75 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Wizard Of Oz

Judy Garland's white and blue dress was actually pink and blue, as the pink showed up better as white in Technicolour

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Toto the dog was paid $75 more per week than the Munchkins during filming

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Toto was played by a female dog named Terry

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The Cowardly Lion was originally going to be played by the real-life MGM lion, which sounds dangerous…

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…though not as dangerous as the snow used in the famous poppy scene in the film, which was made from asbestos! *cough*

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The oil used to lubricate the Tin Man was actually chocolate syrup

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Actress Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch, lived on a liquid diet during filming as her make-up was toxic and couldn’t be ingested. So Beyoncé of her!

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There were approximately 3,210 costumes created for the film.

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Many of the Wicked Witch's scenes were cut from the movie as producers thought children would find them too scary.

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Judy Garland's hair actually changes length throughout the film due to some scenes being re-shot at a later date.

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In the original Wizard Of Oz novel, Dorothy wore silver slippers. *GASP*

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One of the Witch's guards accidentally stepped on Terry the dog during filming and broke her foot. She spent two weeks at Judy’s house recuperating

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Only two munchkins had speaking parts in the film. The rest were dubbed by professional singers and voice actors

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16-year-old Judy Garland had to wear a painful corset during filming so that she would appear four years younger and flat chested

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Temperatures on set often exceeded 100 degrees due to all the lighting equipment needed to shoot in Technicolour

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Fresh faced actress Billie Burke, who played Glinda the Good Witch, was actually 54-years-old at the time of filming

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The horses in the Emerald City were actually coloured with lemon, grape and cherry flavoured gelatine, which meant scenes needed to be filmed fast, as the horses kept trying to lick it off

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The Cowardly Lion's costume was made from real lion skin...

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…whilst part of the facial prosthetic he wore was made from a brown paper bag

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If you watch the film closely you can see wrinkles in the Tin Man's trousers when he falls over, which suggests to us that he may not have been made of Tin after all

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In Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal music video he does the same dance move as the Tin Man in The Wizard Of Oz

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However, when Jackson starred in a musical adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz called The Wiz, he actually played the part of the Scarecrow

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The Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Wicked Witch were all banned from eating in the MGM cafeteria during filming as their costumes kept scaring the rest of the cast

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The Wizard Of Oz was nominated for six Oscars, but lost to Gone with the Wind for Best Picture in 1940

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In the original 120-minute long cut of the film, which only a test audience got to see, the Wicked Witch writes ‘Surrender Dorothy or Die in the sky with her broom

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Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli ended up marrying Jack Haley's (Tin Man) son Jack Jr. in 1974. They were together for four years

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Return To Oz, Disney's unofficial sequel to Oz, was released a whopping 46 years after The Wizard of Oz

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Although not a direct sequel, Return to Oz was still awarded a place in The Guinness Book of Records for a sequel made the longest period of time after the original

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We should also add that the 1985 cult classic also introduced us to a then 10-year-old Fairuza Balk, who played Dorothy in the film, and would later go on to star in ’90s teen classic The Craft

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Dorothy's ruby slippers were a size 5 and are now exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington

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11-year-old child star Shirley Temple was originally meant to play Dorothy, but lost the role to Garland, as her singing voice wasn't up to scratch

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At the start of filming Oz, Judy Garland wore a blonde wig and heavy baby-doll makeup to play Dorothy, before the director decided to ditch the look for something more natural

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Several of the actors playing flying monkeys in the film were injured filming the haunted forest scene when the piano wires holding them snapped

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In the scene where the Witch tries to take off Dorothy's ruby slippers, the film was sped up to make dark apple juice spraying out of her slippers look like fire

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But that didn't prevent Hamilton - who played the Wicked Witch - being hospitalised with severe burns, after the green make-up on her face and hands ignited, whilst filming the scene where she departs Munchkinland in a cloud of smoke

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In 2007, seven of the nine surviving residents of Munchkinland received their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The red carpet used on the day was, naturally, yellow

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In a deleted scene from the original cut of The Wizard Of Oz, Tin Man is turned into a human beehive

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The film was first released on VHS in 1980

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A pair of real ruby slippers were made to celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary in 1989 and were valued at $3million

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Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Man, but had to drop out of the production after only 10 days of filming, when the aluminium powder the make-up artists slathered on him clogged up his lungs, nearly killing him

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Two unlucky crew members were given the unenviable task of drying out the Cowardly Lion's costume every night, which apparently reeked from actor Bert Lahr sweating in it all day

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Terry the dog was so scared of the steam that came out of the Tin Man's hat she can clearly be seen scampering out of one of the scenes in the film

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A total of five directors worked on The Wizard Of Oz!

