, is this like there’s one 

[00:12:11] Josiah: somewhere? Is 

[00:12:12] Donna: this like the brief life of Brie Tanner? Yeah. The brief life of the 10 Woodman. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, but then, you know, in, into, as you move it into film, they chose because of the way they chose to restructure the, the plot, these three characters were her farm hand, the farm hands there where she lived with, you know, auntie em and, and her uncle.

[00:12:42] Donna: And, um, they joked with her. She was just the little kid on the, the farm. They were kind to her. You could tell they cared about her and things like that. So that’s how they moved it in. Um, moved, moved beyond those kind of darker things to bring it into a children’s [00:13:00] film. Well, something like that. 

[00:13:01] Tim: Family friendly film.

[00:13:03] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:13:03] Donna: Yeah. Family friendly. 

[00:13:05] Rebekah: Uh, so the Wizard of Oz himself, uh, in the novel is they call him a humbug. Which I still don’t totally understand. The the, what does that mean? Like when they say that, what is the definition of humbug? 

[00:13:20] Donna: Wasn’t ba humbug already out in a script? 

[00:13:23] Tim: It’s different than the way, um, Dickens uses a ba humbug thing.

[00:13:29] Tim: I think a humbug is just a big fake. A phony. I think that’s what you’re just a humbug. That makes 

[00:13:35] Rebekah: sense. So he is a man from Omaha who is not a wizard, but sort of like Dorothy in the book, gets pulled into the land of Oz and then decided to convince everyone that he was a wizard and rules through deception.

[00:13:51] Rebekah: Which is so interesting because he, like, he didn’t enslave people, but kind of, and it was all by the [00:14:00] deception of pretending to be a wizard and all this stuff. But like, then he’s like, well, you know what, I’m really sorry. And he becomes this like warm caricature. It is kind of a funny portrayal in my head.

[00:14:11] Rebekah: But, uh, in the film he was more of like the bumbling, trickster kind of guy in the film, honestly, he was a little meaner intentionally. And he’s, yeah, a little less relatable, which I think personally probably worked better, I think, than in the book, which I found a little bit confusing, honestly. 

[00:14:27] Donna: Hmm. Yeah. I think in the book it was more of, okay, I gotta do something about this.

[00:14:33] Donna: What am I gonna do? It? It didn’t come across as mean. I, I definitely agree. He 

[00:14:37] Tim: was, he was a balloonist in the book. Right. He’d, he’d been a, been this, that or the other, ended up being a balloonist and he was, right. 

[00:14:48] Donna: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:48] Tim: So he was always into performing and, you know, yeah. That’s. The hypocrite, uh, thing, the two-faced not really playing who you [00:15:00] really are.

[00:15:00] Tim: So he was used to that. So it’s, it’s just an embodiment of that, that kind of character, uh, that balm seemed to be going for. And the film, the film just made him a kindly uncle kind of person. Oh, well that’s just your uncle, you know, he just tells fables or this, that and the other. Um, actually, uh, a drama, a drama that, uh, Josiah was in in college, uh, takes this kind of character and makes a whole movie a about him, makes a whole story about him.

[00:15:35] Tim: Um, that’s 

[00:15:37] Josiah: the big fish. It’s, it’s the, oh, I thought you were talking about James Franco in Oz. The great and powerful. 

[00:15:43] Tim: No, no, I was, I was talking about the, I think fish is good, big, big fish because he’s just, he’s that person. He tells these wild tales. Everybody looks at it, says, oh, obviously it couldn’t be, couldn’t be what he was talking about.

[00:15:56] Tim: Turns out he just made things a little more flowery. [00:16:00] But the adventures were real, just not quite as exciting, uh, as he said. 

[00:16:05] Donna: So a little opinion here, and it doesn’t have to be a long opinion, but just your thought, brief thought about how do you think the Wizard character in the original movie, how do you think that carries over into Jeff Goldblum’s portrayal, the way they portray him in Wicked?

[00:16:26] Donna: Is this the guy before Dorothy? So 

[00:16:30] Tim: I personally think that in, in the whole wicked storyline, he. He’s more evil than, than just, um, kind of bumbling and a, a little bit, uh, grandiose in the way he describes things or whatever, or portrays things. I think he’s actually more evil and 

[00:16:52] Rebekah: I can see that. I think he was like, um, I think the, the wizard in maybe the original film, and even in the original novel, [00:17:00] it was almost like he told a couple of small lies and then it got away from him and then he had to manage.

[00:17:05] Rebekah: Right. It feels like the Wizard, at least I’ve only seen Wicked like the first movie once and I’ve never seen the screen or the like, um, state musical. So Josiah can speak more to that, but from what I remember, it does seem like he was more intentionally deceptive versus like, oh, I’m just trying to like, manage a really awkward situation and I don’t know what to do.

[00:17:24] Rebekah: So, 

[00:17:25] Josiah: um, 

[00:17:26] Rebekah: yeah, 

[00:17:26] Josiah: I like the Wizards portrayal in Wicked as, uh, an autocrat. But he is just like some guy who’s like, well, I don’t, I didn’t really ask to be in charge, but now that I am, I’m, I’m just trying to hold it all together and embrace it. I just have some bad ideas about how to do it. It’s not like I am racist against animals.

[00:17:49] Josiah: I’m just thinking if I’m, if I’m racist against animals and keep them from talking, it keeps the non-animal all together and following me. [00:18:00] I don’t hate animals. It’s just like, oops, I had a bad idea. 

[00:18:04] Donna: Yeah. Hmm. It is in, I think, I think I tend to agree with that. I think that in both cases, they got into an uncomfort, they got into a weird situation that they didn’t really create, but then it was like, well, I got this power in front of me, so what can I do to, what can I do to use it?

[00:18:21] Donna: Or, or work, work with it rather than just say, Hey, I’m not who you think I am. Really, I’m not that, you know, I’m not this guy, but. 

[00:18:30] Tim: Well, because he came down from the sky, people made assumptions and they just went with it in the novel, in the film, even in, in Wicked, uh, the backstory is, hmm, I’m here and I don’t want them to kill me, so they think I’m more than I am, so I need to try to be that.

[00:18:48] Tim: Well, um, another, another group of characters in the novel in the film are the Munchkins. Uh, they’re, um, a few of them appear in the novel [00:19:00] when Dorothy first lands and kills the Wicked Witch of the East by dropping her house on her. Uh, they, in the novel, they use the word murdered her. Uh, they like to use that word.

[00:19:11] Tim: Um, you murdered her, Dorothy, and she doesn’t like the use of that word in the film. There are large numbers on them. They dance, uh, they’re coordinated. Uh, they greet and thank Dorothy. They give her, basically give her the key to the city kind of thing. Um, and. It’s a very, it’s a very cute thing in the movie, um, the Lollipop Guild and the Lullaby Guild and, um, they were a much larger group in the film than they appeared to be in the, the novel.

[00:19:44] Tim: Although in each of the lands there was a color and there were enough of them that they had their whole, a whole separate land in the land of Oz. So, 

[00:19:57] Donna: um, it’s little trivia SL [00:20:00] in here. Um, they took pictures. They, they looked out, uh, they, they did a, a talent search for, like, they were looking for around a hundred dwarves to play the munchkins.

[00:20:12] Donna: And it in the film, it does look like there’s some children in some dwarves. I mean, there’re, if I understand right, but one of the things that I found so fascinating about. Um, knowing they knew they were gonna do, go into this technicolor, right? They were gonna go into this color coloring, um, I wanna say thing, it was new technology, new technology of the way they were gonna color this thing.

[00:20:38] Donna: And it had, it had been used in the animated Snow White in 37 and was crazy popular. So it was that, oh, it’s the new toy and we all gotta use it. So to make sure that they properly captured things correctly and consistently, they made up the [00:21:00] munchkins in their, in their makeup and took pictures of all of them so that every day that they filmed, because it was.

[00:21:07] Donna: Several days of filming them, they made sure like that their makeup match and, and maybe they do the same thing now. I don’t know, I, I’m not sure how that works, but I just thought about, you know, then the detail of, of having to go through all that because there were so many of them and the world had had so few, but previous, previously it 

[00:21:26] Tim: would’ve been black and white.

[00:21:27] Tim: So if the Sure. The makeup probably didn’t have to be exactly the same color. It just had to look the same in black and white. 

[00:21:34] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:21:35] Tim: Uh, now they had color, so all the colors had to be the same. 

[00:21:38] Donna: And the color stark there where they go from Kansas into Oz, and I thought it was really beautiful. The, the movie we watched where they’d done the, like, especially remastered, I mean the, the change in the color.

[00:21:52] Donna: It was just, it was lovely and kind, startling and all that. So, 

[00:21:57] Josiah: wicked Witch of the West, [00:22:00] I’ll tell you that she’s. A little bit of a minor antagonist in the book. She only appears late in the book. She’s barely mentioned. You know, you kill the Wicked Witch of the East, you murder her. Mm-hmm. With the house at the beginning and barely is there a mention of there being another wicked witch?

[00:22:18] Josiah: But in the film, she’s expanded to the main villain shows up in the first scene in Oz in Munchkinland. She’s the sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. Mm-hmm. Very scary that Margaret Hamilton really transformed the character 

[00:22:33] Donna: and, and she was scary as Elvira Gulch too, as in the beginning with the poor little dog.

[00:22:41] Donna: I mean, she was like, I forgot about that scene where I knew she wanted to take Toto, but she didn’t wanna just take Toto. She wanted to him to be killed. Like, I forgot about that until we watch it. And I was like, oh my gosh. That’s right. Sweet 

[00:22:58] Tim: little old lady. Yeah. [00:23:00] 

[00:23:00] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:23:01] Rebekah: I would posit that there was not so much of a villain in the book, like I mm-hmm.

[00:23:08] Rebekah: I think that the, the book didn’t have a clear villain at all. I mean, I guess you could say it’s the idea of the Wicked Witches, but they were villains to other people. They weren’t really villains to Dorothy. Dorothy was kind of fighting the more ambiguous, um, like, need to get back home. And so like, that was her quest.

