The Wizard of Oz Got Another Pass
“I’ll get you, my pretty”, said the producer to the… everyone. To discuss the ur-example of Hollywood’s contempt for human life and why we need safety regulations, Case and Sam are joined by Ashley Griffin to talk about The Wizard of Oz!
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Another Pass Full Episode Originally aired: July 7, 2022
Music by Vin Macri and Matt Brogan
Podcast Edited by Matt Storm
Certain Point Of View is a podcast network brining you all sorts of nerdy goodness! From Star Wars role playing, to Disney day dreaming, to video game love, we've got the show for you! Learn more on our website: https://www.certainpov.com
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PODCAST SHOWS: ▶ Another Pass - https://www.certainpov.com/another-pass-podcast
⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:54 Welcome and Guest Intro
02:36 Growing Up with Oz
04:56 The Cost of Making the Movie
07:48 Margaret Hamilton’s Injuries
10:29 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
11:09 Political Allegory and the Oz Books
13:36 The Larger Oz Series
15:31 Oz as an American Fairy Tale
18:26 Casting Ray Bolger
20:19 Shirley Temple vs. Judy Garland
23:21 The Studio System
25:41 Technicolor Changes Everything
26:50 Creating the Wicked Witch
28:00 The Tin Man Makeup Disaster
29:29 Dangerous Costumes and Makeup
33:50 Multiple Directors
36:14 Saturday Morning Confidential Promo
37:53 Entering Technicolor Oz
41:04 Asbestos and Dangerous Materials
44:09 Judy Garland’s Treatment
47:42 The Munchkins
50:55 A Toxic Set
52:33 Deleted Musical Sequences
54:09 Saving “Over the Rainbow”
54:54 The Original Box Office Failure
57:38 The Movies of 1939
01:01:12 Awards, Re-Releases, and Legacy
01:03:10 Judy Garland After Oz
01:07:29 Learning from the Production
01:09:03 Ashley’s Plugs
01:11:09 Art Is Not Worth Abuse
01:13:52 Adversity vs. Exploitation
01:17:08 Sam and Case’s Plugs
01:18:38 Next Time: Highlander II
01:18:51 Credits
01:19:20 Post-Show
Transcription
00:00
Ashley
Somebody said once that the most unbelievable thing about the wizard of Oz is that Dorothy would voluntarily leave the technicolor world of Oz and go back to her black and white real life. Which, I mean, obviously that's theme of the movie, is there's no place like home. But I do think that there's something fascinating about it and helpful because if you really go back and read the original Oz books, Oz is kind of dark. You know, some of the stuff that gets dark in Return to Oz, like, that's kind of standard fare for a lot of the Oz books. And Oz is not always super sunny and happy.
00:33
Ashley
And so making it really the magical land over the rainbow is something that I think the film did very well and was certainly something that has to be addressed anytime you're adapting the wizard of Oz. Because you either need to go that 1930s movie route or you got to go the full on dark Return to Oz route.
00:54
Case
Welcome to Certain POVs, another past podcast with Case and Sam. This week is a fifth episode, so we're talking about a movie that overcame adversity. Let's celebrate the creativity of the filmmakers. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast. I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Sam Aliceo.
01:14
Sam
Hi.
01:15
Case
And today we are, I was about to say returning to Oz, but we already did Return to Oz. We're going to Oz for the first time again. And for that conversation, we are joined by Ashley Griffin.
01:27
Ashley
Hey, everyone. I'm so excited to be back.
01:29
Case
Yeah, it's been too long.
01:31
Ashley
It has.
01:33
Case
So for listeners who have only jumped on more recently, Ash has been on a couple of times, but the last time was literally for Return to Oz. And let's see, we did Labyrinth and did we do anything else together on that one?
01:45
Ashley
Oh, my goodness. We've been talking about a few, but I think Labyrinth and Return to Oz were the only ones we've actually done so far.
01:52
Case
Yeah. The problem is we've been friends for like, 15 years and have talked about a lot of these kind of fantasy movies altogether. And so it's, like, hard to remember which ones did we see in person together and then talk about? And which ones did we just do a podcast?
02:06
Ashley
We definitely saw the Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland together. That's burned in my brain.
02:10
Case
Yeah, that was a weird day where we walked out and we're like, that is not the movie I expected.
02:15
Ashley
Right. But it was better that I had like a compatriot there with me. But if there's anything I know about, it's fairy tales and fantasies. So I'm excited to use my useless trivia that is permanently stored in my brain for this episode today.
02:32
Sam
We're so happy to have you.
02:34
Ashley
Thank you.
02:36
Case
It's funny to think that you and I met working at Wicked alongside Matty Limerick. So we got to know each other talking about Oz, and Now, yeah, like 15 years later, we're still doing the same thing.
02:50
Ashley
I know. Well, I've always loved wizard of Oz. When I was growing up, it was my favorite movie. I actually read Wicked, the novel, when I was like 12 and was like, this needs to be a musical. And then Stephen Schwartz turned it into a musical. I was like, I was right. Side note, side note, I have these vivid memories. So. I grew up in Los Angeles, and when I was very little, there was some big anniversary of the wizard of Oz, and I got taken to see it at like, Grauman's Chinese. And in the lobby they had one of the pairs of the ruby slippers that was about to be auctioned off at like, Christie's or something. And I. I was so. I was like three or four. Like, I did not really understand money.
03:27
Ashley
And I begged and begged for somebody to buy me the ruby slippers with, you know, like, it's like multi millions of dollars. I'll never ask for anything again. So I have technically been in their presence, but Oz has been a big staple of my life for my entire life, really. So I'm very excited to talk about it.
03:47
Sam
I got to see them in the Smithsonian.
03:49
Case
Well, because we're of that generation of. They did the 80s rerelease. So, like, we specifically were primed for like, VHS had become a thing. So there was home video for us. And like the wizard of Oz, it was a big deal that it had like a release in the 80s that was kind of perfectly lined up for us as little kids to actually see it and absorb it. And for me watching it as a little child, I had nightmares of the Wicked Witch of the west. So much infamously. My sister and I had bunk beds in our room. And the. I forced her to sleep on the top bunk because it was next to a window. Because I had a nightmare that the Wicked Witch came in through the window to get us. And I was like, krista, you're. You're going to stay there?
04:30
Case
And she thought like, yeah, I like the top bunk. And I never told her until years later. I was like, yeah, it was because I was terrified of A witch coming in through the window and you were.
04:36
Sam
Willing to sacrifice her.
04:38
Case
Yeah. We have a strained relationship,.
04:42
Ashley
And that's our intro into talking about hocus pocus. Sacrificing your sister to the witch.
04:50
Case
Well, I mean, the movie that we're talking about today has plenty of sacrifices made to get it to happen, so.
04:55
Ashley
Very true.
04:56
Case
This is the fifth episode. We are talking about a movie that was a successful movie, despite lots of chicanery behind the scenes. And, wow, when you're talking about the wizard of Oz, like, I had to put it in my notes just to make sure that, like, I clarified this, because sometimes we talk about fun movies where it was like, oh, it's kind of silly, all the things that happened in this crunch. And it's. And no one really got hurt, so it's okay. You know, we talked about the crow a while back, and it was like, it was incredible that they made a finished product after Brandon Lee died. And that's cool, but at the same time, it was a terrible set where the fact that he died on set is a really bad thing.
05:32
Case
And there's a reason why there are so many union regulations, there's so many safety regulations. Like, there's so much going on set now. That's because bad things have happened on sets. And, like, the wizard of Oz is, like, one of the examples of lots of bad things happening to people on set. Like, pretty much everyone came out of it either physically or emotionally scarred or both. And I just want to say that's a bad thing. We're going to be talking about it today and talking about a lot of this weird stuff, but this is not like a. Like, oh, isn't it funny that, you know, X, Y and Z occurred? It's more just like, that sucks. That's really bad. But it is incredible that the movie got made and, like, you know, ultimately was a huge hit and so forth.
06:14
Case
But, like, yeah, movies are hard. And it's even harder when the people don't care about the safety of the people on set, kind of. I mean, I'm sure that, like, the. The makeup people would have been like, oh, hey, it would have been easy if they just didn't die when they breathed in the solutions.
06:27
Sam
But, yeah, I mean, why. Why doesn't your skin naturally have a defense against aluminum? I mean, why not?
06:34
Case
Yeah. Or copper.
06:35
Ashley
Yeah, well. And I mean, what I find interesting is that part of what makes the movie so great is the revolutionary technical things that they were doing. But the problem was these were revolutionary technical things that hadn't been tested before, and they learned the hard way about a lot of it.
06:53
Sam
Yeah. So I think there's something also tied into that, because it's not just like, you know, we're doing these revolutionary things, and it's like, amazing technical things that we're trying out that no one tried out. But afterwards, after they try out things, the response when it was negative was so callous by the studio itself. And that's what really makes it tragic. Right. Because, like, you know, mistakes might happen and tragedies, unfortunately happen, even on the safest of sets. And that's just, you know, even the safest of places, you know, that's just, I guess, the roll of the dice of life. But the fact that, like, Margaret Hamilton burned herself and no one sent her home, that she had to call a friend to come and get her. And then the next day she was.
07:41
Sam
While she was recovering, someone from the studio called her to ask her when she'd be back at work. I think that ultimately is.
07:48
Ashley
It's actually. It's actually worse than that. I mean, what. What originally. Well, if we're jumping ahead to the Margaret Hamilton, the first Margaret Hamilton moment, because there were multiple ones. They were shooting the moment where the Wicked Witch has first shown up, and, you know, I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, and she disappears in the cloud of smoke and fire. And so the way that it was set up was there was a little, like, mini elevator in the set that she hit her mark, and then the elevator went down. And then when she was past a certain point, the flames would shoot up, and they did this multiple times, and it was fine. And then the director was like, let's just do it one more time. And the way Margaret Hamilton tells the story is she did it.
