the making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz

Here is Oz, a marvelous, unprecedented experience of studio life as it was lived day by day, detail by detail, department by department, at the most powerful and flamboyant studio Hollywood has ever known - at its moment of greatest power. We watch it happen - the bright, idiosyncratic, wildly devoted MGM-ers inventing the lines, the songs flying hordes of monkeys through the sky growing a poppy field building the Emerald City (and 60 other sets) designing and sewing the nearly 1,000 costumes enduring the pressures from the front office choosing the actors. It was the second book published documenting the making of this film, released a year after Doug McClelland's 1976 work Down the Yellow Brick Road. Eighty years later, the Wizard of Oz’disastrous production remains legendary. The Making of the Wizard Of Oz, written by film historian Aljean Harmetz, is a book about the production of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. In addition, there was no union to protect the stars and stuntmen if they were harmed. A girl is whirled from her home in Kansas by a cyclone which deposits her in the magical land of Oz. This richly detailed re-creation brings alive a major Hollywood studio and reveals, through hundreds of interviews (with cameramen, screenwriters, costume designers, directors, producers, light technicians, and actors), how the factory-like Hollywood system of moviemaking miraculously produced one of the most enduring and best-loved films ever made. In the bookThe Making of The Wizard of Oz,writer Aljean Harmetz noted that some of the dangerous special effects seen in the movie had never been attempted before.

From the ten scriptwriters at work to the scandal headlines of Munchkin orgies at the Culver City Hotel to the Witch's (accidental) burning, here is the real story of the making of The Wizard of Oz.

Celebrate the 75th anniversary of the most-watched movie of all time.

The making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz