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Title: Making of the Wizard of Oz: Movie Magic and Studio Power in the Prime of Mgm... by Aljean Harmetz ISBN: 0-7868-8352-9 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 02 December, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Better than the movie itself... if thats possible.
Comment: The making of the Wizard of Oz is a wonderful book to anyone who has grown to love the Wizard of Oz. You don't even have to be an obsessive fan of the movie like myself to enjoy it. It is extremely well researched. If information is not known the author says it so and does not attempt to recreate history as some nonfiction works do.
Perhaphs what makes the 1939 movie so wonderful is learning all the behind the scenes things that went into making it. This book gives respect and a knew sense of understanding as to what movie making was like in the biggest studio of that time. It is written so that it doesn't need to be read front to back. You can start in the special effects section and finish in the chapter about the script, or the music, or the directors (did you know there were four?).
Did you know that the movie had the work of 10 writers or do you know how the surrender dorothy scene was done? Well, in this book you find out his and thousands more did you know facts to impress friends. I recommend this to anyone who has watched the Wizard of Oz. And if Oz didn't win an academy award for best picture in 1939 than that was because the academy didn't have this book to help choose.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Peek Behind the Curtain
Comment: If you're a die hard fan of this classic film then you'll want to read this well-researched "making of" tome. The book is filled with all sorts of wonderful trivia tidbits but most of all it gives an insightful review of those behind the camera in a way I've yet to find in other "OZ" related books. The one and only shortcoming of this book is to be found in the number of pictures, in my opinion there could have been more, otherwise it's a behind the scenes look that most OZ fans won't be disappointed with.
Rating: 5
Summary: What a wicked world! Me, a cult icon from an MGM kid-flick!
Comment: It doesn't matter unduly if you didn't grow up watching MGM's 1939 color movie "The Wizard of Oz" in re-release or on TV. You might think that a "Munchkin" is what used to be called a "doughnut hole." You may think of Judy Garland only as Liza Minnelli's mother, and avoid prewar movies like the plague. Maybe you didn't feel that shock of recognition that "Cora the Coffee Lady" in Maxwell House TV commercials was none other than Margaret Hamilton, the green-faced Wicked Witch of the West.
Of course, if you love "The Wizard of Oz" you've love THE MAKING OF THE WIZARD OF OZ all the more. I just read this book for the second time (the first upon its initial publication), and was astonished and pleased by how well it has held up. Author Aljean Harmetz has crafted a book relevant not only in terms of one particular "prestige" movie off the Hollywood assembly line; but indeed her insight, research and friendly presentation make the book stand as a metaphor of all Hollywood filmmaking during the height of the Studio Era, ca. 1940. Perhaps the late Irving Thalberg was one of the few Hollywood insiders who could "keep the whole equation of pictures inside his head," but Ms. Harmetz opens up this world for us, and shows us both its realism and its wonder.
We return to an era in which studio moguls were as eccentric and powerful as today's software barons, when studio hands were nonunionized yet intensely loyal to their studios, when no movie studio even thought about a future containing broadcast TV, when movie stars were better known than Presidents or Kings, and when Technicolor would give you any color except the one you wanted. Nonetheless, solving the creative problems inherent in bringing L. Frank Baum's novel "The Wizard of Oz" to the screen was seen as an invigorating set of challenges to be met and conquered.
Back then, MGM had a real "can-do" attitude. So no one had
ever created a moving tornado for a film? After two tries the MGM tech people got it right, and the depiction of that horrendous twister so set the tintype for what a tornado ought to look like that it persists in our collective consciousness today, despite today's ubiquitous video cameras.
There were no tape recorders. How, then, to raise or lower voices artificially for dubbing? This book tells how. What happened when Buddy Ebsen almost died from an allergy to aluminum dust he had worn as the (originally intended) Tin Man? Why was Margaret Hamilton burned severely and ignored, yet Billie Burke turned an ankle and was whisked off the set in a white ambulance? Why did the film need four directors and half a dozen screenwriters, yet was fondly recalled as a labor of love by practically everyone except a prematurely embittered Judy Garland? Was the film the great commercial and critical success you might think it would be? And, by the way, what about those Munchkins' alleged sexual proclivities? Excellent answers provided by excellent research present a fully-formed world view, warts and all.
THE MAKING OF THE WIZARD OF OZ would be a wonderful companion to the new restored DVD version of the film, which is so crisp you can count the gingham checkers on Dorothy's blue dress (which was actually violet, to fool the Technicolor process). How were the ruby slippers made? What about that poppy field? Read on. Some critics have said that Harmetz's later work is not as excruciatingly well researched as THE MAKING OF THE WIZARD OF OZ, but I don't care. This book and the movie are not only as much fun as ever, but a great education in the good old/bad old days of the Hollywood "Dream Factory." Don't miss it!
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Title: The Munchkins of Oz by Stephen Cox ISBN: 1581822693 Publisher: Cumberland House Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Wizard of Oz (Bfi Film Classics) by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0851703003 Publisher: British Film Inst Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Making of Casablanca, The: Bogart, Bergman, And World War Ii by Aljean Harmetz ISBN: 0786888148 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 23 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Wizard of Oz : The Film Classic Comes to Life With Sound and Stunning Three-Dimension by Jay Scarfone, William Stillman ISBN: 1581170580 Publisher: Intervisual Books Inc Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Oz before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939 by Mark Evan Swartz ISBN: 0801870925 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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