08:28
Ashley
And as she was going down, she felt some warmth by her face, which she hadn't felt before. And then all of a sudden, she was, like, on her back down on the ground, and everybody was around her, and the flames had been released too fast and had completely burned her. And the added element is that one of the lead makeup artists came and started vigorously scrubbing her skin. And she was screaming in pain because she had, like, third degree burns all over her body. And he's, like, scrubbing her skin, and she's just an abject, you know, pain and misery. And later, he leans down to her and says, margaret, I'm sorry, I know that was the most incredibly painful thing, but I need to tell you a secret, which is there's mercury in your green makeup.
09:16
Ashley
And if I had left that on you, the mercury would have been absorbed into your skin and you would have died. And that's one of the things that, like, they definitely didn't talk about. Yeah. And then we're like, when can you be back? And her first day back on set was the day that they were shooting the witch taking off on her broom to do the Surrender Dorothy writing. And there were flames coming out of the end of her broom. And Margaret Hamilton had learned a thing or two, and she's like, yeah, no, I don't think this is a good idea. Like, no, no. We're being really careful. We've like triple checked it. And she, like, through a fit, as they would say, defended herself as. As we might say now and said, my stunt double is doing it first.
09:52
Ashley
And they were really pissed off and they were really annoyed and they're like, okay, fine, whatever. Her stunt double gets on the broom explodes, and her stunt double gets taken to the hospital with third degree burns.
10:01
Sam
She also impale. Like, I. That there was something that impaled her leg or she got a cut on her leg possibly. Yeah, Like, I remember reading that. That there was actually an injury to her leg from the fall. Like, she burnt. She got burned, but she also had an injury, which is. I mean, honestly.
10:21
Ashley
Yeah.
10:21
Sam
So that's the kind of episode you guys are listening to.
10:23
Case
Yeah, yeah. I think this is a microcosm of all the problems that we're going to be talking about today.
10:28
Ashley
Yeah.
10:29
Case
That. Just from start to finish there. But let's. Let's rewind. Let's talk about the wizard, the Wonderful wizard of Oz. Let's talk about the book series and, you know, just give a little bit of background before we even get into the movie, because we can't. We can't just be doing all the bad of the movie. Like, we need. We need to start from a place of good. Like, why, like, why are we doing this?
10:51
Sam
I mean, honestly, even knowing everything that I know, I still love this movie. This movie's still magic. I mean, it's still beautiful. The songs are gorgeous. The, you know, the story is great. Just, you know. Yeah, yeah.
11:09
Case
Oh, I mean, if you want to sync it up with when the Lion Roars Three Times to Dark side of the Moon, so much fun. It's. It's a great old time, but it's. Yeah, it. It is important to know the things that go on behind the scenes to it. But like I said, let's take a Step back to L. Frank Baum actually creating the. The series of the. The World of Oz. Now, I had heard that this novel specifically was supposed to be an allegory for the 1890 panic in the US which was a whole situation with a recession, basically.
11:41
Ashley
Yeah.
11:41
Case
And I've seen things where it's just like. No, it's just a coincidence. Which is like, okay, sure, I can believe some of it's a coincidence, but the whole. It. It was silver slippers walking on a gold road to represent a push to.
11:53
Ashley
Move from toward the Emerald City. Yeah, well, yeah.
11:55
Case
And the Emerald City being sort of representation of like, there's a lot of, like, stuff that could be allegories for, like, the US or. And like, US President and like, politics and so forth, but, like, it's the silver standard trying to be pushed over a gold standard for our finances, which was a big thing at the time. The idea that. That William Jennings Bryan was being compared a lot to a cowardly lion in his political career because he was big and blustery, but also kept losing and, like, had some situation where he cried and like, thus was not considered a manly enough person to elect. The idea that the. All. All the poor farmers didn't have a brain. All the industrial workers were being slowly dehumanized.
12:34
Ashley
Yeah.
12:34
Case
Though there's a compelling Case to be made for all of that. Like, the idea that the Wicked Witch of the east is supposed to represent, like, Eastern trusts and the west wicked, which the west is supposed to represent like California railroad interests and so forth. And how, like, it's just like, okay, well, you get away from one bad thing just to be, like, encountered by another. And we've got a little person in middle America being pulled between the two business sides of the coasts.
12:57
Ashley
Like, he and his wife are also staunch feminists, and there's a lot of feminism that runs through the whole series, especially when women are always the ones that are, like, strong leaders and in solid positions of power. I mean, even getting down to some of the. The. The later books where, like, the orphan boy tip is actually Princess Osma in disguise and can only take the throne when he's turned back into a girl kind of a thing.
13:22
Case
So, yeah, Ash, like, you're way more familiar with the series than I am. Like, I read the first book only when someone told me about this stuff, and I was like, oh, that's cool. And that was in high school. So, like, it's been a long time since I've really liked, looked at the series. Like, do you want to give some thoughts about the franchise?
13:36
Ashley
Sure. So L. Frank Baum wrote the original. I'm. There's so much more. I'm just going to do a brief overview. But he wrote the original book and it turned out to be this, you know, big hit. And so he started writing additional books in the series. Some of the more well known ones that he did were, you know, like the Emerald City of Oz, the Marvelous Land of Oz, the Road to Oz. But what's interesting about it. Well, two things. One is that it got kind of immediately adapted into stage plays that were already sort of departures from the source material and immediately sort of adapted into silent films. He was writing sort of at the turn of the century.
14:15
Ashley
But the other thing I find interesting is that he, the books became so popular and the contract that he had didn't necessarily give him exclusive rights as the authority. So all of the books that you see as books in the Oz series, not all of them were written by L. Frank Baum. At some point he was getting a little tired. He passed away and they just full on hired somebody else to start writing Oz books. So when you really start getting further on into the series, they're not written by L. Frank Baum and it just takes a whole other detour. There's also a bunch of other side characters, especially in the original adaptations of the plays. It was Betsy Bobbin instead of Dorothy Gale and a lot of other things like that.
14:58
Ashley
But yeah, it was very influenced by being an allegory to what was going on politically in the United States at the time. It was very influenced by feminism. And the first several books in the series became really big hits, as it were. And then the publisher just sort of took it off in their own direction. But a lot of things that were in the books that L. Frank Baum specifically wrote did end up in Return to Oz and are actually very accurate to the mythology of the Oz series. But yeah, so that's sort of just, I guess, the basic overview of his writing of it.
15:31
Case
Yeah. And like you said, it was a huge hit and like spawned like there were several attempts at doing silent film adaptations of the various Oz books. So the wizard of Oz, which is somehow like the definitive wizard of Oz interpretation in our mind. Like when I say the wizard of Oz, no one's like, oh, do you mean like some other, like, no one's like, do you mean Return to Oz? Like, everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone has a very clear image of what I'm talking about, but it wasn't the first, which I find so fascinating. But it became such, like, such an iconic version of it that, like, Ash, you and I met working at Wicked, the. The stage play version of Wicked adds several elements that make it more like the movie from the book.
16:12
Case
And it's just because, like, that's what the audience is familiar with.
16:15
Ashley
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it hit at the right zeitgeist because when the Oz books were becoming popular, originally it was coming out of a God. This is where my nerdiness comes in Europe, in sort of the 1850s to the 1900s, was when what we think of as fairy tales and children's literature really became what they are. It's when the Grimm Brothers were transcribing the stories. It's when Alice in Wonderland was written and all of those things. And so the wizard of Oz was sort of the very first time there was an American answer to that and a truly, like, American fairy tale. So it really definitely caught on in the zeitgeist then.
16:50
Ashley
But when you think about the fact that the movie was made in the 30s, it had not been that long since the books had first been introduced, and there were still new Oz books coming out. So, I mean, like, Judy Garland grew up with her father reading her the Oz books as they were coming out. So it hit at a really specific zeitgeist in the popular consciousness. It hit at a time where there were new, revolutionary things happening in cinema, like Technicolor that you could do things with movies that you know, could never do previous to that. It was one of the most successful movie musicals, dramaturgically of all time. And it also became a hit movie and then sort of continued right around the time that televisions were first being introduced.
17:35
Ashley
So it would be a really big thing to, like, at Christmas, the Wizard of Oz is going to come on tv. And then, like you said, the anniversary came around the 80s where, you know, home videos were a new big thing. So the combination of it just being a legitimately really phenomenal work combined with it always seemed to hit at the zeitgeist of when it was most popular or important in popular culture, just sort of all blended together to create something really special.
18:01
Case
Yeah, it's. It's shocking how, like, how enduring that legacy has been. Like. Like you mentioned with TV, like, supposedly the 1956 broadcast on CBS, like, created renewed interest in it. And then we said the 80s, like, it just has such staying power. And it's so crazy to think that it had such staying Power. Considering that, like, every turn going into it, like, this movie shouldn't have worked, right?
18:24
Ashley
Yeah, yeah.
18:26
Sam
People should have quit this movie.
18:28
Ashley
And I mean, I think people don't even realize that it's not just the making, like the actual production of the movie. It goes all the way back to the first days of getting the rights and casting. Like the horrible drama started then. Although there is. There is one positive behind the scenes story that is one of my favorite Hollywood stories, which is how Ray Bolger ended up getting cast as the Scarecrow. Which was. Ray Bolger was a very famous vaudevillian performer and he was known for that kind of physicality. And when he first read the Oz books, he was like, if I could get a role like the Scarecrow, it would make my career because it's exactly what I'm right at. Right, right for. It's what I do. It's my niche.