[00:23:28] Rebekah: Mm-hmm. But interestingly enough, I feel like it, the, which I think it does work better on screen, the film added what felt like more intensity and more evil and more villainous activity from like a, a person with a face and a name. And so I do think that that was an interesting, like, it was just an interesting direction to take it, so, mm-hmm.

[00:23:48] Tim: I think the primary villain in the novel was the lack of freedom. ’cause in each of the lands that they go to, there’s, there’s some [00:24:00] concept of freedom. You know, the wicked witch of the East had taken the freedom of the munchkins, the wicked witch of the West had taken the freedom of another group. Um, I think it’s the lack of freedom.

[00:24:09] Tim: So when they become free and they’re able to choose their own leaders and things like that, I think that’s the, the anti villain, uh, of the movie. 

[00:24:19] Rebekah: I think. I think Josiah really liked that he started crying as soon as he was like, whoa. Oh, okay. That’s not raw. I mean, it’s a really interesting take. Honestly, 

[00:24:32] Josiah: L Frank Bomb did believe in women’s suffrage.

[00:24:36] Josiah: Hmm. So probably thought that women were lacking freedom. 

[00:24:43] Rebekah: So maybe he was actually trying to communicate a message there, which is interesting. Which is again, why separating the art from the artist. Yeah. Like it is good sometimes to be able to like eat the meat, spit out the bones. Like what are the good things that you can take away, even from people who believe things [00:25:00] antithetical to some of the what you believe.

[00:25:02] Rebekah: Yeah. ’cause we are more complex than a binary of you have to think this way or think that way. And there’s two options and nothing else. 

[00:25:11] Donna: I had a memory, a very vivid, I could just see my grandmother being Auntie M when she said, there’s a lot I want to say to you right now, El Ira Gulch, but I can’t because I’m a Christian woman.

[00:25:25] Donna: And she storms out of the room. It was so funny. And, and uncle, the uncle sitting there in the chair and he’s just like, smirking, you know? You know he is just wanting to say something. You can see you on his 

[00:25:34] Tim: face if you stay, I’ll say him. 

[00:25:37] Donna: You could you just hang around for a minute? Yeah. So, sorry, a little more about the aunt and uncle here.

[00:25:42] Donna: Let’s go on a little, 

[00:25:43] Josiah: yeah, a little uncle. About more and an, I think they’re basically the same from. Book to film that I wanted to mention that one of the deleted scenes in the film was an a reprise of Over the Rainbow [00:26:00] where uh, an to m is in the crystal ball and she may have also sung along with Dorothy.

[00:26:07] Tim: Aw. 

[00:26:08] Josiah: And it is added back into the stage musical. I just produced a stage musical of mm-hmm. Oz Youth Edition. Oh yeah, that’s right. The Rainbow Prize is with Dorothy and an m. 

[00:26:20] Donna: Oh oh, nice. 

[00:26:22] Tim: I thought that when I had seen the film before that there was a part where Ant M’s. Face was in the crystal ball. Um, now see 

[00:26:33] Donna: there is, 

[00:26:33] Tim: it was, it was released to with television rights in the late, late fifties.

[00:26:40] Tim: Um, and it would’ve been on television once a year at least, uh, for all of my childhood. So I thought I remembered seeing Aunt M’s. Face in the crystal ball when, when he saw Yeah, 

[00:26:54] Donna: she did. I mean, you did. So, okay. So, um, there were, uh, [00:27:00] they had three or four other musical numbers planned in the, in the screenplay.

[00:27:08] Donna: And because the target, they were going for a target audience of, of youth, I mean, their, their, their main target audience, let me say that. And the, the movie would’ve been over two hours long and they were afraid that it, it wouldn’t make it with youth audience. And so to fall they took out that reprise.

[00:27:30] Donna: But yeah, there were, there were a number of things that they had written, um, with specifically music numbers. Um, because the, um, they didn’t like the fact that the, uh. Well, I guess the, the bottom line of all of it is there were several voices in this trying to decide what they wanted. And a lot of what I read suggested it [00:28:00] was almost, it was like kind of too many voices to really come up with something.

[00:28:05] Donna: Finally, finally, too many The kitchen. Yeah. And finally, Fleming, the director, Fleming, and, you know, they finally were just like, these are the things we want, we’re, we can’t keep doing this. Because discussions had gone on and on and on about how to portray it. 

[00:28:22] Rebekah: So, uh, another character thing that I thought was fascinating, this might have been one of my favorite changes actually, uh, to realize is in the novel, the Flying Monkeys were not like inherently evil and didn’t serve the Wicked Witch.

[00:28:39] Rebekah: They were required by a magic item called the Golden Cap. To respond three times, only three times to summons from whoever possesses the golden cap. And so the wicked witch of the West had already called on them twice. Once was to, um, enslave the people where she was in [00:29:00] the West and the other time Drive.

[00:29:03] Rebekah: Do you what it was 

[00:29:04] Josiah: out? 

[00:29:04] Rebekah: Yes. To drive the wizard out of her territory. And so the third time she used it to capture, um, Dorothy and her friends because she had tried to call on like her other minions and they weren’t answering. So in the film, the Flying Monkeys are like these scary villains that just serve the Wicked Witch.

[00:29:24] Rebekah: Um, although she does also have like soldiers, I guess, in similar garb to those, um, monkeys in the film that like after she dies, aren’t they happy about it? 

[00:29:37] Tim: Yeah, I think those were the winkys, those were the people of the land that she had enslaved. 

[00:29:43] Rebekah: So I thought that whole thing was just such a fascinating change.

[00:29:47] Rebekah: I think it, you know, it works in the film, it’s fine. It was just, I think I liked it in the book better actually. I don’t know. 

[00:29:55] Tim: It’s simplified for the film, but I love the backstory in the novel. [00:30:00] Um, and that, that they’re, they are kind of rough characters even when they’re on their own. Um, the reason that they were cursed that way, uh, to have to obey the cap is because they were making fun of, of someone.

[00:30:15] Tim: Um, but I, I like the backstory and if you’re, if you’re reading this book as a chapter book and you know, it’s an episode after episode of, it’s a really nice thing that backstory. Um, there were, uh, some other animals, uh, toto, for instance, the dog, um, in the novel. He occasionally speaks, uh, at least toward the end.

[00:30:42] Tim: Um, um, I did not realize that either until I got to the end of the book. And he starts speaking just before they leave and Dorothy says, oh, I’m sorry, Toto, we’re gonna leave. Um, but in the, in the film, he’s always just a dog remains silent, um, [00:31:00] which makes sense for the film. They, they didn’t make him much of a character, uh, to be perfectly honest.

[00:31:07] Tim: Um, I had, I had trouble with Toto. Because they’re in in the film in, Nope, in the novel. Oh. I had trouble with Toto in the novel because he was so upset. It, it bothered me that she was supposed to be getting in the balloon with the wizard to go home and Oh, where is Toto? Where is Toto? You’ve gotta come in, get in the balloon.

[00:31:28] Tim: But aren’t they Get in the balloon? Where’s Toto? Where’s Toto? It’s like Toto is always getting her into trouble. It’s the same thing. Totos. The reason that she couldn’t get down in the storm cellar Totos. The reason she couldn’t get in the balloon toto was a problem. 

[00:31:41] Donna: It’s the same thing in the film though.

[00:31:43] Donna: The film there. Yep. Ms. Gulch has got it. If we had just followed 

[00:31:47] Tim: Ms. 

[00:31:47] Donna: Gch, 

[00:31:48] Tim: no, I love dogs, but Toto was just, uh, Toto needed to be on a leash, let’s just put it that way. So she would have control over him. Okay. Well [00:32:00] there are some characters that are absent or altered in the film. In the novel, there’s the queen of the field mice and she’s got such a tiny little voice.

[00:32:12] Tim: Uh, she’s a tiny monarch who is certain that everyone should bow down to her, of course. Um, she commands the mice, uh, and they help free the lion from the poppy field trap because, uh, the scarecrow and the tin tins woodsmen could carry Dorothy and toto out, but the lion was too heavy, so they needed help.

[00:32:34] Tim: And so they were able to call on, uh, the field mice to help them with that because they had earlier saved the field mice queen. So 

[00:32:46] Josiah: that was cute. Hey, did you know that the good witch of the South is Glinda in the film and separate from the good witch of the North? Uh, she helps Dorothy return home at the end of the book as a only once [00:33:00] mentioned before, AO X Mackinac.

[00:33:02] Josiah: However, the good witch of the North. The book. That’s the first kind witch Dorothy meets in the novel. This unnamed witch. Yeah. Gives Dorothy the silver shoes, a protective mark on her forehead and some advice. 

[00:33:16] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:33:17] Josiah: This, uh, there was a 1902 stage play of The Wizard of Oz that l Frank Baum helped write where this good witch of the north

[00:33:35] Josiah: was named LaCosta. LaCosta. 

[00:33:39] Tim: Hmm. 

[00:33:40] Josiah: Okay. 

[00:33:41] Donna: He’s gonna use her. I guess they gotta give her a name. So Dorothy Frank and Auntie m LaCosta, even Glenda’s 

[00:33:53] Josiah: interesting locus. Uh, 

[00:33:55] Donna: yeah, that’s it. Thinking 

[00:33:56] Josiah: just a locust. 

[00:33:58] Donna: Yes. 

[00:33:58] Josiah: But yeah, a [00:34:00] separate good witch of the, uh, north in Munchkinland. It’s not you’re book. I’m glad that it was the same witch in the movie.

[00:34:07] Josiah: So she was there at the beginning and the end. 

[00:34:10] Tim: Yeah, I think, I think having one 

[00:34:11] Josiah: villain 

[00:34:12] Tim: in the film was simplified it and, and all of that. Having one, one good witch simplified it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It’s just the one against one kind of, kind of thing. You got rid of the first bad witch right at the beginning.

[00:34:26] Rebekah: And I think my only, I think my only, it’s not a concern, my confusion around that, the, the two different ones versus like in the movie, it’s just, one is mentioned that there are four witches hello in the film, but what. 

[00:34:45] Josiah: Your mother has always is the fourth 

[00:34:46] Rebekah: witch. Hello? No, I know, but I mean it’s mentioned that there are four and in the book, in the book she’s the fifth, although she kills one of the others.

