We just re-watched the classic twister flick, The Wizard of Oz (1939), but! We saw it on the big screen for the first time, and it was a revelation.
We were struck by the Technicolor landscape of Oz, with its highlighter-yellow brick road and saturated green of Emerald City.
The Wizard of Oz has always felt upside-down to us, because things make more sense when Dorothy is in the surreal kingdom. The real world, although beautiful in rich sepia tones, feels arbitrary and illogical. Why is everyone so grumpy? Why doesn’t anyone answer Dorothy’s questions? And why does Miss Gulch have such unreasonable hatred for Toto?
However, in glorious Oz, Toto is safe and Dorothy isn’t a pest. Both have the potential to be a Hero in this strange land, because, as you know, they’ve embarked on the traditional Hero’s Journey.
They’re also making new friends. Dorothy gains three traveling companions who, like herself, are searching for Something. Dorothy seeks to go Home, while her companions seek (1) a brain; (2) a heart; and (3) courage – qualities, incidentally, Dorothy already possesses.
Through much dancing, singing, and Derring-Do, Dorothy and Toto defeat the villains and – spoiler alert! – safely return to Kansas.
When all is Resolved, Dorothy has a renewed sense of love for her home (there’s no place like it), and her family has a greater appreciation for her (and her little dog, too).
There’s only one lingering question: How on earth did filmmakers create the tornado effect?
They say The Wizard of Oz was the first Hollywood movie to realistically portray a tornado, and the effect is still impressive today.
Get this: Filmmakers made the tornado out of cloth. A 35-foot-long muslin sock, to be precise, similar to a windsock at an airport.
The original plan was to make the tornado out of a 35-foot-tall rubber cone, but it was too stiff. Then the special effects director developed the muslin sock idea.
According to Arcfield Weather, the top of the tapered sock was attached to a steel gantry, which is like a mount for a crane. The bottom was attached to a rod located in a slot in the floor. This allowed the filmmakers to maneuver the giant sock from side to side, simulating the movement of a tornado.
For the debris, the crew sprayed Fuller’s Earth onto the muslin “tornado”. As the sock shifted, so did the debris, and it sifted through the material, resulting in a wind-blown appearance.
“Four or five feet in front of the cameras were two panels of glass on which gray balls of cotton (great for mammatus clouds) had been pasted,” writes meteorologist Paul Dorian. “The two panels moved in opposite directions adding to the boiling sensation and, at the same time, they obscured the steel gantry and top portion of the tornado.”¹
Footage of this tornado was projected onto a translucent screen behind the actors, while wind machines blasted them, creating the atmosphere of an approaching tornado.
It was the most expensive special effect in the movie, and look how clever it is:
The Wizard of Oz was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Special Effects, but won only two Oscars for music. It did not win for special effects; that award went to The Rains Came (1939), a film about a flood in India.
Oz was a costly movie for MGM. Even though it performed relatively well at the box office, it didn’t turn a profit until its re-release in 1949. Wikipedia says the studio lost $1.45 million US during the initial 1939 release.²
It has garnered far more revenue in the years since, appearing on television (starting in the 1950s), special theatrical screenings, and VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray releases.
When was the first time you saw The Wizard of Oz? Do you think the tornado special effects still Hold Up today?
The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger. Directed by Victor Fleming & King Vidor. Written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939, B&W & Technicolor, 102 mins.