19:04
Ashley
And so when he was offered initially a contract with mgm, years before anybody was even thinking of making a movie with the wizard of Oz, he got them to put in his contract that should a movie of the wizard of Oz ever be made, that he would be cast as the Scarecrow. And it was such a ridiculous thing at the time that it was, like, laughable. And they're like, okay, great, if you want that, then sure. I mean, it would be like me saying, if. If Stephen Schwartz ever writes a musical adaptation of Pan's Labyrinth and you make a movie of it, then I get to play Ophelia. And everybody's like, great, sure, whatever. And then it happens. And so when they were gonna make the movie, he was like, oh, my gosh, yes, this is my big break.
19:46
Ashley
And they contacted him and they're like, great, you've been cast as the Tin Man. And he was like, absolutely not. There's no way I'm right for that role. And they're like, well, too bad. That's what they decided you're gonna do. And he pulls out his contract and is like, in my contract, you said I get right of first refusal as the Scarecrow. And they were like, well, I guess there's nothing we can do. And that's how we ended up getting cast as a Scarecrow. They were going to insist he played the Tin Man.
20:09
Case
Yeah. The power of lawyers.
20:11
Sam
Yay.
20:13
Case
Who Some have said that the flying monkeys are supposed to represent.
20:16
Ashley
Oh, gosh. Oh, man.
20:19
Sam
Get it.
20:19
Case
I mean, casting was kind of crazy. Like, yeah, so we'll get into the casting changes that occurred later because those are usually more tragic in nature. But. But, I mean, another big one is that they initially wanted Shirley Temple to be. To be Dorothy. And my understanding is that after some, like, actual auditions with her, they needed someone with a, like, more powerful singing voice. So they went with.
20:42
Ashley
Well, there are a couple different. There are a couple different stories that are floating around. And some have said that wizard of Oz in some ways was responsible for kind of ending Shirley Temple's career. So Louis B. Mayer bought the rights for the wizard of Oz. It could be Gone with the Wind. I thought maybe at the time it was. It was certainly one of the most expensive rights acquisitions that had happened at that time. And everybody wanted Judy Garland because at that. Till that point, they hadn't really been able to figure out what to do with her. They kept casting her in Andy Hardy roles, but they just hadn't had the big breakout thing. So everybody really wanted her. But Louis B. Mirror was like, no, we need a big star. And technically, in the books, Dorothy's, like, seven years old. Like, she's.
21:23
Ashley
She's very. Or 12. She's between seven and 12. She's very young. And Judy Garland at the time was 16. And so he was like, no, I want Shirley Temple for it. So Judy Garland had been told she got the part and then told that actually it was going to be given to Shirley Temple. So they did send somebody over there to hear Shirley Temple sing. And it was true that they felt that she didn't necessarily have the vocal chops to do it. But that wasn't the. My understanding is that wasn't the real issue. The real issue was that I think Warner Brothers wouldn't loan her out to end or that they were going to do a trade where they were going to loan Shirley to MGM to do wizard of Oz.
22:01
Ashley
If, like, Warner Brothers got Clark Gable and somebody else for another film, they were gonna, like, do a trade. And then one of the people that was going to be traded, I think, either passed away or something happened and the deal fell through. And so they were like, well, if we're not getting both of those stars, even for a horrible reason, you can't have Shirley Temple. And so then it was like, oh, I guess we can't have Shirley Temple either way. Why not just go back and give it to Judy Garland? And Shirley Temple apparently was devastated because she grew up loving the wizard of Oz. And Warner Brothers turned around, was like, it doesn't matter. They paid all this money for this. We're going to go out and get the rights to the Bluebird.
22:37
Ashley
And we're going to make them a movie adaptation of the Bluebird of Happiness, and it's going to be bigger than Oz. And they, like, blew a huge budget on Bluebird of Happiness. Shirley Temple was starting to go a little bit older at the time as well, and they were still trying to make her look as young as possible. And the Bluebird was a huge flop, and the studio. It was not a rival to the wizard of Oz, obviously, although I have a soft spot in my heart for that movie, but it was a huge flop. They lost an insane amount of money. And that was sort of the nail in the coffin of Shirley Temple's getting too old. And she clearly doesn't have the clout to really make anything a success anymore. So we're going to drop her contract.
23:19
Ashley
And that's what ended up happening with that.
23:21
Case
Yeah, you just made me realize that we've actually never talked about the studio system on this show. Yeah, yeah, because we've mostly been talking, like, I think, frankly, the oldest movie we've talked about has been in the 60s. Like, it might even beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which has not actually come out yet. And that was 1970. Like, now I'm like, wait, have we done something older? But, yeah, the studio system is kind of crazy to think about where you have, like, all these people locked up under contract or. Or movies getting made just because, like, they're contractually obliged in ways specifically that were different than the current era of, like, the MCU and so forth.
23:57
Ashley
Right.
23:57
Case
As. As we sort of, like, everything old is new again. But, yeah, that's actually really interesting to think about because I. I never stopped to think about, like, oh, well, yeah, well, she was owned by Warner Brothers, or however you want to describe that situation.
24:10
Sam
I mean, that's basically what it was. I mean, the. The actors were basically on contract, but, like, basically owned by the studios. And then, you know, if they wanted to do a movie that wasn't being done at their studio, that had to be a negotiation and be lent out. A lot of people missed out on films just because they could not work for a different studio at all.
24:33
Ashley
They also got screwed over financially because I think it was with Shirley Temple. She. When she first got under contract, they didn't really do much with her. And her first big film was Little Miss Marker that she did at a different studio. So she got loaned out. When she. When you got loaned out, the studio that was borrowing the actor had to pay the other studio to borrow that actor, but the actual actor didn't see any of that money. So, like Shirley Temple, I was still making whatever her weekly salary was, and then realizing that her home studio was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for her that she wasn't seeing a penny of to do Little Miss Marker.
25:10
Case
God. Such a weird feudal system that. Yeah, used to. You used to be the norm and.
25:17
Ashley
Yeah, well, United Artists was started by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, who were the big, hugest stars in the world at the time. Being like, we don't want to beholden to the studio system anymore. We're. We have money. We're going to start our own system. And that's why it was our own studio, and that's why it was called United Artists, because the artists founded it and they were in charge of their own careers when they did it.
25:39
Case
I didn't hear that story before. That's awesome.
25:40
Ashley
Yeah.
25:41
Case
Yeah. So in terms of, like, actually getting it off the ground, I mean, obviously there's a lot of questions in terms of, like, how are you going to do it? It's very early in the concept of color film. It's. It's often credited as the first, but I think it's actually the second color film. Right.
25:54
Ashley
It's not the first one that was ever done. It was one of the first ones ever in Technicolor, which is a different thing to just being in color.
26:02
Case
Right. Because obviously there are earlier movies where people, like, hand individually, like, colored in each frame and things like that, which.
26:09
Ashley
Well, in tiny little things, like, the original Technicolor was not, like, a total equivalent ratio of color. Like, if you go and see Judy Garland's costume, like, on display in the Smithsonian, her white blouse is actually very pale pink. Because the kind of film that they were photographing on, pale pink, photographed as pure white. And it's one of the reasons that things that we think of as iconic happened. In the original Oz novel cases you mentioned, Dorothy is given magical silver shoes to go on the yellow brick road. Well, they changed it to ruby slippers to take advantage of Technicolor because they knew the ruby color was going to show up more vibrantly. And now that's what we think of. And they made the witch green also to show that. See, that's another thing.
26:50
Ashley
Originally, at that point, Disney's Snow White was the most influential fantasy film probably that had ever been made. And they were trying to take a page from that. And they were going to make the Wicked Witch of the west gorgeous and beautiful, and they originally cast Gail Sondergaard and if you look at some original film tests and photographs, they were completely copying the Evil Queen from. From Snow White. But Gail Sondergaard, like, really didn't want to play an evil character, and they just didn't feel like it was totally working out, so they decided to go in a different direction called Margaret Hamilton, who apparently was thrilled to be offered something in the wizard of Oz because she loved it, asked her agent, oh, who do they want me to play? And her agent goes, the Wicked Witch, of course. Who else would it be?
27:32
Ashley
And they made. They made her green to take advantage of the Technicolor, which now the idea of witches being green is, like, kind of standard in the Zeitgeist, but they literally made it up to take advantage of the color at the time.
27:43
Case
So, yeah, it's so funny. Like, any, like, cartoonish depiction of a witch now is, like, automatically green skin. Like, if it's going to be a Halloween decoration, green skin, like, just go, banjo Kazooie. Grunt, Grunty in that green skin. Go for it. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, witch. Yeah, obviously.
27:58
Sam
Yeah, clearly.
28:00
Ashley
But also, speaking of casting, Buddy Epson was the original Tin man, and he had a similar horrific makeup issue where they actually put aluminum in his silver makeup for the Tin man, and he had a horrific allergic reaction to it, and, you know, he went off to hospital. He couldn't finish the movie. He was devastated. And they replaced him with Jack Haley, and they didn't tell Jack Haley what had happened, and they just sort of surreptitiously took the aluminum out of the makeup and, like, hoped it would be okay. And fortunately it was fine, but they didn't tell anybody. They didn't disclose it. They didn't know what I think he did get.
28:34
Sam
My understanding, he got an eye infection, right?
28:37
Case
Yeah, yeah. So they. They switch it from aluminum dust, like a powder to being, like, a paste instead.
28:42
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, because he was breathing it into his lungs, and it was just like a double whammy of bad news.