[00:34:55] Rebekah: She essentially replaces the Wicked witch of the East. But there are still [00:35:00] three other witches. And in the film it is kind of we weird that she kills one, she’s now one, but then there’s two others. But then who’s the other one that’s alive? Like it is a little confusing if you actually stressed it little bit.

[00:35:13] Rebekah: You know what I’m saying? 

[00:35:14] Donna: Yeah. And also another thing that, uh, around around Glenda, I was listening and I’ve, I’ve thought this before. I think at any time I watch the film, um, when Glenda is describing herself and she says, only bad witches are ugly. So I thought that was weird enough. Okay. But then line, yeah, amazing line.

[00:35:36] Donna: And then she says. I’m a good witch. I do, you know, I do good things. And I thought it was interesting because in my younger adult days, the whole concept of, uh, witches and people proclaiming they were witches and wizards became more outwardly, [00:36:00] uh, it wasn’t a stigma in society to come out and say, well, I do this.

[00:36:05] Donna: Well, I’m a witch. Well, I’m a good witch. Well, I’m a in, have 

[00:36:08] Tim: you ever heard of Bewitched? Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was a big thing when we were children, a television show. So 

[00:36:14] Donna: she, you know, it was, I thought it was interesting because she was like, well, I’m a good witch. I only do good things for people. And I don’t know, I guess just where I grew up and, and things like that, that should have been more jarring to us, that we would not want our children to hear that.

[00:36:32] Donna: But at the same time, this is a fanta, this is considered a fantasy film. And, and, um, 

[00:36:39] Tim: and along with, along with that film, popular Culture was starting to make that Yeah. Make that a thing. We, I I dream of Jeanie was another popular television show. Yeah. She did magic all the time came. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, um, 

[00:36:53] Donna: so we move on to the Winkys and the Lings in the novel, they are distinctive [00:37:00] peoples.

[00:37:00] Donna: They, they both have their own story, their own world or, or their own land. Um, only Winkys appear in the movie. And these are the, uh. Witches slaves with the flying monkeys. They’re, they’re human humanoid or human characters with green faces like hers. And so they, they did come again, combine a couple of things and, and use them in that way.

[00:37:25] Donna: It seemed 

[00:37:25] Tim: like in the, in the film that the, the Wicked Witch of the West had created the Flying Monkeys, so that’s why Yeah. In the novel, that was a kind of a neat story that they had a, they had an actual other story. It looked like she had created them, and then the, she had enslaved the Winkys. 

[00:37:44] Donna: Um, 

[00:37:45] Tim: well, the, there’s another land that they go to in the novel after they encounter the Wizard of Oz and the, the Wicked Witch is taken care of.

[00:37:59] Tim: Dorothy [00:38:00] still wants to get home, and one of the places that they visit is a place filled with people made from China. Not the country. Uh, they are porcelain. They are actual glass like people that go about their life. They live in a land with a tall border that looks like a China dish, uh, all around. And once Dorothy and their company get in there, um, they, they have a little bit of adventure there.

[00:38:34] Tim: It’s kind of a short one. I noticed, uh, as I was listening to it again this morning. Uh, it’s a very short time, but when they first drop over the fence, the porcelain fence, um, the milk maid who’s milking a cow, uh, her cow is scared by them. When he, when the cow, when she first sees them, she, you know, joles [00:39:00] around, breaks a leg, falls over and the milk maid is angry with them.

[00:39:04] Tim: ’cause she’s gonna have to take them. Take the cow to be fixed because the cow with three legs can’t stand and so she can’t milk her. Um, and 

[00:39:12] Rebekah: they make the point at one time to say like, yeah, of course we can put ’em back together, but it never looks the same when we’ve put, been put back together and then Right.

[00:39:21] Rebekah: You can always, some of them have the cracks all around. This threw me off, threw and it was such a weird, it’s just everything and everyone is made of precious China. Like what it was, it was so interesting. But all part the fantasy. 

[00:39:40] Donna: I mean, 

[00:39:40] Tim: what do you think it was supposed to represent? 

[00:39:44] Rebekah: Oh, I’m a left brainer.

[00:39:45] Rebekah: I have no idea what people mean when they say that. I think it 

[00:39:47] Tim: was supposed, I think it was supposed to represent people who, uh, who want to stay exactly as they are and they’re too scared to do anything because they’ll, you know, it somehow they [00:40:00] think it will break them. They’re scared of anything new or anything different.

[00:40:04] Donna: Mm-hmm. 

[00:40:04] Tim: Because they’ve got one really weird person that lives in that country. He’s the jester and he’s been broken so many times. ’cause he keeps insisting on doing strange things. I, I think it’s people that don’t want to change, they want to remain the same and that that’s the most important thing to them is remaining the same.

[00:40:27] Donna: Mm. Um, a few, the next few are like book only characters that are, we don’t see in the movie at all. The, the first is the Kalita. Um, they’re like these lion bear creatures that attack the group during their travels on the yellow brick road. 

[00:40:45] Tim: Um, the lion is very afraid of them. Yeah. I hear he mentions them.

[00:40:48] Tim: He mentions them at the beginning, before they run into them later. 

[00:40:52] Donna: Yeah. And I, and I get the why they cut. I mean, they, they faced enough, enough stuff in the movie to, again, just [00:41:00] tearing, tearing down or pruning out, pruning down some of the. 

[00:41:04] Rebekah: Well, I was sad that they took out the hammerheads armless creatures who guard a mountain near Glenda’s land.

[00:41:13] Rebekah: I cracked up aloud when I was reading about these yesterday. So for those of you who haven’t read the book, they have no arms. They, they look like they are completely non-threatening. They just have really, they describe them as having lots of loose skin around their necks. And so then when the people would try to walk past them, their heads would literally like, like jump out, spring out at you.

[00:41:36] Rebekah: Like they were Jack in the box on a spring and like, they were very formidable. Just thought they were so funny 

[00:41:44] Tim: that that was, that was funny. And I, I liken them to CS Lewis, uh, pod, the pod people that, uh, Lucy runs into on the island in, uh. Voyage of the [00:42:00] dawn Treader. 

[00:42:00] Josiah: Well, we talked about the, we talked about the king of the winged monkey.

[00:42:03] Josiah: There was a king of the winged monkey, and he, uh, they speak of course, but he tells Dorothy after the witches melted. So I was surprised when the witch was melted. There was still 30 minutes left in the audiobook. It was like five more chapters. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. One of them was the winged monkey king telling Dorothy about the kind of weird story about how they came in to be enthrall of the golden cap and the witch.

[00:42:26] Josiah: It wasn’t that weird. I thought it was weird that they were enthralled to the golden cap by this person that like, they made fun of him at his wedding or something like that, or they made fit in his bride and it was, I think it was his fiance, his bride, that that was actually able to, to enslave them.

[00:42:45] Josiah: Yeah. And I think the story goes, uh, we were mean to her. She put us in, we, she enslaved us to the golden cap magically, but never used it once. Then the golden cap went [00:43:00] into the possession of the Wicked Witch of the West thought, okay, did we need a story about this golden cap? If it was never used by anyone but the wicked witch of the West?

[00:43:12] Josiah: Well, 

[00:43:13] Tim: but it 

[00:43:13] Josiah: came to be used. It’s 

[00:43:14] Rebekah: vital. Josiah, 

[00:43:16] Josiah: like, just add a part in there where you had like two masters you don’t wanna talk about in between the first one and the Wicked Witch. I don’t know. Add some intrigue. Yeah, make a book about it later. 

[00:43:28] Tim: I, I thought some of these side, side journeys were interesting, but, uh, but ultimately I thought, um, a number of them, this one, uh, the part of that story that you were talking about, Josiah was kind of an unnecessary detour.

[00:43:44] Tim: Um, I was fine with the monkeys having a backstory and they were enslaved to the cap and all that stuff. Um, I mean, it would’ve been just as simple to say the, the Wicked Witch created it so she could enslave them. Um, but [00:44:00] some of the, some of the side stories were a little, a little odd to me. Um, and I, I know exactly why they cut them.

[00:44:07] Tim: Some of them would’ve been cute, but there again, they were trying to make a film and trying to streamline it. So I understand that too. 

[00:44:14] Rebekah: So, as we get into plot and timeline, we’ve kind of talked about several of the characters involved in these different pieces, but we wanted to have kind of a, just a rundown of the actual way that the plot changes.

[00:44:28] Rebekah: Um, so you may hear us kind of mention what we’ve already mentioned, but give you more of the story aspect of it in this case. So 

[00:44:36] Donna: yeah, we, we’ll begin with the pre Oz journey and when I started reading the book, I was like, are they gonna get into the farm thing? Did they. Oh, I, it kind of threw me, and then I thought, okay, it, it’s fine.

[00:44:51] Donna: The answer is no, no, they don’t get into the farm thing or the farm hands. And then I was like, oh, no, I, I could, you know, I was trying to remove my [00:45:00] brain from the movie and, and, uh, it was okay. It didn’t, it wasn’t like, it didn’t ruin the book book for me, but I thought it was interesting in the novel. Uh, it, it begins with Dorothy describing, or the, the description of her aunt and uncle, em and Henry, um, as kind of gray.

[00:45:18] Donna: They were sweet and benevolent. I mean, she loved them and they took care of her. They took her in and all those things, but they’re very, um, just common farmers. That’s who they are. They’re hardworking. Uh, the tornado starts and she’s in the living room of the house and it’s lifted up and transported to Oz, and that’s it in the film, you know, the.

[00:45:47] Donna: Start out with Dorothy on the farm and, uh, they’ve got, um, characters, you know, MI, Mrs. Gulch and her problem with Toto, [00:46:00] who rightfully bid her ’cause she’s a horrible woman. And, oh, sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not saying you should have jogs go bite people. I’m just saying it’s the characters they write. Right. And then the farm hands and they’re, wow.

[00:46:10] Donna: Thank you for 

[00:46:11] Rebekah: clarifying. 