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Astonishingly, Over the Rainbow was nearly cut from the film, due to MGM executives questioning why Judy Garland was singing in a farmyard. They also thought the song was too sad for kids

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As it turns out, Over The Rainbow went on to win Best Song at the Oscars the following year, and was crowned the 20th Century’s Best Song in 2001

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In 2008, 19 designers were asked to redesign Dorothy's iconic ruby slippers to celebrate the film’s 70th anniversary. Designers including Gwen Stefani, Diane von Furstenberg, and Moschino contributed to the project, which raised money for charity

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When Judy Garland couldn't stop giggling during a scene where she's meant to slap the Cowardly Lion, director Victor Fleming took her aside, and slapped her himself! She then filmed the scene straight after in only one take

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When the yellow brick road originally showed up as green in Technicolour, it had to be repainted with industrial paint, bought from a hardware store down the road from the studio where they were shooting

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The Wizard of Oz has a 99% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes

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The girl’s voice you can hear when the Tin Man sings If I Only Had A Heart belongs to Adriana Caselotti, who also voiced Snow White in the Walt Disney classic

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The face prosthetics that Ray Bolger wore during filming to play the Scarecrow left lines on his face that took a whole year to vanish after production wrapped!

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We can’t quite believe that the tornado at the beginning of the film was created by spinning a large stocking around with dust and dirt. But it was

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And, for the scene where Dorothy's house falls from the sky, a miniature house was dropped onto a painting of a sky. Which is pretty genius, right?

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During filming, Judy Garland fell in love with Terry the dog and wanted to adopt her, but Terry’s owner wouldn’t let her

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Glinda's now iconic gown in The Wizard Of Oz was actually recycled from a film that was released three years earlier called San Francisco

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Even though the shabby coat that Professor Marvel/The Wizard wears in the film was a thrift store find by a crewmember, it was later discovered that it had once belonged to Wizard Of Oz author L. Frank Baum, whose name was sewn on the inside!

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L. Frank Baum's Wizard Of Oz novel actually spawned 17 sequels, three of which were released after the author’s death, in 1919

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Australia's World War II troops used We're Off To See The Wizard as their marching song

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The Munchkins’ famous chant Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, sung by punk band Notsensibles, reached number 2 in the UK charts last year following the death of Margaret Thatcher

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The Wicked Witch spends only 12 minutes on screen over the course of the whole film

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Margaret Hamilton who played the Witch worked on the film for 23 weeks instead of her originally contracted 6-week stint. Perhaps this includes all the time she spent in hospital having her burns treated?

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L. Frank Baum apparently came up with the name for Oz after looking at his filing cabinet one day and seeing 'A-N' and 'O-Z'

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The flying monkeys in the film wear the same uniforms as the Witch's castle guards

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In the books, Oz is a real place, and not a dream

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The date on the Wicked Witch's death certificate is actually the date of Oz author L. Frank Baum's death

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You can clearly see the trap door open that the Wicked Witch jumps into when she’s really meant to be departing Munchkinland in a cloud of smoke!

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In an earlier script for the film, Dorothy’s Aunt Em was meant to play the Witch in Oz, who wanted to kill Toto to punish Dorothy

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Sadly, after a long battle with debilitating arthritis and impending blindness, Clara Blandick who played Auntie Em committed suicide in 1962

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Only seven years later, in 1969, Judy Garland committed suicide following years of substance abuse

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When Judy won an honorary Oscar Juvenile Award for her performance in Oz she later called it the Munchkin Award

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A deleted scene set back in Kansas at the end of the film is said to suggest that Dorothy and Hunk (Scarecrow’s real-life counterpart) had a bit of a thing for each other in the film…

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Most people think the Wicked Witch shouts “Fly my pretties, fly!” in the film, but she actually says “Fly! Fly! Fly!”

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When Dorothy clicks her ruby slippers together in the film she says, “There's no place like home.” But in the book, she actually says, “Take me home to Aunt Em.”

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Many fans have claimed to see one of the Munchkin actors hanging from a tree as Dorothy and friends skip down the yellow brick road! We’d rather trust reports that what you can actually is one of the many birds that were borrowed from a zoo

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As it turns out, it was Dorothy who invented the ice bucket challenge, 75 years ago! And here’s the proof

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