28:47
Case
It was, like, years of recovery. Right?
28:49
Ashley
Yeah, yeah.
28:50
Case
Terrible stuff. I mean, hell, might as well just talk about the weird casting choices as a result of people getting terribly sick on set. Yeah, yeah. So there's, like, test shots of. Of him in, like. Apparently there's, like, all this footage that was shot under earlier director because they also had to, like, rework how they were going to make Dorothy look. She had, like, a blonde wig at one point.
29:12
Speaker 4
But.
29:13
Case
But yeah, so with Ray Bulger, like, super sick as a result, and then switched it around, and all of a sudden it's like, well, yeah, now he's not breathing it in, but it is getting in his eyes and all of his pores, and it's terrible. Yeah, Pretty much everyone had some horrible makeup situation.
29:29
Sam
Yeah.
29:29
Case
On. On set.
29:30
Sam
All of them.
29:31
Case
No one was happy.
29:32
Ashley
Yeah, well, and it was pretty miserable, apparently, during the filming for the three guys, because Bert Lahr was in, you know, a costume that apparently was actually made from, like, lion's fur.
29:44
Sam
Yeah, this is.
29:45
Ashley
Yeah. In a really hot set where he was already a bigger guy and he was just constantly suffering from heat stroke.
29:51
Sam
With those hot lights on him, too.
29:53
Ashley
Like, oh, gosh, the Tin man couldn't sit down. So the most he got was, like a reclining bench thing that, like, sort of tilted backward.
30:01
Sam
Yeah.
30:02
Ashley
And none of them could eat solid food because of the makeup. So the three of them, like, basically had to go on a liquid diet during the course of. So the one advantage Judy Garland had, ironically, is that she was the most comfortable in the costume and makeup and she could eat. Which was also then negated by the fact that the studio had her on a horrific diet where she was only allowed to drink suit because they thought she was too fat, and they had her on uppers and downers and that whole thing. But the three guys definitely went through it on that shoot.
30:32
Sam
Yeah. I mean, the scarecrow's mask, like, it was so uncomfortable that it actually left him with lines across his face a full year after shooting. Like, he still had, like, markings from it. So that's how uncomfortable. I mean, it was pretty early on in prosthetics, so, like, their techniques were not as good as they are today, but it was really uncomfortable for all of them. And even Margaret Hamilton couldn't eat because her. Her makeup was also copper based, so she could only really drink. Like, she couldn't digest because she was afraid to digest the makeup. So it's just like, all along the road. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The person, ironically, who had the best in terms of eating was Judy Garland. And she was the one that was not allowed to eat just cigarettes, chicken soup and black coffee.
31:25
Ashley
Yeah. Well, and the fact that because she was 16 and theoretically she was supposed to be playing a 12 year old, they, like, were binding her chest and doing, you know, so, you know, other. Other things that, you know, made it hard to breathe and all that.
31:38
Sam
But which is crazy when you think about her singing in a corset and, like, a boundary chest. Like, it's kind of like, although she.
31:45
Ashley
Was they did still do pre recordings, so they were singing to a pre recorded backing track with most of it.
31:52
Case
To get around the corset situation.
31:54
Ashley
Right. Yeah. And the multiple directors and everything.
31:58
Case
Yeah, it's all awful for all them. Like, like we said Margaret Hamilton, like, if she had consumed her makeup by accident because she was eating, she might have died. Yeah. Like, all of them had these terrible situations and obviously it's hours in the chair for it all. So they want to keep their costumes on if they go to lunch. And apparently when they tried to eat at the MGM cafeteria, other. Other people working on other movies were like, they're freaky looking, and actually had them banned from.
32:23
Ashley
Yeah, I heard about that.
32:24
Sam
Yeah.
32:25
Case
Which is crazy. Like, this movie was such a miserable time.
32:30
Sam
I don't want to stray too far from the lion costume just because I want everyone to know that it was pretty disgusting at the end of the night. And they did hire two people to clean it and dry it completely at the end of the night so that it could be worn the next day because it was so expensive that they could only make one.
32:50
Speaker 4
Yeah, that.
32:51
Case
Yeah, I wanted to circle back to that part because that, like, it's gross enough that he's in a full fur costume, but I guess, you know, it's the 30s. Like, people don't think quite as much that way. I mean, like. Like, I'm like, oh, my God, it's actual lion. That.
33:03
Sam
Yeah.
33:04
Case
Fucking blew my mind when I read that part. But also it's like, oh, and he only had one costume, and because he sweated so much in it, they had to industrially dry it every single night. So he's just putting on this, like, dried sweat hide every single day for this grueling shoot.
33:19
Sam
Yeah. I imagine it did not smell great, right?
33:23
Case
Oh, no. Oh, God. Yeah. So. So that part wasn't good. Ray Bolger. Apparently, in addition to just the makeup being terrible on his skin and so forth, I. I read one at one point, the prosthetics actually started to melt and burned his face at spots.
33:40
Ashley
I believe that. Yeah, I believe that.
33:43
Case
Just, again, just terrifying that's how things went.
33:47
Ashley
Yeah, yeah.
33:50
Case
And these shoots were crazy. Apparently they were six days a week and they would be shooting from like 4:00am to 7:00pm yeah, well, I mean,.
33:57
Ashley
First of all, there weren't the same kind of labor laws back then that we have now, but some of that, theoretically, I mean, there's no reason to abuse actors like that or crew under any circumstances, but they were way behind schedule. Because they went through three directors who would shoot stuff, and then somebody else would have to come in and then not, like, what had been done and then have to, like, start all over from scratch. I mean, it wasn't until the second director that they even really got Judy Garland's look down. And he was the person who, like, kind of took away all her crazy makeup and hair and was like, you just need to be a little farm girl from Kansas.
34:32
Ashley
But, yeah, they were constantly behind schedule and having to redo things because of all the team members that kept coming in and out.
34:40
Case
Yeah, yeah. So I have it down as it started with Richard Thorpe, who basically didn't shoot anything that we saw.
34:45
Ashley
Right.
34:45
Case
Like the earlier look for stuff. And then it was George Cucor. Cu. Cord. Yeah.
34:50
Ashley
Yeah.
34:51
Case
And my understanding is he went off to go work on. On Gone with the Wind, and then Fleming came over and then he went off to go work on Gone with the Wind.
34:59
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Because they were having a lot of issues with Gone with the Wind. I mean, speaking of fire problems, I mean, when Atlanta burned, it, like, burned. I mean, to the point where if there are any folks here that are fans of the TV show Pushing Daisies. Not Pushing Daisies, I'm sorry, dead. Like me. I mean, there's an entire plot point with one of the central characters, Daisy, that she died as an extra on set of the burning of Atlanta. That just went so horribly wrong. And it's totally believable, sadly. Yeah. But they kept taking people off of the wizard of Oz and, like, putting them on Gone with the Wind because that was so insane. And Clark Gable didn't like who he was working with and. Yeah, all the stuff.
35:37
Case
Yeah. So Victor Fleming ends up being the majority director for this and is credited as the director on most things. Most of the movie, he shot the. And then at the very end, it was King Vidor who shot, like, all the Kansas stuff, basically. So arguably that's reshoots at that point, but the movie wasn't done. I don't know.
35:59
Ashley
Although, ironically, it kind of added to them to it being a very different world between Kansas and Oz. I mean, they were shot by two different people.
36:06
Sam
Yeah.
36:08
Ashley
In some ways, that actually was something that probably added to. To the quality of the finished product.
36:14
Case
Yeah. That switch between Kansas and Oz is a really striking one. And I think this is a good spot for us to take a break, shout out one of the shows on our network, and when we come back, we'll actually talk about. Well, we talked about some of the craziness but like, we'll talk about the rest of the craziness.
36:32
Sam
There's more, don't worry.
36:33
Case
Yeah, so we'll ride a twister away, and when we come back, we'll be in Technicolor.
36:39
Sam
Woohoo.
36:46
Speaker 4
Nostalgia is one of the strongest forces in the human psyche and is responsible for the continued existence of some of our favorite fandoms from the minds behind the Dole and Dreams podcast and isolation cast voices from Quarantine. Saturday Morning Confidential takes you on a deep dive into the properties that helped influence the artists and creators of today. So whether you are a Goonie, a gym girl, a digidestined, or you just want to return to Oz, new episodes release on Fridays, BI weekly starting January 1st of 2021. And join us on the Wednesdays after the main show for the Serial Killer Radio Hour, where we sit down with the people responsible for the toys, shows and fandoms that you love. Now, you can find Saturday morning confidential@ certainpov.com smc pod or on your favorite podcast platforms.
37:41
Speaker 4
So don't forget to tune in for another deep dive into the files of Saturday Morning Confidential.
37:53
Case
And we're back. All right, so we have touched down from our tornado and where we left off, were talking about the transition from Kansas to Oz. And this brings up one of these spots that I actually think is a really creative and just a good thing that they did that I think was kind of cool, which was in figuring out how to go from sepia to color. The scene where Dorothy walks out into the colorful world of Oz, they don't have computers to desaturate everything. So that room, and I'm not sure if it's Judy Garland or if it's a double.
38:27
Ashley
It's. It's her double.
38:28
Case
It is her double. Yeah, I figure is all painted sepia browns so that they can get a oner of her opening the door and just like seeing in color, which I gotta say, like, I. If I was making that movie and I didn't have computers, I would have her open the door and then cut to her foot stepping out in color and like not actually have that shot because that's insane that they did that. But I think it's really creative and that's why certain releases of the movie where they actually go like, they totally desaturate into black and white the Kansas stuff. Like why that scene is still in sepia.