[00:46:11] Donna: Yeah, yeah. Good. And the banter with the farm hands and Dorothy. And Dorothy interestingly falling into the pigs pig style and he picks her up the pigsty and her dress is completely clean. Rebecca goes, there’s no mud on her dress. Really? Not one speck of mud. She was, we just, 

[00:46:31] Rebekah: listen, we’ve been watching Clarkson’s farm, I know how disgusting pigpens are and you’re telling me she falls in, in a mostly white dress and then is completely clean.

[00:46:41] Rebekah: I do not think so. 

[00:46:43] Donna: So my question just as a yes or no or how long, how long or how many times have you seen the movie before you realize the three farm hands are the three companions and Oz and Mrs. Gulch is the witch and the [00:47:00] wizard is the, uh, fortune teller. Because I didn’t, I saw it a few times and then I was like, wait, it’s all, and she says at the end, and you were all there.

[00:47:10] Donna: But I still didn’t connect it until I’d watched it a few times. 

[00:47:14] Rebekah: I saw it growing up and I couldn’t tell you the answer to your question for certain. Although I do think that I was an adult, like a young adult watching it and I think someone had to point it out to me. Um, I don’t think that I ever noticed it.

[00:47:27] Rebekah: I think I noticed that the circus performer guy was the Wizard Oz, but I don’t think I connected that the farm hands, maybe Mrs. Gulch or whatever her name was. Gulch. That’s right. So yeah, I also wanted to say. In the book, it gave me that like classic fantasy vibe that we’ve talked about honestly, when reading like Chronicles of Narnia, but then also with um, what’s the one we read?

[00:47:53] Rebekah: It’s the weird, oh my gosh, there’s a star. She’s a person. It’s actually written in the [00:48:00] nineties. What was, we did an episode. Stardust. Stardust, thank you. When we read Stardust and it felt like that like classic fantasy thing where it’s just like this girl is like, oh, a tornado picked up my house. I will calmly wait in the living room and just see what happens.

[00:48:15] Rebekah: I guess it like, it was so weird, but cool. Like I loved the way that they kind of introduced like, this is a fantasy story. This isn’t just like a dream sequence. That was like one of the biggest things, you know, that I thought was so interesting. She just like, is so chill, like, yeah, I’m in a dream.

[00:48:33] Rebekah: Whatever. Let’s go. Let’s figure this out. I’ll just wait until we land and then I’ll see what happens. 

[00:48:38] Tim: Yeah, I think, I think that’s. Kind of weird because, uh, the, the movie’s really clear that, that this is a dream. But the, the book is not, uh, the book is an adventure. 

[00:48:50] Josiah: Whoa, whoa. It’s clear. And why did l Frank Baum write 30 more books that were very literally in a [00:49:00] different magical land called Oz, where he details all of the politics?

[00:49:04] Josiah: No, no. I think, and he’s the governor of each land. 

[00:49:07] Tim: I think the novel’s very clear that it, that it’s an actual adventure. The movie, the movie is clear that it’s a dream. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. No, I was being sarcastic 

[00:49:20] Donna: way. I don’t believe that you, well, okay. 

[00:49:23] Tim: Here’s, here’s a tiny, tiny little question.

[00:49:28] Tim: Uh, well, today. They wouldn’t make the movie the way they made it because it would have prevented them from making seven 

[00:49:42] Josiah: sequels also filled with a bunch of tropes that are now cliches. True. Were are cliches because Wizard of Oz is so popular, the, I hear on so many like YouTubers that are writers and editors, [00:50:00] they say, and I, they never reference Wizard of Oz specifically, but I hear a lot of people say, do not make the ending of your novel, the real solution.

[00:50:11] Josiah: All the, was the friendship you made along the way, which is basically Wizard of Oz ending where the Wizard of Oz mm-hmm. Gives the Tin Man, the scarecrow, the Lion, all these things they want. Now it’s actually, you could still do that today in Wizard of Oz because it’s, he’s lying and it’s. A multilayered thing.

[00:50:31] Josiah: It’s not just this cliche, you’ve always had your shoes, you’ve always been able to click your heels. Like in the movie Glinda even specifically says you had to figure out that home was where you really wanted to be. You had to figure out that somewhere over the rainbow wasn’t as good as your home. And now the Ruby Slippers work, which by the way, in the novel, the, the witches su she gets are silver.

[00:50:55] Josiah: Mm. And they changed them to Ruby in the film. Mm. The show off [00:51:00] Technicolor’s vivid Red tone. 

[00:51:04] Tim: I, I looked up some things when it said, this wasn’t the first Technicolor movie, but it was one of the first. Mm-hmm. Uh, they actually had a, a duo color, uh, two duo color movies before this, a few years before it.

[00:51:20] Tim: And, uh, as the technology was changing and I was looking it up to try to see what does that mean? And it’s actually. It uses two tones, two, two other colors. Like, uh, it, I’m not sure what the film would’ve looked like though. That would’ve been really strange, but, uh, the duo color was the first experiment, but technicolor was, you know, we can use all of the vibrant colors of the, of the rainbow.

[00:51:49] Tim: And that’s also why the film is so bright and colorful. You’ve got so many different colors to take advantage of that. 

[00:51:59] Rebekah: Um, [00:52:00] another thing that they have in the book that’s just not in the film at all that I thought, I understand why it was cut, but it was an interesting kind of plot device was the Good Witch of the North in the book plants a kiss on Dorothy’s forehead and it.

[00:52:15] Rebekah: Was something that left a mark that was like essentially universally recognizable as a good witch’s kiss. And so there are a couple of instances throughout the film that people are not going to listen to Dorothy or they’re going to hurt her, and it actually serves as her protection because it’s mm-hmm.

[00:52:34] Rebekah: The, the witch like saying like, I am protecting this person. Like I have said that this is, you mean in the book This person is under in the book? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that that was a, an interesting thing. Really smart to cut, like it made sense to cut for the film, but I thought it was a cool plot device in the book.

[00:52:51] Tim: I thought it was funny that there was one of the places that they visited and she said, can’t you see the mark? Oh. And somebody says, oh, that’s what that [00:53:00] is. Like, they didn’t recognize it for being this protective mark. They, you know, I, I thought that was interesting because most of the places she went and they’re like, oh, we see that, you know, you’re under a protective mark.

[00:53:11] Tim: And then this other one, it was like, oh, really? I dunno what that is. 

[00:53:16] Josiah: I don’t recognize it. So in the novel, there’s this long episodic trek through many lands, uh, you know, the munchkins and the winkys, the quad links, China country, multiple adventures and side quests, including after the witches melted. You know, you see more land like with the China people and you hear about the deadly desert.

[00:53:39] Josiah: You hear about even more geography. 

[00:53:43] Tim: Yeah. Well, in, in the film they, they condense all of that so that there’s, there’s kind of this really, there’s narrow kind of thought. There’s the yellow brick road, there’s the emerald city, the witches castle, and then return home, there’s the single [00:54:00] villain who is the wicked witch of the West, and she’s pestering them all the way through.

[00:54:04] Tim: And once she’s destroyed, that’s done. Um. Glenda is the one who rescues them from the poppy field, so they don’t have to add the, the mice and the, the China people, uh, and all of the other lands are omitted to keep the narrative, uh, very tight. And I can understand that because I think as a film, the, if the novel had been, um, expanded, if they’d simply taken the novel and made it a film and used most of the elements, I think it would’ve been plotting and confusing because even, even the book was that at times.

[00:54:46] Tim: Mm-hmm. It’s like, okay, well, you know, it’s taking so long to get there. And yes, there’s an adventure and we know that they take one step at a time, but hey, let’s just say they woke up, blah, blah, blah, and that night they were in such and such a place. [00:55:00] Um, so I think, I think it made a lot of sense for the film to narrow the narrative down and make it very clean.

[00:55:07] Tim: I thought they did a good job. 

[00:55:10] Donna: Um, the, the defeat of the Wicked Witch changes a good bit. The novel. Dorothy still, uh, still uses the water to melt her. She’s afraid of water, but it’s 

[00:55:21] Tim: a soap water that she’s been cleaning. Yeah. But the mopping of the floor with, 

[00:55:25] Donna: I felt like there was a little more reference in the book to make you understand.

[00:55:31] Donna: The witch was afraid of water, which is fine. It’s not that it had to be in the film. I think there was built that up. One little note. Um, but after she melts her, their journey goes on. There’s still more to do, but then in the film, when she kills the, uh, witch with the, the defeat, same defeat, obviously.

[00:55:51] Donna: They go, uh, they go, it’s like the end of the movie. And I will say, I did not think much about this until [00:56:00] now that I’d read the book and saw the movie after it. Man, the end is rushed. It’s like. Look, we have the broom bing wizard. We have the broom. Bing, get us home. B And I felt like they cut again, back to what I said before.

[00:56:17] Donna: They were terrified. They didn’t want this movie close to an hour. It still ended up being an hour, 41 minutes. I mean, sorry. They didn’t want it to hit two hours. Um, I don’t know if it would’ve been any better if they’d lengthened it out. I, I think it’s fine. But, um, I did find it interesting after reading the book to see how quickly they, they bring things to a close.

[00:56:40] Donna: So 

[00:56:41] Tim: in a, in a story, is it correct to call it the climax when it’s the, that high point when a lot of things happen, but you’ve still got some film, you’ve still got some story left, like you, your climax and then you have a conclusion? Resolution. Resolution. Mm-hmm. Okay. [00:57:00] 

[00:57:00] Rebekah: End resolved. There’s a falling action.

[00:57:02] Rebekah: Like falling action is after the climax where you’re kind of. Getting into the resolution. Yeah. 

[00:57:07] Josiah: Gotcha. There’s also like g Glenda’s role in the novel. She’s the one who comes at the end to tell Dorothy how to use her shoes, but she’s not the one in the novel come to Munchkinland. Uh, Belinda’s a combination, a good witch of the north unnamed, although she’s in the 1902 stage play named LaCosta.

[00:57:30] Rebekah: So I think Josiah mentioned this earlier, but one of the other plot things that changes the, like in the timeline is that in both the Wizard of Oz leaves obviously, um, but in the book he’s unmasked earlier, so he sends. Dorothy and her friends off to defeat the wicked witch of the West. They defeat her.

