Wizard of Oz curse - excruciating burns, poisoning and Judy Garland's pill addiction

Wicked fever has swept across the UK, with the new musical film earning £14 million at the box office on its opening weekend. The prelude to the Wizard of Oz showcases Elphaba, the green-faced sorceress who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, played by Cynthia Erivo, and her rivalry-turned-friendship with Ariana Grande ’s Glinda the Good Witch.

But the original 1939 fantasy film left many of its cast members permanently scarred - both physically and mentally - and set its lead star Judy Garland down a path of drug dependancy that would ultimately take her life at the age of 47.

The Wizard of Oz, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, one of the first films to introduce Technicolor and was nominated for five Academy Awards, but it wasn’t a commercial success and didn’t break even on its - at that time, vast - $2.7million production budget in its first year. It wasn’t until its 1949 re-release that the film made any money for its Hollywood studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

But it’s a wonder that the whole cast actually survived the shooting of the film, as multiple accidents, horrific injuries and four different directors gave lie to the concept of a Wizard of Oz Curse.

“Health and safety regulations weren’t the same as they are now, and studios were allowed to get away with treating their stars appallingly,” explains Dr Ellen Wright, senior lecturer in cinema and TV history at De Montford University.

“It was just how they worked, their stars were treated like workhorses. They were signed into contracts for seven years that they couldn’t get out of, and they were asked to do awful things. If they refused they were penalised.”

Judy was just 16 at the time of filming, having started appearing on stage with her sisters as part of a vaudeville act. Once she was locked into the MGM contract, her life was in the studio execs’ hands. She was put on a strict diet of chicken soup, black coffee and cigarettes, and given pills to kill her appetite.

Studio head Louis B. Mayer would constantly scrutinise the teenager’s weight and appearance. “He would apparently refer to her lovingly as ‘my little hunchback’, says Ellen. “He was hateful to her, all the time, so unsurprisingly she ended up with chronic body dysmorphia.”

Standing at just 4 feet 11.5 inches, Judy was already tiny, but had every morsel of food watched by her minders. Her breasts were bound and her body squeezed into tight corsets to give the impression of the wholesome young Dorothy.

“There was a birthday party thrown for her by the studio, but it was a couple of weeks early to fit into her schedule. She couldn’t even celebrate her birthday on the right day!” says Ellen. “They photographed the party for the fan magazines but she wasn’t allowed a slice of her own cake because it would make her fat.”

Judy had been put on amphetamines from the age of nine by her mother, and her drug use ramped up during the long gruelling days of filming. She’d start the day with her ‘pep pills’ - speed - to boost her energy levels, but would be so wired by nighttime that she needed barbiturates to help her sleep.

“They had us working days and nights on end,” Judy later told her biographer Paul Donnelley. “They’d give us pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they’d take us to the studio hospital and knock us out with sleeping pills­… Then after four hours they’d wake us up and give us the pep pills again so we could work 72 hours in a row. Half of the time we were hanging from the ceiling but it was a way of life for us.”

By the time filming wrapped, Judy was a full-blown addict - and her drug abuse followed her for the rest of her life. “She suffered from this chronic sense of not being enough,” says Ellen. “She was clearly a talented young woman, but Mayer bullied all the fight out of her.”

It wasn’t just the film’s lead who suffered on set. The original Tin Man actor, Buddy Ebson, was hospitalised and nearly died of toxic aluminium poisoning just 10 days into filming. “His makeup was pure powdered aluminium, which he was inhaling for hours and hours, but the studio weren’t aware this could be potentially fatal,” explains Ellen.

Buddy had already recorded all the Tin Man’s vocals, so the studio decided to reshoot his scenes with a replacement, Jack Haley. Even Haley came to harm on set - despite the makeup team quietly switching to an aluminium paste rather than powder to give him the Tin Man’s characteristic silver form, he ended up with an eye infection from the metal irritant.

Bert Lahr, who played the Lion, collapsed with heat exhaustion after wearing his 100lb fur costume for hours at a time under the hot Kleig lights. He could only drink his lunch through a straw and was forced to lie down on boards to eat.

Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow, had permanent damage done to his face from the prosthetic mask he wore. And Terry, the little dog who played Toto didn’t escape injury: her paw was sprained when one of the cast stepped on it, and she spent two weeks recuperating at Judy’s home.

One of the nastiest injuries sustained on set was by Margaret Hamilton, a teacher and part-time actor hired to play the green-faced Wicked Witch of the West. She was left with excruciating third-degree burns on her face and arms when a pyrotechnic mishap set light to her copper-based makeup.

“She point blank refused to do any more stunts after that, so the studio had to hire a body-double to film the stunts instead,” says Ellen. Unfortunately, Hamilton’s stand-in Betty Danko received serious burns while filming the Witch’s fiery entrance to Munchkinland, when the smoking broomstick she was sitting on exploded. She spent 11 days in hospital and had permanent scarring on her legs.

“They were just another cog in the machine,” says Ellen. “The big stars were remunerated fairly handsomely, they had the big houses, the expensive cars. But a lot of the time the houses weren’t theirs, the cars were on tick, the clothes they wore were loaned out by the wardrobe department, and the argument was, ‘we pay you well so we can treat you like s***’. They were in a gilded cage. Some of the stuff they were asked to do was unbelievably dangerous, and they just had to do it.”

Judy and Ray even had to roll around in asbestos during a scene in which Dorothy and the Scarecrow fall asleep in a field full of poppies, which turns into a snowy blizzard. “That’s what they used as snow, they had no idea it was carcinogenic so she was just inhaling all of that asbestos,” says Ellen.

“There were very few stars who could command any say-so because you were up against a formidable machine that had you in its grasp. You did what they told you - whether that was rolling around in asbestos, being bullied or being fed loads of drugs.”

Tragically, Judy died aged 47 from an overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind her three children - Liza Minnelli, Lorna and Joey Luft. Despite earning millions over her glittering career, her estate was worth just $40,000 - £200,000 in today’s money - by the end.

“Judy brought so much joy to so many people but she could never see that in herself,” says Ellen. “All that money, all that success and she never really loved herself.”