39:02
Ashley
Yeah, that's valid, actually. If you really watch that scene carefully, you can tell that it's being filmed in color because some of, like the skin tones and whatnot are not the same quality that they were in the other sepia sections of the film.
39:14
Case
So I just think that's a cool little bit right there. And like the, the choice to have sepia be her in Kansas and then color for Oz I think is probably the most evocative filmmaking technique that they use in the whole thing. I think it's so. You know, again, we talked about the silver being the ruby slippers because it looks better on it all. Like, they did so many things to like, have it be like just a stunning visual treat right there. It's really cool. Like, like, I just, I like there's a lot of shitty things that happen behind the scenes and there's a lot of spots where like, their level of creativity was like, well, instead of the dust that will murder their lungs, it'll just be the thing, the pace that like, gives them infections.
39:57
Case
This is one point of creativity that I'm like, I just want to call that one out because I. It's really cool. It's a film nerd thing that we like. If you know anything about movie making, you've heard the story because it's like such an early example that people bring up. But it's still a cool one and.
40:08
Ashley
I like it and it's interesting. No, I've heard people say, somebody said once that the most unbelievable thing about the wizard of Oz is that Dorothy would voluntarily leave the technicolor world of Oz and go back to her black and white real life. Which, I mean, obviously that's theme of the movie is there's no place like home. But I do think that there's something fascinating about it and helpful because if you really go back and read the original Oz books, Oz is kind of dark. You know, some of the stuff that gets dark in return to Oz, like, that's kind of standard fare for a lot of the Oz books. And Oz is not always super sunny and happy.
40:46
Ashley
And so making it really the magical land over the rainbow is something that I think the film did very well and was certainly something that has to be addressed anytime you're adapting the wizard of Oz. Because you either need to go that 1930s movie route or you got to go the full on dark Return to Oz route.
41:04
Case
Next up, a lot of people call out, and we mentioned the asbestos stuff earlier. I'm going to chalk that one up as being like, people were cool with asbestos for a lot of years and not everyone was aware that it was a carcinogenic. I understand that there were people who were aware in the 1930s, but I also know that in the 1960s, there were super villains being put out asbestos man. And it's a guy wearing asbestos suits. And, like, the general public was not aware that it was, like, so terrible.
41:30
Ashley
Well, let's just say when I was in high school in the 2000s, they were just then deciding to get rid of the asbestos in the, like, insulation in the school. So it has a long history of being very acceptable.
41:43
Case
Yeah, it was really sold. It's like, look at this fireproof material. It's so great. Yeah, it's like this glow in the dark paint. It's awesome.
41:48
Sam
Yeah. I mean, similarly, like, lead has the kind of the same history of that. Like, there. There was knowledge that lead paint was not very good in homes, but here in America, we just kept doing that well into the 80s. So, I mean, it's kind of a standard.
42:04
Case
Or lead nor gasoline and that.
42:06
Sam
Yeah, it's kind of standard. It's kind of. It is a beautiful. It is a beautiful scene.
42:12
Ashley
Yeah.
42:12
Case
Yeah. Like, it gets called out as, like, look at this horrible thing. And I honestly think in the grand scheme of all the atrocities that occurred on set, like, that's actually on the, like, the lower end of it. But it's because, like, the general audience and probably most of the people involved in making it were like, oh, yeah, it looks good on film and had no idea.
42:29
Sam
Yeah, probably.
42:30
Ashley
That's one of the things I have an issue with, I think just about people in general is we have a tendency to be like, oh, look at this cool thing. Let's just use it, like, instead of. Let's do the research about it first before we just jump in with both feet. But I'm sure in 50 years, we'll find out that, like, oh, no, the. The plastic that iPhones is made out of causes cancer. Too bad. Like, you know, I'm sure there's something that we'll discover. Yeah. 50 Years, we need this object.
43:00
Sam
So I guess that's what's going to happen, right? Yeah. We still need to look pretty, so we're still going to paint them with lead because that's the paint that's available.
43:09
Ashley
Well, I mean, I. I actually just recently watched a really interesting, like, history of makeup and the things that people did fully knowing that they were, like, horribly bad for them. But, like, in the name of, like, beauty is the most important thing. I mean, some of the madness of King George in England, some people think had something to do with the fact that he was wearing, you know, leaded white makeup all the time. Because it was what was in fashion.
43:33
Case
Yeah, Yep.
43:35
Sam
Yeah.
43:35
Ashley
Beauty standards.
43:38
Case
Beauty standards. And just general like keeping up with the Joneses kind of stuff I think is a lot of this. Like, you know, it's hard for me not to go on kind of a rant about how I hate grass because I, like it's an invasive species that we all just sort of decided like, hey, this is, it makes our lawns look attractive. And so now we like waste tons of water on like a thing that is unproductive and not even edible by most animals or all the other things like cars. I hate them. I really do. Like, I really do. Like I drive a car. I understand that I'm a hypocrite, but like, I think they're terrible for cities.
44:09
Sam
You, you're preaching to a choir here. I, I hate all of that. I will say, if we're going to talk about unrealistic bystanders, I think we should talk a little bit. Even though we have talked a little bit about Judy Garland and her forced starvation as a 16 year old.
44:26
Case
Yeah, let's focus a bit more on that because that was really bad. And the fact that they recommended she smoke cigarettes to keep her weight down is like kind of up.
44:35
Ashley
Well, and there was so much like even more than that. I mean one of the things I, I don't think that it applied to Judy Garland specifically, but I do know forced plastic surgery was a thing back in the 20s and 30s. I think it's, I think it was done to Marilyn Monroe. I don't quote me on that. But I do know that it was done to many actresses that of forced plastic surgery. Judy Garland was affectionately referred to as my little hunchback by Louis B. Mayer. They thought that she was overweight, so they put her on a like a liquid only diet. They plied her with pills, uppers and downers.
45:14
Ashley
I mean, it's the reason that, you know, she had the downfall that she did later in life was they turned her into a drug addict, forced her to use cigarettes, they bound her when they wanted her to, you know, look younger. And then a little bit later than the wizard of Oz, they forced her to have an abortion as well. So the number of things that were completely supported by her mother too. Yeah, Is just insane.
45:35
Sam
Her mother used to like, her mother started the uppers and downers when she was just Working with her mom in vaudeville. Like, it was completely supported by the studio. And it definitely got worse during this production, especially because of the long hours. But this was something that her mother was already doing. It's just that the studios made it so much easier to access doctors that would just give over the pills. The other thing is that the executives, during the filming of this film, because, you know, she's. She's 16, so going on 17, because this film lasted a while, and so she's kind of coming into her. Her, you know, body. And because they were trying to keep her tiny and trying to keep her small, a lot of the executives at the studio behind her back were calling her a piggy in pigtails.
46:28
Ashley
Yeah, I heard that.
46:29
Sam
Which is just really, like, mean and terrible. And, you know, like, even though it was behind her back, she definitely knew. Oh, yeah.
46:35
Ashley
Well, and. And I've heard from. I mean, from interviews that she did that, you know, she was also, you know, being schooled on set. And the people that she was in school with were like, Lana Turner and these people that she felt like she could never live up to those beauty standards. And side note, this isn't Judy Garland specific, but, I mean, Shirley Temple shared stories about her and her mother being sexually assaulted. Like, when. At the same time, in two different rooms when Shirley was, like, very young. So there was a lot of shady stuff that went on. And I mean, some people try to excuse some of it, like the pills by, like, oh, well, they didn't really know. And they were like, oh, just take a pill when you need to be awake for sad.
47:16
Ashley
And then when you take a nap, just take a downer. But it was so insidious and they literally did own these performers that it's. It was a bad and complicated system. And Judy Garland certainly had a. A horrible time. I mean, I think she was quoted as saying when she did meet me in St. Louis and Margaret O', Brien, the little girl, was playing her little sister of saying something like, dear God, I hope they don't do to her what they did to me.
47:42
Case
Yeah, because. So I didn't put a note in to talk about the munchkin stuff because I feel like some of it might be apocryphal, but there is. So Jenny Garland's husband, after she died, put, like, had an. I think it was unpublished, but it was still, like, widely circulated memoir that mentioned that apparently, like, the, like, they would get drunk and, like, try to stick their hands up her dress. Yeah, I. I don't like perpetuating Some of that. Because, like, I feel that it's definitely the people who had the least ability to sort of defend themselves and, like, were the most likely for public scrutiny. But also, like, a lot of stories about, like, most of the. The people on set being drunk.
48:23
Sam
Yeah.
48:24
Case
Have come out. So I don't know. I mean, certainly a toxic workspace.
48:29
Sam
Yeah. I think. I think it's fair to say that the. That the people who played the Munchkins were. Were living it up in this sort of way, but also very poorly treated. And so I think that. Yeah, I'm sure there were a couple in the bunch that may or may not have done this. This is alleged by her husband. It was after she passed. And. But I. I mean, they were paid. The Munchkins were paid, like, $50 a week, probably like, each. And they weren't even credited by their names later on. So, like, you know, there. I think that, yes, they were all in a hotel room apparent. Or in a nearby hotel, kind of pushed into several hotel rooms, like, you know, but cramped. And they would go out and get drunk, and then the police would escort them back and.
49:23
Sam
But they would never fully arrest them. They would just return them to the studio because the studio had a deal, because they needed them.
49:31
Ashley
On the flip side, I do want to throw out because I've seen a lovely documentary that is about the little people that made the wizard of Oz. There was a. It was in some ways actually a bright spot when you look at all the awful stuff that went on in that. In the 1930s, people with this physical condition certainly, you know, were often treated terribly. And a lot of times their options of how to go out and earn a living were very limited and pretty terrible. And there are a lot of them that worked on this movie that talked about this was the first time they'd met anybody like them, that it became a community, that it was actually very supportive and healing.