[00:57:50] Rebekah: They come back and he’s like, oh, I have an idea. Let’s just get in a hot air balloon. We’ll go together. And I think Omaha is like on the way back to [00:58:00] Kansas probably. It was just very funny ’cause neither of them were familiar with the geography very much. But, um, what actually happens is he leaves her by mistake, like she can’t jump in the air, the hot air balloon quickly enough.

[00:58:15] Rebekah: And then Dorothy Toto. Huh? Toto, Toto like stops her from jumping in the, the hot air balloon. And so then Dorothy and her friends have to go and find Glinda, even though they’ve already defeated the wicked witch of the West, it creates another plot point. Um, because the wizard himself goes ahead and flies away, and then Dorothy’s like, oh, good, I’m glad.

[00:58:38] Rebekah: Like I didn’t wanna be in a hot air balloon for some reason. Um, so in the film, he also leaves in a hot air balloon, and she also can’t get in it. However, this is like the emotional finale at the end of the film, um, before her dream kind of dissolves because Glinda has been present throughout the entire film, um, because they, you know, combine the [00:59:00] good witches as we discussed.

[00:59:01] Rebekah: Uh, so it would’ve made sense for them to have to go and then seek out Glinda as an additional plot line. 

[00:59:08] Tim: So then, then you’ve got Dorothy’s return home, which, which is a little strange the way that they, they work, they work that, you know, they have to travel to find the witch, the, the witch of the north.

[00:59:25] Tim: Is that the correct one? That, that comes at the end anyway. In the novel, the Know which of 

[00:59:31] Rebekah: the South. 

[00:59:32] Tim: Okay? Only, only in the novel, but uh, in the novel, Dorothy’s shoes physically carry your backs. It’s gonna take, you know, three wherever you want to go. It will only take three steps as long as you know where you want to go.

[00:59:51] Tim: Um, so in the film, she awakens in bed. And this is a reminder, [01:00:00] uh, of the difference in the novel. In the film. The novel is an adventure novel that’s actual place and actual places, real adventures in the film. All of these adventures were just Dorothy dreaming them because when she wakes up in her bed, she’s surrounded by our family, implying that yes, indeed, this was all just a dream.

[01:00:23] Tim: Kind of like that terrible episode. Uh, at the beginning of one of the seasons of Dallas, which said, oh, last season that you all watched faithfully, this very popular television series. Yeah. That was just all a dream. We’re just gonna go back. 

[01:00:38] Rebekah: Well, the funny thing is, it goes back to something Josiah mentioned, which is, it wasn’t a trope at the time, but now it is like, now if you did this, and it was like, wait a minute.

[01:00:49] Rebekah: That whole thing was a dream. Like the only, I mean, and this is gonna be this, I’m saying this because of who I am. The only thing, the only point of this whole thing was just the character [01:01:00] development. You know, the story itself didn’t even have, oh, no character development. But I say it kind of tongue in cheek a little bit, but it wasn’t overdone at the time that this was created.

[01:01:11] Rebekah: It was actually like innovative. And so it wasn’t a trope, it wasn’t a, oh, I can’t believe they did that. It’s the thing that created the idea of, I can’t believe they did that. 

[01:01:24] Tim: Can I just say though. To know that the shoes that she’s been wearing the whole time in film, in book and film were the thing that would take her back home.

[01:01:39] Tim: It’s just kind of strange. It’s like, oh, well you could have told me that at any time, I suppose. But, um, you know, in the, in the novel, which makes it clear that, well, you could have done it at any time, but you needed to know all, you know, like what we said before, that where you really wanted to [01:02:00] be was not somewhere over the rainbow.

[01:02:01] Tim: You wanted to be at home. Um, but in the, in the film it’s like, uh, Glenda, why didn’t you just tell her at the beginning? You know, she said from the beginning, I want to go home. I just want to go home. Um, go see the wizard. ’cause he can help you go home. 

[01:02:19] Rebekah: It’s less frustrating. In the setting of the novel, but then in the novel, it’s not a dream.

[01:02:26] Rebekah: Like right. It’s just like, this is how you get home. But in, I get what you mean. ’cause like, in the setting of the film, Linda, you’ve been here the whole time. Like you, you know this, you weren’t, you didn’t just join us at the end. Yeah. And she 

[01:02:38] Donna: had said, I consistently through the film, I just wanna go home.

[01:02:43] Donna: I need to get back to Kansas. Every person she met, every, every one of her companions and, and all those things. Um, interesting, interesting choice there. But I think this time was the first time that I kind of went, Glenda, seriously, [01:03:00] this you to wait this long to, you know, uh, let’s see. Uh, it’s a few setting things.

[01:03:05] Donna: There’s not many things here. Just, just a, a couple we’ll note one, um, Oz has very distinct. Colors in the novel, like Munchkin Lands Blue, the Emerald City’s green, the Winky Country’s yellow, the quad country Quading country is red. But the film just replaces this with this c of almost a monotone area in Kansas when she’s, when she’s out of the dream.

[01:03:38] Donna: And then Oz is this incredible, you know, the, the, the Aian geography is just so colorful and beautiful and we have this technicolor technology we really want to use and so we’re gonna use it. I did think, did we, um, I was trying to think if we got [01:04:00] into this. I’ll see if we don’t, I’ll, I’ll bring it up later.

[01:04:03] Donna: Anyway, but the, the colors I did think it was interesting. He used color codes in the book. And one of the, which gave you some visual, something to grab onto in your, in your mind. 

[01:04:14] Tim: One of the colors that he used that, that they mentioned when she’s first in munchkin land, um, they knew that she was good because she was wearing blue.

[01:04:25] Tim: ’cause she had a blue and white check gingham dress on because that was the color of their land. But they knew that she was a witch because only the witches wore white. I thought that was, I thought that was interesting. That’s why they kept calling her a witch. I’m not a witch. She said, well, but you’re wearing white.

[01:04:44] Tim: You know, only witches wear white. 

[01:04:46] Rebekah: Well, speaking of that. Part of how her dress became not just blue and white, but all white in the book, when they go to the city of Emerald or the Emerald City, one thing that does happen there that’s kind of magical is that her dress [01:05:00] when they leave is just white. It’s no longer got any blue.

[01:05:03] Rebekah: Oh, um, gingham on it. I did catch that. I thought it was really interesting. It kind of like, I didn’t catch that almost. Yeah. It almost solidified her change into being a witch. However, in the book also the Emerald City, when you arrive, they tell you you have to put on these glasses. Um, and they lock on the back of your head.

[01:05:22] Rebekah: So like, she makes a point to say she couldn’t take them off if she wanted. Um, and oh, if you don’t wear the glasses, you’ll go blind. It’s so bright, it’s so glimmering, whatever. But then you find out when the Wizard of Oz is like, you know, exposing all of his treachery. You find out that the glasses are just cast green and like they make everything look green.

[01:05:42] Rebekah: But the city itself is just like normal colors. Some of it, it was of just part of his lies. 

[01:05:47] Tim: Some of it is green, the, the, uh, the walls of the city that when they come up, those are, those are emerald green, but things inside the city are not, they just look green because of the glasses. [01:06:00] Yeah. 

[01:06:01] Josiah: You know, whereas the film takes the viewer from Munchkinland to Emerald City, you know, with, with little things along the yellow brick road.

[01:06:08] Josiah: The witches castle back to Emerald City, the novel goes more of Oz. You get the China country. Mm-hmm. You get the, there’s the little poppy field bit. Where Glinda makes it snow to save the lion and Dorothy from falling asleep in the poppies. But there’s a bigger chapter about it with the mice people and talking about all sorts of, all the little details of how Oz is a real place with surrounded by the deadly desert and all of these different, the Qualin country, all of these places, the film just simplifies it.

[01:06:44] Rebekah: Did we talk about the weird, like the mirror of this book, which was written in 1900 with the little mice saving in particular the lion carrying the lion and the interesting [01:07:00] like foil to that in Narnia where the mice free Aslan. Did we mention that 

[01:07:05] Tim: we didn’t. 

[01:07:06] Rebekah: That’s an interesting, weird thing that happens similarly, but totally differently in two different fantasy novels.

[01:07:15] Josiah: You know, the AOPs fable of. And in the lion, is that right? Mm-hmm. 

[01:07:20] Tim: And, and in the lion. I totally is. I think it’s pronounced esop, all the words 

[01:07:24] Donna: that you just said. It is esop Saal. Yeah, it is one. I was 

[01:07:29] Tim: act, I was in Andrick, Les in the 

[01:07:31] Josiah: lion in college. Yeah. Oh, Aesop’s Fable is the lion and the mouse. Mm-hmm.

[01:07:39] Josiah: And the tail of the, of Anderle and the lion is often fine with that since the Middle Ages. It’s basically been combined. 

[01:07:50] Tim: So that’s, that’s a trope, a really, really old trope that the, the tiny mice are actually very helpful [01:08:00] and friendly, which is an interesting thing considering what mice really are.

[01:08:08] Rebekah: Alright, let’s talk about the interesting details about the book and the film and when they came out and our trivia, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. 

[01:08:17] Donna: Uh, all right. Let’s look at some numbers for this book in film. The book release was May 17th, 1900. I didn’t realize the book was written that far by under 

[01:08:28] Tim: 25 years ago.

[01:08:29] Tim: Yeah, 

[01:08:30] Donna: I didn’t, did not realize that. Um, the movie release, its very opening Premier was at the Orum Theater in Green Bay, Wisconsin on August 10th, 1939. Then there was a second premier, uh, is that called something? I don’t know, a second year. Well, Hollywood 

[01:08:51] Tim: Premier. 

[01:08:52] Donna: Yeah, the Hollywood Premier was on August 15th, just five days later, 1939 at Groman’s [01:09:00] Chinese Theater.

[01:09:01] Donna: Then there was a New York City premier held at Lowe’s Capital Theater on August 17th, 1939, after which Garland and Mickey Rooney gave this live performance. I don’t know if they did q and a or if they just did some sketch or talk. I, I really didn’t get a lot of information about what they did. But they performed live after the, the film was concluded there in New York City.

