The Wizard of Oz is so good, so crucial to the filmmaking canon, that nearly every other attempt to follow it up has failed. That was filmmaking in 1939 and their recklessness led to one of the greatest films ever to be put to print. The producers may not have had the best ideas, but what they did have is a song, perhaps the film song, as well as a child actress who would work 16 hours a day while subsisting on a diet of pills and other pills, and a complete disregard for the health and safety of their actors. Initial ideas for the film included changing Tin Man into a criminal without a heart who had his body cast in tin as a punishment, a song and dance number inspired by “ The Jitterbug,” and a romantic subplot between Dorothy and the 18-years-her-senior Hunk aka The Scarecrow. Baum’s best seller and, over the course of a year, 13 different writers - most uncredited - would contribute to the script. In 1938, MGM purchased the film rights to Frank L. After the release and subsequent success of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the studio sought its own potential hit film to be adapted from a children’s book. MGM’s The Wizard of Oz should have been a disaster.
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