50:10
Ashley
And, you know, a lot of them came from sideshows and things, and they were suddenly working in a very respected Hollywood film, and it led to a community and support that had never existed for them previous. So in some ways, that was actually a positive thing that came out of the movie. That being said, there were a lot of them. And when you're going and just finding a lot of people that their only similarity is a certain physical characteristic, I'm sure there might be some bad apples in the bunch. Yeah.
50:39
Sam
You know, and I'm going to say, as a person who worked in restaurants, you get a bunch of people together that are not treated terribly well that have stuff in common. They're going to go out drinking and some of them are going to make trouble. Like, that's just human nature.
50:54
Ashley
Absolutely.
50:55
Case
And it's such a toxic work environment. It's not like they're not gonna, like, be like. It's definitely encouraging everyone to be shitty. I mean, circling back to Judy Garland for a second. She was slapped on set by the director.
51:07
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Also, one of the big things, I mean, when they made that movie, Judy Garland, Me and My Shadows, and the making of the wizard of Oz was like a grand total of, like, five seconds out of the whole movie. The thing that they focused on was that every time they shot the we're off to see the wizard sequences with the four of them going down the road, the three guys would sort of, like, crowd her out, and they would keep having to redo it because they would, like, be pushing her out of the line. And they would constantly have to be like, you guys need to be nicer. You know, like, get. Let her in there.
51:36
Ashley
Not to say that they weren't nice to her, like, as human beings, but it was kind of three vaudevillian stars hamming it up for each other, and then, like, the little girl who was the only female on set, like, trying to, you know, force her way in there.
51:49
Case
And not only was she young, she's also, like, small as a person. She was under five feet.
51:54
Sam
Yeah. She's like four. Eleven.
51:56
Case
I'm not sure if she grew more after that, but, like, at this point, she's like a tiny person in, like, up against these big, you know, bombastic, hamming it up actors, like we said, who are in a ton of makeup and probably don't have wonderful visibility overall. That is also especially the line. Like, I can't imagine, like, being like. Like, when I've done cosplay in stuff that has fur on it, because I've done beast cosplay. Like, I. I know that I can feel like my shoulders are just going to randomly bump into things. And, like, all of a sudden, I'll be like, oh, I got to back off. Like, I. I can easily imagine that if you're trying to dance or something, you just are not as physically aware of. Of the limits of your body because you're.
52:31
Case
It's being artificially extended by your costume.
52:33
Ashley
And, I mean, not to mention the Tin man who, like, can't. Probably can't even, like, turn his head all the way in either direction, you know? And the other interesting thing is all the Musical moments that actually were cut from the movie, like the Scarecrow. If I Only Had a Brain. Actually a whole giant extended dance sequence that you can online that was phenomenal with wire work and all sorts of stuff that got cut.
52:55
Case
I was gonna say the wire work. Like, I. I was watching some of those clips and I was like, that's a lot of, like, very difficult to set up stuff that.
53:03
Ashley
Monkeys, too.
53:04
Case
Yeah.
53:04
Ashley
I have not personally heard that any of the wire work went terribly wrong, which shocks me in a production where so much stuff went wrong. But.
53:11
Case
Well, he had lawyers. Maybe that's why it didn't happen for him.
53:15
Ashley
Although I would. I mean, I would also venture to maybe speculate that wire work has actually been a staple in theater for a very long time. So maybe they were a little more expert at it. But there was also the cutting of the. The jitterbug number, which, ironically, is probably the saving grace to keep this movie from being dated. Because originally, when they went into the forest to go find the Wicked Witch before Dorothy gets absconded with by the winged monkeys, they made reference to the. The popular dance of the day, the jitterbug. And the idea was like, oh, no, there's the jitterbug in the forest and it's making us all dance and we can't stop.
53:57
Ashley
And they literally did a 1930s jitterbug number that you can also watch online that if that had stayed in, that would have been the thing to completely date the film. And they almost cut Somewhere over the Rainbow too.
54:09
Case
Yeah, like, that was a late addition. I read that, like, they weren't really sure what was going to be the big I Want song. And, like, it came in much later into shooting, and then apparently in some of the screenings, they had cut it because they thought it was too. It, like, dragged the movie too much at the beginning.
54:24
Speaker 4
Right.
54:24
Case
Which. That one blows my mind because that's definitely the song everyone knows from this movie.
54:29
Ashley
Well, and years later, with the Little Mermaid at Disney, when they were going to cut Part of that World, the. The heart of the argument they made is, what if they had cut Somewhere over the Rainbow from the wizard of Oz? Like, you don't want to be the person who cut Somewhere over the Rainbow from the wizard of Oz.
54:45
Sam
Solid argument.
54:46
Ashley
Yeah.
54:47
Case
Yeah. I mean, like, that song has lived on. There's so many versions of that song. I have a techno remix of that song.
54:52
Sam
Yeah, Yeah.
54:54
Case
I can't imagine that being removed because that's. That's the thing that sells this movie. But you Know what didn't sell? This movie. This movie? Yeah, when it came out. True. Yeah, when it came out, it actually was a box office bomb. Like, it's funny to say that because especially if you look at the returns, because the opening or when it opened, it barely made its money back. It wasn't a flop in the sense that it, like, it made its money.
55:17
Ashley
Back and like, it wasn't the kind of flop that like Bluebird was.
55:20
Sam
Right, right.
55:21
Case
Just. Just to put a point of contrast there, it wasn't that kind of a bomb, but it was considered a bomb for most purposes. And the reason why it's considered not a bomb today is because movies used to get released a lot. And once that cycle started, people really liked it, especially people who could take their kids to it because they remembered seeing it like 10 years earlier when they were, you know, in their teens or young. And it created that cycle and that sort of is the proto form of what would become then again the TV releases and then the VHS releases and so forth. So it is weirdly a viral movie. It's like it's borderline word of mouth that has like, perpetuated it into being this American classic. Because at the time it wasn't right.
56:08
Sam
Because people, they were in the middle of, like, people really couldn't afford that much. You had to choose what you were going to see. Right. And. And this was kind of like. Like people weren't really invested in going to see kind of like a children's fairy tale kind of thought. So, yeah, they went to go see Gone with the Wind or any of the other movies. They just didn't.
56:30
Ashley
Well, and I think that's, that's important. That's important to mention is like, this movie came out in the same year as Gone with the Wind and Gone with the Wind. Correct me if I'm wrong, Case, I feel like you would know. This isn't Gone with the Wind. Adjusting for inflation, like, still the most successful movie of all time.
56:50
Case
It's up there in conversation. Conversation, yeah. It might have been eclipsed just with like the crazy budgets or like the crazy successes that we've seen in the 21st century, but certainly prior to Titanic, it would it uncontested. I mean, I'm just not sure.
57:06
Ashley
This is a terrible analogy, but it's similar to like, didn't like Phantom of the Opera and Into the woods open on Broadway in the same year kind of a thing.
57:17
Sam
I was like, let me look that up.
57:19
Case
Guinness Book of World Records. Don't tell me what the adjusted inflation price is. Is it the best?
57:24
Sam
Oh, God, you're like, oh, yeah.
57:27
Case
It is actually still ahead of Avatar. It is at 3.7 billion.
57:31
Ashley
I thought so.
57:33
Case
Yeah. So it's pretty fucking crazy.
57:38
Ashley
Also. Let's just have a minute. I just looked this up. The. The top 10 movies that were released in 1939, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Jesse James, Babes in Arms, which also star Judy Garland, the Wizard of Oz, Gunga Din, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Dodge City, the Rains Come, and the women. Of those, at least five are still classic staples. When you think of the fact that those all opened in the same year and people had to pick and choose what they went to see. I mean, the fact that wizard of Oz still ranked, like, fifth out of that top 10 list, if it had opened in another year, it might have been number one. But I mean, the kind. The movies that were released that year, just Insane. And Gone with the Wind, I mean, the. The.
58:24
Ashley
Oh, gosh, what's it called? The. The road show that they did for that was. I mean, there was no competing with it.
58:29
Case
Yeah. I mean, everyone talks about Gone with the Wind, which is just like. Yeah, that one other movie obviously was going to do better. But when you bring up that whole list, that is crazy. How many just, like, huge movies there were, at least in terms of, like, cultural impact.
58:42
Ashley
I'm looking at, like, the Academy Award nominations that year. There was also Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Huckleberry Finn, the Three Musketeers, the Ice Follies of 1939, the Little Princess with. I think that was a Shirley Temple one, Hound of the Baskervilles, a Buck Rogers film. And I'm not. I'm not even naming everything. I'm just. This is just some of them that's.
59:10
Case
Like, when people talk about, like, 1982 being, like, the best year in sci fi. Like, yeah, this is. This is just like. Oh, yeah. If you want to talk about studio system movies. 1939.
59:18
Sam
Yeah.
59:19
Ashley
Man in the. Man in the Iron Mask and Wizard of Oz didn't come out till August, so it was relatively toward the end of the season. Golden Boy came out also. Just some hilarious things. Gulliver's Travels, a Zorro film, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Those were all in the same year. Yeah, this. I mean, that was the year if wizard of Oz was going to get lost in the shuffle. I mean. Yeah.
59:44
Case
Even with it being as big of a cultural force as the property was, it wasn't going to stand up against some of these also again, it wasn't the first time they had adapted wizard of Oz. So it'd be kind of like if someone made new Harry Potter movies that were actual Harry Potter movies, not fantastic Beasts and tried to be like, hey, come, go watch this. Like they might better Harry Potter movies. Like it's still not going to be the first ones that people who were looking for an adaptation were looking for.