[01:09:31] Donna: They did this two more weeks. And then, uh, then in the third week, the final week of this live performance edition, uh, Ray Bulger and Bert Lar, who were in the, you know, her, two of her companions, um, joined them and did, added to their, their banter. 

[01:09:50] Tim: I was just gonna say, remember this was the time when, when movie studios basically owned actors and actresses.

[01:09:58] Tim: Mm-hmm. And. [01:10:00] Mickey Rooney and Garland were in another film that same year, um, and the company wanted to promote that, and so they would tie these two things together. Yeah. Although Mickey Rooney wasn’t in it, although the other people were Yeah. That would perform in the other parts. 

[01:10:19] Donna: Um, it is, that is an interesting part of Hollywood history, how in the beginning of, of, as the production companies came into being, it came into being and it became so popular for them to own and own the actor, actress for the under contract.

[01:10:36] Donna: Yeah. Period. Yeah. Um, I have always found that fascinating. The book rating, uh, was given, uh, in good reads is four out of five. That’s with over a half million ratings. So, um. That’s, that’s interesting to me. Uh, let’s see. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 98%, and we have talked about how older [01:11:00] films will pretty much hang on to their, their, uh, how high rank like that IMDB gives the movie.

[01:11:07] Donna: Uh, 8 1, 8 0.1 out of 10. And then the Flixter audience score, and this was with over, this was over, uh, this was with over 250,000 ratings is, uh, holds an 89%. So let’s look down farther. Okay, so cost of box office, well, cost and box office. Let me say those are two separate things. The production cost was $2.77 million today.

[01:11:38] Donna: That would be 64.6 million. So honestly, not, still not hugely expensive. Huge. 

[01:11:45] Rebekah: Really, if you did it today, you would honestly, it would cost so much more even with inflation dollars because you would probably do so much of that stuff with special effects. But part of why it’s not that expensive is real [01:12:00] effects are actually less expensive in a lot of cases than trying to do a ton of computer generated stuff.

[01:12:05] Rebekah: And in 39, I mean, there was just so little of that that could have been, yeah, computer generated. I really thought the special effect of the witch flying in the air and then grabbing Dorothy and Dorothy’s like legs, seeing it in 4K, it’s like, oh my gosh. You can really tell, but like you wouldn’t have been able to, that’s a really good like, uh, what’s it called?

[01:12:26] Rebekah: Like a real effect, not a special effect. Practical. 

[01:12:29] Donna: Practical effect. 

[01:12:29] Rebekah: Practical effects. Yeah. I thought that was neat. 

[01:12:33] Josiah: Rebecca, did you know that computers did not exist in 1939? 

[01:12:39] Rebekah: I did know that. If you say it, that is correct. I just mean like there wasn’t another digital way to do a lot of those effects and practical effects were less expensive.

[01:12:47] Josiah: Yeah. I think that digital is 

[01:12:51] Rebekah: okay. Well, it would be more expensive to make today is all I’m saying. But there were other plate of dollars. That’s all I’m trying to pet. 

[01:12:57] Tim: Even at the time, there were other special [01:13:00] effect ways though. You could, you could do claymation, you could do small, you know, sets that were miniatures and things like that.

[01:13:08] Tim: You could, they, those were still possible 

[01:13:11] Rebekah: to clarify wicked cost $145 million in 2023. So 

[01:13:19] Josiah: a little more. Yeah, 

[01:13:20] Rebekah: a little bit. Um, well, it’s like over double 

[01:13:23] Donna: in inflated dollars. You know, the film opened nationwide, let me throw that in here on August 25th, 1939. Mm-hmm. And that’s. Exactly 22 years before my sweetheart was born.

[01:13:37] Donna: Oh, tear. Okay. So, uh, when the, the weekend the film came out and the three premieres that had taken place a few weeks before, uh, it’s opening in the US was only 17,000. And there was concern about this because they, they’d sunk so much money, it was the most [01:14:00] expensive film MGM had put out at this point, at this point in their history.

[01:14:06] Donna: Um, the USA Canada Gross came in at 2 million International, pulled about just short of, uh, a a million. And then that brings a total worldwide of 3 million. Now. Um, the film, you know, it was popular in the theaters. It just, they had just sunk so much money into it. Uh, it didn’t actually make a profit.

[01:14:32] Donna: Overall until the rerelease in 19 49, 10 years later, that pulled in another 1.5 million. So I found that fascinating that, that, uh, 

[01:14:42] Rebekah: and you said it was like they were surprised, right? That it didn’t, it was expected to be successful and it wasn’t as successful as they thought. 

[01:14:50] Donna: Yeah. And I guess just the thought of what the movie cost at the box.

[01:14:55] Donna: What did you pay for a ticket in 1939 and 

[01:14:59] Tim: [01:15:00] 10 cents a quarter or something? What 

[01:15:01] Donna: would have to come in? And I didn’t look that number up. So what would have to come in? What would the total seat, you know, the, the total ticket take, what would it have to be for them to have made the profit at the beginning?

[01:15:18] Donna: Now, of course, we know the thing. Now obviously, whoever still owns the rights or whatever to it. Yeah, it’s been profitable, but, but 

[01:15:27] Tim: it was, it was re-released again. There were two re-releases. Oh yeah, that’s, they, they said yesterday in the introduction that, that we watched, there were two rere releases, and then in 1959, they released it onto television.

[01:15:45] Tim: Was the first time that had been done, a, a theatrical thing had been released to television. Uh, 56. Was it 56? Uh, 

[01:15:52] Donna: 56, yeah. Guess. Okay. 

[01:15:53] Tim: It was the, toward the end of the fifties, and then it was on television like every year or ever. It [01:16:00] received 53% of the audience share for the night, which was very good. How many 

[01:16:05] Rebekah: channels were on at that point?

[01:16:07] Tim: Three, you would’ve had three major channels. Are you sure? In 39 

[01:16:10] Donna: you would’ve even had that many. 

[01:16:11] Tim: Yeah. You had, they were early on. Oh, 

[01:16:14] Donna: 56. Sorry, sorry. 50. In the fifties you 

[01:16:15] Tim: had, uh, A, B, C, C, B, S, and NBC, and then you had PBS. Later, I’m not sure that PBS wasn’t something that came in the sixties, so you only had those three.

[01:16:27] Tim: Uh, so they had over 50% of the share, uh, that night, three years later. Uh, they released it in December and it brought in 58% of the audience, uh, for the Nielsen ratings. And from that point, it became an annual television event, always in December. Uh, and the BBC even premiered the film on Christmas Day in 1975, and they had an estimated viewership of 20 million.

[01:16:57] Tim: So it’s one of those that didn’t [01:17:00] make its money initially in its second release, it finally began, began to make a profit in its third release. It did a little bit better, and then as it was on television, it continued to do better and better and better. 

[01:17:14] Donna: Is this, 

[01:17:15] Tim: that’s, that takes a long time to make a profit.

[01:17:18] Donna: This is like the ultimate sleeper. 

[01:17:20] Tim: Definitely. 

[01:17:21] Rebekah: Um, although I will say, I don’t know how this works now with streaming, but you had written down that it was sold, uh, to CBS for televising mm-hmm. Productions at 225,000 per broadcast. Yeah. In current dollars. That’s 5.25 million per broadcast. Is that normal, or at least maybe similar to current dollars of what you would’ve sold movies like to TV once they’d been released and out for a while, like to sell.

[01:17:50] Rebekah: Is that pretty standard still? Oh, anyway, that’s just kind a random side question. Oh, no, 

[01:17:56] Tim: it was the first time it was done, so I, that kind of set the [01:18:00] precedent. 

[01:18:01] Donna: Yeah. Well I had, I get to do trivia like, you know, the, i I research and, and do most of the trivia we pull in, um. And so I took the privilege of putting together mom’s opinion poll.

[01:18:16] Donna: Uh 

[01:18:17] Josiah: oh. 

[01:18:17] Donna: So I’m gonna have Love it. Uh, yes. I’m going to have my two offspring read a possible storyline that was pitched in the early stages of the screenplay. And then I want us to, I want you to tell me if one of these two had to have been incorporated in, which would you have picked? And that would be for all, all three of you to answer.

[01:18:40] Josiah: Well, of course, in an attempt to attract youth by incorporating modern fads, there was a version that included tune called a Jitterbug. Mm-hmm. A storyline with several musical contests from Wikipedia. A [01:19:00] spoiled selfish princess in Oz has outlawed all forms of music except classical music and operetta.

[01:19:06] Josiah: The princess challenged Dorothy to a singing contest. Which Dorothy’s swing style enchanted listeners, and she won the grand prize. I also wanted to say the jitterbug is added to the stage musical. Mm-hmm. That I just produced where the witch commands evil jitterbugs to make Dorothy dance till she drops.

[01:19:25] Josiah: Who’s that high? In the tree tops. Ooh. Away from the jbu. 

[01:19:33] Donna: Oh wow. So it’s good that they can incorporate it into the stage play. 

[01:19:37] Rebekah: That’s really cool. So wait, did I read it correctly in understanding that that’s like somehow a dirty dancing? Like is that, this was like the precursor was this added story story.

[01:19:48] Rebekah: So are you saying dirty dancing is an offshoot of, I think 

[01:19:51] Tim: that’s just your mind, 

[01:19:53] Rebekah: maybe. Okay. So the other version in another scene from Wikipedia, there was an epilogue that took [01:20:00] place in Kansas after Dorothy came back, hunk. His name is Hunk. His name is Hunk. He is the scarecrows actor person in Kansas.

[01:20:10] Rebekah: Hunk is leaving for agricultural college and he extracts a promise from Dorothy that she promises that she will write to him. And the scene is supposed to imply that a romance will develop between Dorothy and Hunk. It’s a little on the nose. Okay. Which may have also, uh, explained why she was like more partial to the Scarecrow versus the other two companions in, uh, in Oz.

[01:20:37] Rebekah: You know, if you want us to say, I have an opinion, if you had to pick one of those, which should it be? I just wanna throw out, well, gimme your opinions. I’ll tell you what I thought. Yeah. Dad, you go first. You had mentioned something. 

[01:20:46] Tim: Well, look, I have an opinion. No way. The, the, the first one seems jarring and strange.

