A teenage girl from Kansas arrives in a new town and kills the first woman she meets, then she enlists the help of 3 local outcasts to hunt down and kill the woman's sister. Fun for the whole Family. Well, maybe that is boiling it down too much- but I would guess that most humans roaming the Earth know the plot of this classic movie by now. This beautiful movie went through at least 3 directors and dozens of writers before it got to the screen. It took a few tin men to get to the final product also- Buddy Epson of Beverly Hillbillies fame was originally cast as the tin man but the silver make up they were testing got into his lungs and put him into the hospital. Actress Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch) was burned during her big exit from Munchin land, she got a little to close to the pyrotechnics.

Interesting tidbit for your next cocktail party Margaret Hamilton was in her 30's when the movie was made but looked like she was 50+, Billie Burke (Glinda) was in her 50's but looked 30.

MGM's head of production, Mervyn LeRoy, was born in San Francisco In 1900.. It was through him that MGM made The Wizard of Oz, and because it did so poorly at the box office, he decided to go back to directing (it didn't get its mass popularity until it showed up on TV.)

The movie was nominated for best picture in the 1940 Academy Awards: the winner was Gone with the Wind.

Other Nominees that year:

* Dark Victory (1939) - David Lewis

* Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) - Victor Saville

* Love Affair (1939) - Leo McCarey

* Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - Frank Capra

* Ninotchka (1939) - Sidney Franklin

* Of Mice and Men (1939) - Lewis Milestone

* Stagecoach (1939) - Walter Wanger

* Wizard of Oz, The (1939) - Mervyn LeRoy

* Wuthering Heights (1939) - Samuel Goldwyn

The film was restored and re-released in 1998.

If you are seeing this on a big screen for the first time you may ask, "it is practically square- where is the rest of it?" Movies were almost the same ratio as TV before cinemascope and panavision came around in the 40's

Film notes by Eric Quakenbush with help from the Internet Movie Database http://us.imdb.com/

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