01:00:13
Ashley
Right. And most of the people. Because that, I mean that's the interesting thing is I need to double check the dates, but I think that the more recent silent films of the wizard of Oz there had been some adaptations in the 20s, but certainly we're talking like at most like 15 years between the silent film and this one coming out. So most adults would have a memory of going to a movie theater to see the wizard of Oz previously. So for them it kind of was a remake.
01:00:43
Case
And they also. I've seen some of it. I haven't like ever like just sat down and watched the whole thing, but I've seen stills and I've seen little clips. They didn't look that great to me.
01:00:51
Ashley
So no. Oh, and side note, I double checked. Yes, both Phantom and Into the woods were up for Tony's in 1981. No, no, sorry, Phantom and Into the woods were 1988. They were both up for best Musical. So I mean there are many other similar examples but it's one of those things of like just kind of getting lost in the wrong year.
01:01:11
Case
Yeah.
01:01:12
Sam
So I mean this was nominated for Oscar though and they did.
01:01:15
Ashley
Oh yeah, no, for sure.
01:01:16
Sam
Like, like this film was nominated even though it did not make back the money that it made. It was, it was acknowledged like the Academy did acknowledge the work that was placed into it. So we should say that like it's just, it was a bomb and release did make it. But I think word of mouth also probably helped that release because it did win awards and it was an award winning film. So ten years after that when it was released, it was a chance for people to see that when they had more money in order to see that film because it had won awards, it was easier to kind of market.
01:01:54
Ashley
It also did very well with merchandising.
01:01:56
Case
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Well, and you know, and it was critically acclaimed. Like it again, it didn't bomb so bad that it didn't make its money and it was well regarded and people were very impressed with the Makeup that almost killed the actors. And, like, there's been. Right. And all these pyrotechnics.
01:02:18
Sam
Every.
01:02:18
Case
Every time we talk about someone almost burning in this movie, I'm like, that scene didn't require fire.
01:02:24
Ashley
Valid. Valid.
01:02:25
Case
Every single time. It's an insane movie to talk about in that regard because it's just like, wait, why. Why did you almost kill them there? Not just like, how. Like, that's also important, but, like, why it's always like, a part.
01:02:38
Sam
Even when the wicked witch is. Is. Is descending. Right. She's leaving. The smoke would have been enough. You definitely lose her in the scene. And she would have been gone without the fire. You. You did not.
01:02:53
Ashley
You know, I mean, at certain Hollywood executives, it's like, if you can add fire.
01:02:58
Sam
Right.
01:02:58
Ashley
I mean, pizzazz.
01:03:00
Speaker 4
Yeah.
01:03:01
Case
I get that impulse.
01:03:05
Sam
We're looking at you, Michael. Bay explosions.
01:03:10
Ashley
Yeah. And then Judy Garland, they still didn't quite know what to do with her after this movie.
01:03:14
Sam
And I will say that, like, there was an interview with one of the. The last little people who worked on this film, and he did say that she was very nice and she gave all of them autographs and chocolate. On the last day, everyone got a box of chocolate from Judy herself. So.
01:03:33
Ashley
And her. Her kids said that, you know, she was 16. She had a great time on that set. So barring, you know, the. It seems like most of the awful things that happened to Judy Garland were general things that were already going on in the studio system. Not necessarily wizard of Oz specific, whereas with other people was very wizard of Oz specific.
01:03:53
Case
Yeah. Like, I mentioned that Victor Fleming slapped her on set. Apparently he felt bad about it and asked people to slap him to make up for it.
01:04:00
Ashley
Right.
01:04:00
Sam
And then she kissed him on the nose to absolve him of his guilt. Which is so weird, though.
01:04:05
Case
So weird. Like, it's just. There's so many things that just wouldn't fly today. And this movie made when it was, people were like, that's showbiz, baby. And like.
01:04:16
Ashley
But no, the sad thing is, if you take the fantasy element out of it, anything that went wrong that did not specifically have to do with the fantasy element and the makeup and all that stuff is stuff that happened probably on most film sets back in the day, you know.
01:04:29
Sam
Yeah.
01:04:30
Ashley
The pay discrepancies, slapping people on set.
01:04:33
Sam
Yeah. The drug use, the uppers, the downers, stuff like that. Yeah. The long hours.
01:04:42
Case
Yeah. Like, eating disorders for. For actresses is not. Has not gone away.
01:04:46
Sam
Yeah.
01:04:46
Case
Like, one.
01:04:48
Ashley
And also, along with the sort of plastic surgery thing Is in addition to literal plastic surgery, there were cosmetic things that they would do in the staged photo shoots. Like anytime you see a staged photo of Judy Garland, she has little things in her nose to make her nostrils flare out a little bit. She has fake teeth in like there were a lot of things that they also, you know, before Instagram filters that they would do anytime a celebrity, especially the women were photographed. So even, you know, she wasn't even like, you know, from the way she viewed it good enough to just like take a normal photo of her, let alone without all of this other stuff on top of her to make her look quote unquote decent.
01:05:28
Case
You just read about it and you just feel so bad for her and for everyone. But like especially for her because she was just a kid.
01:05:34
Ashley
Yeah, absolutely. And her mother was also assisting everything. Like it sounds like based on what I've read, that Shirley Temple came out of the whole thing pretty unscathed. But a lot of that she attributes to the fact that she had a phenomenal mother that was with her all the time. And that was not the Case for everybody.
01:05:53
Sam
Yeah, her mom was definitely a lot more a solid source for her and was when Shirley was done, her mom was not upset at that at all and helped her really navigate what her next moves would be. So it was, you know, it's nice that she had the support.
01:06:14
Ashley
I also find it interesting. I'm reading Hayley Mills's autobiography right now and it seems like, I mean, who knows, because none of us were there, but it seems like the Disney kids that were active at the studio while Walt Disney was alive and active in their careers, it seems like they were very well taken care of too and left with very positive experiences, which has not been the Case for Disney stars. Sort of post 1980s, 70s.
01:06:43
Sam
I would say that sounds about right.
01:06:45
Case
Yeah. I mean we're living in the age of a post free Britney and that, you know, certainly was a more modern day version of some of the crap we're talking about here.
01:06:57
Ashley
Well, it's, I guess the one interesting perspective I have is I was born and raised in la. I grew up in LA and I was a child actor like in Hollywood from a young age. I'm very fortunate. I had a positive experience. I have an incredible mom, only lovely things generally personally to say, but I know a lot of people that I grew up with that cannot say that. And I've seen a lot of it from the other side too. And it's, you know, certain things have changed, but certain things have not. They've just gotten dressed up in different vocabulary and different ways of dealing with it.
01:07:29
Case
On that note,.
01:07:32
Sam
It's like, how do we segue away from that?
01:07:35
Case
I mean, if we want to follow the yellow brick road to happier things. Ash, you've got stuff that you've got going on in your life.
01:07:47
Sam
Yeah, Ash, lead us to happier things. Things in your life.
01:07:51
Ashley
Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness. Well, first of all, I'll say that one of the things I'm very happy about the world that we live in today is the fact that this stuff is coming out of the woodwork and it's become common knowledge. And I think, at least to a degree, there's certainly more transparency in the world at large than there was in the 30s when this movie was made. And I think the fact that we can look at this and, you know, acknowledge the wonderful work of art that came out of it, but the terrible way that some of it came about can hopefully inspire all of us to really advocate for making the changes that need to be made so things like that don't ever happen again.
01:08:31
Ashley
And, you know, when we're the ones that are in charge of a film set or a theatrical piece to, you know, learn from the mistakes of past eras, you know, I think that's hopefully the positive thing to take away from it that, you know, when. When a leading actress says, I'm not comfortable with a. A dangerous stunt to maybe not default to shoot, but we're losing money, so just, you know, shut up and do it. Of like, oh, maybe I'm gonna remember that doesn't always end so well. And I should be thankful that I have an actress that's going to speak up. And let's make sure that we take care of this for the safety of everybody involved.
01:09:03
Ashley
But in terms of what I have going on, I have a couple plays in development that I'm just waiting to hear on dates for when we're going to open Off Broadway. That's very exciting. I have a couple other projects in the works I don't know if I can totally talk about as of now. I have a very fun web series that's an offshoot of my Off Broadway show Spectacle, the musical that we've been developing during COVID when were all locked down and couldn't continue with, you know, doing it on stage. But if anybody wants to follow me, stalk me, check me out. My website is ashley griffinofficial.com my Instagram handle is Ashley Griffin, official on Twitter. I'm Ashley J. Griffin. And I have a YouTube channel too, so please come follow me on all the places.
01:09:43
Ashley
And I'm very thankful to have outlets like this to share all the useless trivia knowledge that just sits rent free in my brain 24 hours a day. So.
01:09:52
Case
Oh, we're so happy to have you come on for this one.
01:09:55
Sam
And it is absolutely useful. Please do not call it useless. Is absolutely.
01:10:00
Ashley
No, I think it says something about me that like, I did not do any research preparation for this episode. Like everything I said, I mean, I double checked it after I said it, but everything I said came from the annals of my brain.
01:10:11
Sam
That's.
01:10:12
Ashley
That says something a little bit about,.
01:10:14
Case
About you kept firing off names and I was like, holy hell. I'm having a hard time like keeping up. Like I'm scrolling through Wikipedia quickly just to make sure I have all the actors names correct.
01:10:23
Ashley
Yeah, well, no, I mean I, I've, I have three areas of expertise. Broadway, theater plays and musicals, Shakespeare and anything to do with fairy tales. So I can rattle off some useless stuff if you want me to do math for you. That's not going to go as well, so. Yeah.