[01:20:55] Tim: The second one is a little bit creepy, but I think the, the second [01:21:00] one would’ve been a little bit easier to, to put in the film. 

[01:21:03] Rebekah: I think with the film her age in the film, you could like kind of make it work. Like she’s later teenage years in the book. She’s like a kid, like 

[01:21:11] Donna: right in the book, she’s a kid.

[01:21:13] Donna: But in the movie, we’re gonna get into this in just a minute. In the film, Judy Garland was 16 and they, there were a lot of people that fought against her getting the part because she was too old, because Dorothy’s supposed to be a little kid. So then there’s a part in the screenplay where Dorothy and Hunk have a potential relationship later.

[01:21:33] Donna: I was like, what the, 

[01:21:35] Josiah: it was the thirties. 

[01:21:36] Rebekah: Yeah, that’s it. I think that’s true. I think honestly that the both of them are so weird. I, I don’t hate the one about him making Dorothy write to him. I guess if they’re not that far apart in age, I think that’s less, I guess I agree with that. It’s less jarring than the dirty dancing contest.

[01:21:57] Rebekah: So, 

[01:21:58] Josiah: and she. [01:22:00] She was gonna miss the scarecrow more than the Tin Man and the lion. That’d be a reason. And she 

[01:22:06] Donna: did say that’s right. And that, that was one of those things in the film that, that was one of those things in the notes where they put that line. I’ll miss you most of all, which you kind of assume that’s because she met him first.

[01:22:19] Donna: I guess. 

[01:22:21] Tim: I you’re the first for end I made in Oz. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:22:23] Donna: Well, thanks for responding to my opinion, Paul. I appreciate you all. 

[01:22:27] Tim: Okay. There’s some, some other things. Margaret Hamilton. Mm-hmm. Who played the Wicked Witch. 

[01:22:32] Donna: Yeah. 

[01:22:33] Tim: Uh, she was made up in copper-based green makeup, which was toxic. Uh, she was required to eat a liquid diet on shoot days, uh, because of that, because it made her sick.

[01:22:46] Tim: Uh, but it didn’t stop there because of Hamilton’s copper makeup. Um, it was. It caught fire at least once during the production, and she was burned, uh, [01:23:00] as a, as a result of it because the not only was the makeup toxic, it was not flame retardant, uh, it was flammable. So after returning from the fire accident, after six weeks of recovery, Margaret Hamilton refused to do any scenes with fire and wouldn’t even ride on her broomstick with smoke billowing behind it.

[01:23:21] Tim: Uh, the stunt double Betty Danko filmed the scene and was severely injured when the smoke mechanism malfunctioned. 

[01:23:27] Donna: Not good. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s like, okay, so I don’t know about theater makeup. Obviously, I’m not versed in this. Is there, was there no other way to get green makeup on the woman? 

[01:23:41] Josiah: I don’t know.

[01:23:42] Josiah: There there is now. Yeah. But I, I don’t know what it was like in Lawless 1939. 

[01:23:48] Donna: Yeah. I mean, well there were, so, there were so few. I don’t aware that that was hilarious. Yes. Well, 

[01:23:52] Tim: I don’t like a, a highly regulated society, but there were so few regulations back then that, [01:24:00] you know, things that were completely toxic.

[01:24:03] Tim: You say, sure, use this on, use this on your body. It’s good for you. It’s like, yeah. Which is 

[01:24:08] Rebekah: hilarious. It’s terrible. ’cause we say that as if we don’t do it now, but like. We literally do allow a lot of toxic chemicals in our makeup and we, we still do. 

[01:24:18] Josiah: Not anymore. 

[01:24:19] Rebekah: That’s right. Less now than ever before.

[01:24:21] Rebekah: Well, not the never before, but then in recent history as than 

[01:24:24] Tim: never 

[01:24:25] Josiah: even 

[01:24:25] Tim: before the caveman, we keep discovering, we keep discovering things that are more toxic than we realized, and we have to keep doing that. The more things we make, the more we discover, oh, this really shouldn’t be part of what we use.

[01:24:42] Tim: So, um, 

[01:24:43] Donna: but that should not have been the case in 39 because the way, the only way they could remove this makeup ’cause of the irritation or he removed it with alcohol from her on her skin. Well, alcohol is the way that 

[01:24:55] Tim: we remove makeup. When I was in theater in college, and that was [01:25:00] just, that was just regular makeup.

[01:25:01] Tim: Oh wow. 

[01:25:01] Rebekah: My skin just dried out. Hearing you say that. 

[01:25:04] Josiah: Maybe it was just, just the two thousands when we figured out healthy 

[01:25:07] Rebekah: makeup. Yeah, yeah, 

[01:25:08] Donna: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[01:25:10] Josiah: Well, you know, who else did not have a good time while filming? Uh, or as a result of this film, Judy Garland had a real tough time, uh, whether it was really because of this movie.

[01:25:21] Josiah: Well, let me tell you that she wasn’t considered to be the prettiest of actresses in consideration for the role, and I assumed that she knew that that was in discussion. Those, you know, I don’t think we figured out how to treat women right in films until eh seventies or the nineties. I don’t know. Many thought that Judy, at the age of 16 was too old to portray the child that l Frank Baum had written in the novel, but she had the most experience due to contractual obligations of other contenders.

[01:25:55] Josiah: Arland was finally chosen. Shirley Temple. 

[01:25:59] Tim: Shirley [01:26:00] Temple worked for a different. Company and they wanted her and they wouldn’t wanna go 

[01:26:03] Josiah: wanted, 

[01:26:04] Tim: but they would 

[01:26:05] Josiah: couldn’t get it in the contract. You know, the price of this fame was a bit too high for Judy. She was given Ben Zarine tablets to keep her weight down as well as uppers and downers, which resulted in her having giggling fits 

[01:26:23] Donna: Lord Jesus.

[01:26:24] Donna: He lost 

[01:26:24] Josiah: it in the Lion’s intro scene. After it was finally wrapped, director Fleming slapped her in the face. Wow. In shame. He ordered the crew to punch him in the face, but Garland just walked up to him and kissed him instead. Alright. I, 

[01:26:40] Rebekah: I’m buying into the lawlessness of the 1930s. Yeah. Like, yeah. Well 

[01:26:45] Tim: now don’t, don’t forget that even, even in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up, uh, there were a lot of diet pills on the market.

[01:26:55] Tim: That turned out to be things like what she was using. It’s like, well, this [01:27:00] is just common. You need to, if you wanna keep that weight off, you do this kind of thing. But you saw her today. We look at it and say, it’s terrible. Then they’re like, well, everybody’s doing it. It might not have been good, but everybody’s doing it.

[01:27:13] Donna: But here’s, oh my gosh. I’m notifying just at her look at her in the film. 

[01:27:20] Rebekah: I mean, well, at least she had a 

[01:27:21] Donna: nicely 

[01:27:21] Rebekah: shaped nose. 

[01:27:23] Donna: Well, yeah. Yeah. Why? She’s so okay. She, so she also, that that was the stuff they put in her body. Then they made her wear a fa, false teeth over her teeth because they were slightly misaligned and they made her put rubber discs up each nostril because they didn’t like the shape of her nose.

[01:27:44] Donna: And I listened to her the whole time. We watched the movie going, can I tell? And honestly, she sounds like she has a little teeny bit of a cold. And I was like, 

[01:27:54] Tim: and that’s probably why now one of us, how much do you have to annoyed by that trivia? Tiny. [01:28:00] I’m the one that looks like I have a broken nose.

[01:28:03] Tim: Should I wear a little rubber things? ’cause on a video podcast, I don’t wanna embarrass you guys with my terrible looking nose. 

[01:28:10] Rebekah: I don’t think that, I don’t think there are rubber things big enough to fix the way your nose looks broken. I’m sorry. Can you imagine walking around? Mom was mentioning slap him in the face.

[01:28:19] Rebekah: Slap him in the face.

[01:28:24] Rebekah: Oh. So on top of everything else, people on set made lewd comments about Judy Garland’s chest. So they tried binding them so that they would shrink, uh, to reduce their size, which is so. Chest binding is, you know, and I think I, nope, I can’t even talk about how bad it is for your breast health. It’s not good.

[01:28:48] Rebekah: And I mean, I’m sure that they didn’t know that. It was just like, oh, how will it look on the screen? But, but there are some, some of the, 

[01:28:54] Tim: some, there are some countries that have done that as a, as a beauty thing [01:29:00] that, yeah, 

[01:29:00] Rebekah: sadly, yes. So also there were some cast that wrote later, uh, that drunk actors, uh, playing munchkins would pinch and proposition her, pinching her on the bottom.

[01:29:13] Rebekah: Garland stated that she was groped by Louis B Mayor. Uh, and you may recognize the m as the last M in MGM, so it just, 

[01:29:23] Tim: Metro Goldwin Mayor. 

[01:29:25] Rebekah: It’s so sad. Like the, the ways that women were treated on sets. Oh yeah. I have so many comments. 

[01:29:35] Tim: Don’t forget, it was a, it’s been a visual medium. And before we say that 2025 is so much better, look at the number of actresses who look anorexic when they wear a sleeveless gown.

[01:29:48] Tim: It’s like, I see every bone poking out of your shoulder and everybody’s like, oh, aren’t they beautiful and wonderful? And we are wonderful people. It’s like, yeah, they’re doing the same kind of [01:30:00] thing. 

[01:30:01] Donna: Well, I will say one of the things that I’ve thought about a lot more since we’ve been doing the podcast is, um, recognizing since we’ve done things over several decades.

[01:30:16] Donna: So we’ve been able to look back at different periods of time in, in film and stuff like that and realize what a toll it takes on a person to be in the spotlight. We see child actors who become wildly popular because many of them are incredibly talented. And then what happens to them as they get older and what the price of that fame is.

[01:30:43] Donna: Yeah. And I, I’m, I’m stricken. I wish I could say that this period of time was the only thing, only time only that this stuff happened, but it wasn’t, and just the whole thought about what you have to deal with. And then you find [01:31:00] that there’s a small group of actors out there, there have been all through the years where they make decisions that prevent that happening in their lives.

[01:31:11] Donna: And a lot of times they’re dinged for it, for whatever reason, but at, at the same time, they get, you know. 

[01:31:19] Tim: Have to be in charge of their own life. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s not, let’s let other people be in charge of their life. Right. Which, you know, if we’re talking about the film and the novel that we’ve Yeah.

[01:31:29] Tim: That we’ve just reviewed, you know, it is all about freedom. Mm-hmm. Of making, being free to make your choices. Yeah. 

[01:31:39] Donna: Well, the last of the trivia, I’m gonna, uh, I wanted to bring out, which I thought was so interesting, um, and there’s tons of trivia out there if you wanna ever go read it. Uh, MGM thought the film’s time in Kansas, the, the time that they were spending was a little bit long and.

[01:31:58] Donna: Being afraid that over the [01:32:00] rainbow, that that the song might be over the heads of the target audience of kids, I’m assuming, like it might be too serious. Or teenagers, something maybe, I don’t know. They suggested cutting it from the movie and there were other complaints about, um, would it be degrading for Garland to sing in a barnyard?

[01:32:19] Donna: And I’m like, you’ve already given her drugs and found her chest. You’re worried about her singing in a barnyard. And then you had her fall into a pig stop. I just thought it was all kind of conflicting there. Anyway, Fleming and a few others in the production staff were like, no, this has to stay in. And the the thought that over the rainbow would not have been included in this movie.

[01:32:45] Donna: That song has like, it is one of the greatest and most popular and most frequently sung songs. Um, and she in, in modern history. Yeah. And then Judy Garland went, [01:33:00] used it, she kept it throughout the rest of her life. Um, as her signature song. That’s how, I mean, she, that was her. It stayed with her. Yeah.

[01:33:11] Rebekah: Alright, well we have finally come to our final verdicts, uh, ratings out of 10 for both. And was the book or film better? 

[01:33:21] Josiah: What a, what an interesting experience. A classic iconic film for what it is you get. Uh, you can get a 10 out of 10 for the movie. So, uh, as far as the book goes, it’s a nice children’s 

[01:33:39] Tim: book 

[01:33:41] Josiah: for what it’s going for.

[01:33:44] Josiah: I think it basically achieves what it needs to achieve, let’s say like a round an eight outta 10. Not exactly my cup of tea. It’s, it’s a children’s book with a little less depth in the movie. [01:34:00] Funny enough, the movie seems like it’s so candy coated and horny, but you know, there’s a lot of depth to the themes that the artists are exploring.

[01:34:12] Josiah: I think that it’s just so obvious this film is iconic for a reason and it’s definitely the film is better on this. 

[01:34:25] Rebekah: I think that I have similar feelings. I would probably give the film like a nine and a half out of 10 it for what it was and when it was. It’s fantastic. And there’s not really a lot you can say about improvement.

[01:34:37] Rebekah: Um, I would give the book like an eight and a half. I really enjoyed reading it. I know it was such a quick read for me, but I actually had fun reading it and like I said earlier. I just, I had this thought of like reading it to little kids before bedtime, like doing a chapter at a time. And so if and when I have littles and get to put them to bed, I hope this is a book that I can eventually read to them.[01:35:00] 

[01:35:00] Rebekah: Um, so I think the film is better in that it is more of a classic and it’s something you could just easily put in the background, like, you know, of getting ready for the day or whatever. Um, so it’s something I could put on and rewatch. It is an enduring classic for a reason. I don’t love peeling back the curtain, which I think is a phrase that came from the Wizard of Oz itself.

[01:35:24] Rebekah: Don’t look behind the curtain. Peel back the curtain to see Oz. Right, the great and powerful Oz. Um, but I don’t love peeling back the curtain. ’cause then watching it, like you said yesterday, we watched it with Nathan and he was like, oh, the more you sing about the background of this movie, the less I like it.

[01:35:38] Rebekah: You know, knowing all that. But in reality, like just kind of separating it from all of those things that were just. Considered normal at the time. Um, it’s a classic and it created so many of the tropes that we have now. And yeah, I mean, it’s, there’s, there’s not much else I can say about that. I, I do think that the film is better, but the, [01:36:00] the book was also a delightful experience.

[01:36:02] Rebekah: So 

[01:36:04] Tim: I think I would probably, uh, land about the same place. I would probably give the film a nine out of 10. I would also probably give the book a nine out of 10. They’re two, they are two different things. Uh, they’re, they’re very different. Uh, one is the children’s book with the kinds of themes it has and all the episodic stuff that that’s going through.

[01:36:26] Tim: Um, but I would probably give both of them a nine out of 10. Um, I enjoyed, Hmm, I think I enjoyed the book better because there was so much in it that had not in, in the film. And as far as, um, healing back the curtain or looking at the, the man, don’t look at the man behind the curtain. Um, I think the more we do that in anything we watch, the [01:37:00] more we discover that we don’t like the whole Weinstein thing that’s happened in the last decade or so, uh, has just reminded us that these kinds of things have always been happening.

[01:37:11] Tim: And, uh, we need, we need reform in those areas, uh, but we to enjoy the artistry that we see separate from that, um, I think is important. Sometimes we have to do that. Look at the, the beauty despite the problem. You know, it’s several years ago when I went to Arizona for the first time, I was on, uh, a Navajo nation and I described it as a desolate beauty.

[01:37:45] Tim: There, you know, you recognize the fact that it’s so dry and it’s, there’s so much desolation, but there is a beauty in it. And I think sometimes we have to look at, look at artistry that way and say, okay, the way they got to this [01:38:00] place, the things they did, or whatever, I don’t care for. But there is still beauty that came out of it, and I want to recognize the beauty, think on these things.

[01:38:10] Tim: So, 

[01:38:12] Donna: well, I’ll wrap up. I have similar thoughts in several of the things you all have said. Um, I kind of see them as two separate works. You, you suggested that I, I see them as two separate things. I enjoyed the book, like Rebecca said, something you could read short enough chapters that you would keep the children, you know, keep their attention and it would be interesting to them.

[01:38:41] Donna: Uh. I got a little lost in some of the different, because there were so many different characters in places, and maybe that was because I had seen the movie so many times in the past. So I would kinda get, is [01:39:00] that, that there am I, you know, which I probably shouldn’t do. I should read the book on its own merit.

[01:39:03] Donna: Right? Uh, I would still give the book an eight out of 10. Um, the movie. Hmm. I mean, what, I don’t think I can add anything to what you’ve said. I felt like the changes they made, I can add this. I felt like the changes they made in the, the reduction in, in the, in the film, in the film’s, characters I felt were smart.

[01:39:29] Donna: I liked the fact that they gave you the, the story at the farm. I was okay with it being a dream sequence. I did. Because I don’t read a whole lot of fantasy, the concept of Doty Dorothy actually making this journey. Now, maybe if I went and read the other books, I might feel different. I, I don’t know. But, um, still, I, I’m gonna give this to the movie.

[01:39:53] Donna: Um, I would say the movie is easily, uh, easily a nine and a half [01:40:00] or 10 just based on what it is. And, you know, to Rebecca’s point of seeing it in, uh, in high def, high definition, yeah, you get pieces and parts of the technical, you know, things that we would do differently with CG and things like that. But still, it’s just such a masterpiece of, of not only acting and story, but also.

[01:40:27] Donna: The, the creation of it and how it came to be. So yeah, 

[01:40:31] Tim: I actually listened a couple of months ago to, to the audio book, the regular audio book. Uh, but in the last few weeks I listened to a dramatized version of the audio book, which, um, I thought was, was very nice. Um, all of those were really good ways to, to listen to that.

[01:40:48] Tim: And Rebecca, you, you read it, it, it’s amazing to me at how fast you read, uh, but you read the whole thing in a very short period of time. So I think all [01:41:00] of those are good ways to consume this. And sometimes, um, like I’d seen the film so many times, I’d never read the book, but a few months ago I did. And then I thought, well, instead of reading the book again for the podcast, I’ll do this other version.

[01:41:15] Tim: I think it’s always kind of nice to do, to do different versions if you can, different things to, to get a, a well-rounded understanding of the story. 

[01:41:24] Josiah: So I 

[01:41:25] Tim: would recommend that. 

[01:41:28] Josiah: Did anyone else listen to the Anne Hathaway audiobook? 

[01:41:31] Donna: I did. 

[01:41:32] Josiah: And your mom did? Mm-hmm. 

[01:41:34] Donna: There wasn’t one. There was one voice of one of the characters that I thought was a little odd, but I thought she read well.

[01:41:43] Josiah: One of the Emerald City guards was Southern. 

[01:41:49] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. Listen, there’s only so many accents apparently, so you gotta add some in Wi 

[01:41:55] Josiah: The Wizard of Oz was a little bit southern, but you know he is from Nebraska. 

[01:41:59] Donna: [01:42:00] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Omaha. Omaha. What did you think? What did you think of her reading? Did you like it?

[01:42:05] Donna: Yeah. 

[01:42:07] Josiah: I love Anne Hathaway, and I assume this was from years ago, back when she was big and I was in love with her. 

[01:42:13] Rebekah: Well thanks guys. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating and review. It helps us out a ton. Uh, we’re on Patreon, so you should be on Patreon, get updates about our new episodes as even a free subscriber, um, and access to some paid tier.

[01:42:30] Rebekah: Fun as well. You can find us on all social media. At Book is Better Pod. Uh, if you wanna send us feedback, ask the host questions. That’s us, obviously. Uh, or anything you can DM us on social media or join our free Discord server, uh, or you can also email us. Book is Better pod@gmail.com and, uh, until next time, there’s no place like home, like home’s.

[01:42:56] Rebekah: Home’s. No place. There. No place like home. There’s no place place. There’s no place [01:43:00] like. 

[01:43:01] Josiah: We don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. 

[01:43:04] Tim: Odo 

[01:43:05] Josiah: anymore.

[01:43:21] Rebekah: Good. I like it. Mm-hmm. I like it. Good. You do.

[01:43:30] Rebekah: I like it. We’re we’re doing so good. Keep with 

[01:43:33] Tim: it. Is this Marty?