01:10:41
Case
Well, that's why we all have calculators with us all the time now.
01:10:43
Sam
Yeah.
01:10:44
Case
We can't always have Ashley Griffin with us all the time. And that's the important part.
01:10:49
Ashley
Oh, thank you. But I do love the wizard of Oz. I think the trials and tribulations are really tragic, but I'm grateful that we have the movie that came out of it. But yeah, I mean, hopefully the joy of something inspires people to learn more about it. And I think that education can be really helpful in a lot of different areas of life.
01:11:09
Case
Yeah. How much more tragic would this movie have been if all of this happened and then we just forgot the movie?
01:11:15
Ashley
Oh, God. Well, the thing is, I'm sure there are movies like that.
01:11:18
Case
Yeah.
01:11:19
Ashley
That we just don't know about. There's certainly like really terrible, you know, low budget things that get made every year that are probably very dangerous that never even make it to streaming somewhere that we don't know about.
01:11:30
Case
But, but then we have examples like this and that at least like helps us be more aware of the things like, you know, the one silver lining to like anytime you hear a horror story that has, that elicits change is that horror story has the potential to elicit change. And hopefully people hear about it and hopefully people don't disregard things that are safety procedures or so forth just to, you know, just to Get a shot in as quickly as possible. And we know it still happens. Like, Ash, you and I were working when Spider Man Turn off the Dark was going on Broadway.
01:12:01
Ashley
I was all. I was close to being in Spider Man Turn off the Dark, which is a whole other thing. And that was.
01:12:06
Case
I mean, last year we. We had like, the Alec Baldwin shooting situation. Like, you know, it's not. It has not gone away, and it probably will never go away fully, but at least more people are aware of it. At least. At least they're the anomaly instead of the norm. And that's the one goal I have and why I feel good about doing an episode like this. So that if a random podcast listener who wanted to tune in to us talking about a weird psychedelic 60s movie and then the next episode we're talking about this, it's like, all right, yeah, that's fine.
01:12:38
Ashley
Well, the other thing I do want to throw out, though, is I do think that the dangerous place that this conversation can go, and I've definitely heard it come up in conversations, is the idea that it doesn't matter how you get there as long as you come up with a great product. Like the idea that the wizard of Oz is so great that it doesn't matter what kind of abuse and injury and pain people suffered as long as we got the wizard of Oz out of it. And I think that is a really dangerous and really bad way to think about things because there are long term consequences.
01:13:12
Ashley
For example, I would much have prefer, as much as I love the wizard of Oz, I would have far preferred for Judy Garland to live a long, happy, healthy life filled with creating lots of great art because she was treated in a healthy manner. You know, I would. And I think that we don't always think about what the real sacrifices are, that if you chalk it up to like, oh, somebody got burned, but then they're better and it's worth it. It's like, no, like, lives can be destroyed and careers can be destroyed. And I don't ever think that the excuse that getting good art out of it is worth any kind of abuse you're going to inflict on people. That makes me angry.
01:13:52
Ashley
The flip side of it is when you take out the actual, like, dangerous things, like take out the injury and stuff, and just talk about the things that were probably very difficult, like switching directors and, you know, not for somebody not getting Shirley Temple. I think we can also hold those up as examples of, you know, kind of God works in mysterious ways. And sometimes things that feel like real setbacks or real frustrations are actually the things that are going to make something successful. You know, not having Shirley Temple allowed Judy Garland to become iconic in this film, having three different directors is probably what resulted in making the film as special and unique as it is. So that. That's always a good thing, I think, to a way to look at theoretical setbacks. When they happen on something you're working.
01:14:36
Case
Those are the positive, like elements of the fifth episodes that we talked about here, like the movies we talked about there, like, where it's like, oh, this is adversity and they overcame it. Those are the good things that we can look at and be like, oh, isn't that either fortuitous or clever or whatever. But this is a movie beset with a lot.
01:14:53
Sam
And I will say that, you knowing the, Knowing the hardships that these actors went through and the performers went through on set, it. It actually adds to their amazing performances. Not because I want them to have gone through that, but because I am so amazed that they were able to get through that and do it. And so it adds another level of appreciation. Again, not to say that this is what actors need to go through, but it makes that performance by Margaret Hamilton, which is amazing, that much more amazing because I know that she put everything there and she loved like she. She did what she had to do to make this performance amazing soldiering through. And I do wish that she didn't have to this do this.
01:15:46
Sam
And I wish that she had been able to have agency enough to sue what she wanted to do, but she was worried that she wouldn't work again.
01:15:54
Ashley
She stood up for herself in a time and a situation where that could have been career devastating. The fact that she refused to get on that broom when she came back, I mean, I do not want anything bad to happen to the stunt double that should never have happened. But that's always been inspiring to me that like, if Margaret Hamilton in that situation had enough guts to like, be like, no, I'm not doing this right now. Also, if anybody wants some to see something very uplifting on YouTube, there's an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where Margaret Hamilton was a guest and. And she came on and they got a witch costume and she comes out like normally dressed and she talks about her grandkids and. And she's very sweet.
01:16:33
Ashley
And it's basically sort of demystifying the fear obviously, that, you know, we can all associate with scary characters on film. Especially Case they talk and the. They talk about, you know, that it's like Halloween and putting on the costume and playing the role and it's just like the most heartwarming thing. So I highly recommend everybody checking that out. It's delightful.
01:16:57
Sam
It was very helpful with the wizard of Oz. It did not help me with my fear of Darth Vader, though I was pretty sure, oh gosh, he was not a costume. Very real.
01:17:08
Case
Well, people should check that out and then they should check out other stuff. We have Sam, if people wanted to find you, follow you, see what else you had going on, where could they find you, follow you, see what else you have going on.
01:17:20
Sam
They can find me here as always, speaking with you and other lovely people. And occasionally I check the Discord when I remember it exists. But other than that I'm exploring Oz right now and trying to help them with a little problem they have. So if they have any complaints about anything, I said they can find you.
01:17:39
Case
Case for me it's all a dream, but I live in a dreaming existence. So you can find me on Twitter Aase Aiken. You can find the show at Another Pass. You can find more episodes of this show@ certainpov.com where you can also find the link to the Discord that Sam referenced where you can come interact with us directly. But do check out certainpow.com we've got tons of great shows that Ashley has been on such as Saturday Morning Confidential with our friend Matty Limerick. So check that out. I forget the last time you're on, but you've been on a couple of times there.
01:18:11
Ashley
I have. Oh my goodness, what was the last one I did with Maddie?
01:18:14
Case
Still have been dole whipping dreams at that point.
01:18:16
Ashley
I don't remember for sure. But I actually have my own podcast on the onstage network called Stage Directions where I sort of do deep dives into everything theater related, Broadway related and have some really fun guests on too.
01:18:30
Case
Oh yeah, and check that out too. There's so many good podcasts. And then come back for the next episode of Another Pass. Sam, what is the next episode of Another Pass?
01:18:38
Sam
Next time we'll be talking about Highlander 2 the Quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.
01:18:51
Case
Thanks for listening to Certain Point of View's Another Pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on itunes. Just go to certainpov.com.
01:19:04
Sam
Another pass is a certain POV production. Our hosts are Sam Alicea and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.
01:19:20
Case
One, two, three.
01:19:23
Ashley
Oh, I did not do that at the same time as you.
01:19:25
Sam
That's fine.
01:19:25
Speaker 4
No, no, no.
01:19:26
Case
It is totally fine. This is not movie where we need to get it so that the audio syncs up with our mouths. This is just so that when we're. That when Matt, our editor, is looking at the timeline, he can see, like, okay, there's three spikes at about the same time. And then when I'm like, this is Ashley Griffin, and you say, hello, and it's like, four seconds late. It's like, oh, I just need to nudge that over to the left a little bit.
01:19:47
Ashley
Can we do that again then? Because I messed that up.
01:19:49
Case
No, no, no.
01:19:51
Sam
We're good. Yeah. Matt is. Matt is a genius. He'll be, he'll be fine with it. We love you, Matt.
01:19:55
Ashley
Thank you for your help.
01:20:00
Case
I love you, Matt.
01:20:03
Sam
I, I, I always thank Matt profusely. And because of it, now Case has to. And it's amazing. And not that he wouldn't, and not that he didn't want to. It's just that he didn't understand that words of affirmation make Matt very happy.
01:20:18
Ashley
Oh, no, wait.
01:20:20
Case
Cut.
01:20:20
Ashley
Cut to, like, the episode where Sam, you thank him and Case, you don't. And, like, Case, all of your audio is, like, screwed up. And Sam sounds phenomenal.
01:20:30
Case
He just pitches me up a little.
01:20:31
Ashley
Too high and adds that, like, electronic reverb on it or something.
01:20:36
Sam
Matt is a professional, so he would never do that. But he might think about it.
01:20:43
Ashley
Just don't give him an April Fool's deadline on anything.
01:20:47
Case
Don't put ideas in his head. We have a wonderful symbiotic relationship.
01:20:50
Ashley
Hey, Matt, give me a call. We'll come up with some ideas in chat.
01:20:53
Case
Oh, God, my allergies are killing. I, I'm over a cold now, but, like, I have allergies. And so it's been that, like, oh, am I still sick? No, no, it's just pollen.
01:21:01
Sam
Yay. Plant sex organs in the air. You're welcome.
01:21:08
Ashley
The title of your next podcast, the new comic Coming.
01:21:14
Sam
I really like reminding people that is what is happening.
01:21:19
Case
Cpov. Certainpov. Com.