The Wizard of Oz

Continuity mistake: Dorothy raises her right arm and points at the horizon and cries, "There's Emerald City!", then lowers her arm. A shot later from the angle shot from behind, it's raised again and she's repeating all previous movements. (00:54:41)

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Toto escapes from the castle, jumping over the moat, Dorothy starts crying. A shot later, her right arm is leaning on the wall. (01:17:46)

Sacha

Revealing mistake: When Dorothy bumps into the Tin Man, she knocks on his foot, which sounds metallic. However, her fist sinks, revealing it is made of a soft material.

Sacha

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the beginning while Dorothy is still on the farm, she walks along the pig pen fence and then falls in. When Bert Lahr picks her up out of there her dress is perfectly clean. (00:03:45)

Revealing mistake: When the Lion runs out of the Wizard's room, the group disappears because it is an obvious backdrop.

Sacha

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When the Wicked Witch scares the Munchkins in Munchkinland, where Dorothy lands, she disappears into a cloud of smoke she creates. But you can see her sneak down into a trap door below. [As a sidenote to this entry, Margaret Hamilton was hospitalized for severe burns after a take of this shot (not the final one used) when the stage elevator got stuck and the explosion went off.] (00:30:45)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: During the scene when Dorothy and Scarecrow are fighting with the trees, Scarecrow says "I'll show you how to get apples" and he gets hit by the apples. In the very next shot, a quick view of Dorothy reveals she is wearing black shoes, not her ruby slippers. (00:40:15)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: During the sequence where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, Dorothy's pigtails are first short (above her shoulders) and as the song progresses her hair gets longer (below her shoulders), then short, and then long again. (00:35:15)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Revealing mistake: Soon after Dorothy slaps the Cowardly Lion, she looks as though she is about to laugh out loud. This happens about 10 seconds or so after the slap. She even tries to put Toto in front of her face to cover up her smirking. (00:48:45)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture Video

Revealing mistake: When the guard tells Dorothy that she may not see the Wizard, Dorothy starts crying and tells a sob story about Auntie Em. Then, it shows the guard crying, but the tears aren't coming from his eyes. They're coming from above his eyebrows. (01:08:00)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When the Lion is pulling up the Tin Man with his tail on the way to the castle, you can see a square block inside the Lion's costume to hold the tail on. (01:20:00)

Revealing mistake: During the Lion's song of, "If I only had the nerve." You can see the cameraman's shadow pass over Dorothy, the Lion, and then the log on the side of the road. Watch carefully, it comes back. (00:52:18)

Continuity mistake: When Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion are marching into the Wicked Witch's castle after taking the guards' uniforms, all three of them are shown holding the same types of spears as the guards, so when they go rescue Dorothy out of the locked room and Tin Man chops through the door with his axe, where did the axe come from? (01:22:50)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: I'm 63 years old and still watch The Wizard of Oz. If I remember correctly, the axe was taken off a nearby wall.

There is no scene of him taking the axe off the wall, nor is there any axe seen on any of the walls. Plus, it's the same axe he had the whole time. But the 3 also take off their coats/disguises while the camera is on Dorothy and it's possible he had the axe tucked away in the coat.

Bishop73

In the books, the Tin Man always has his axe and he uses it often. Perhaps it is the same in the movie.

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When trying to escape the Witch's castle, the big doors close, and the gang stands in a line and starts banging on the doors. Between shots, Dorothy and the Tin Man switch sides. (01:21:15)

Hamster

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: As the chandelier falls on the guards at the witch's castle, all the candles are blown out by the time it lands. The next shot shows some of them relit. (01:24:50)

Visible crew/equipment: Glinda sends Dorothy off saying, "Just follow the Yellow Brick Road" and Dorothy walks through the shadow of the camera's crane. (00:32:05)

????

Audio problem: At the very end of, "We Welcome You to Munchkin Land," at the very last 'fa la la la la laaaaaa' right before the Wicked Witch interrupts the song with her explosive arrival, you can hear someone scream before the explosion even occurs. (00:29:04)

The Wizard of Oz mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the Witch melts, the broom is laying several inches from her dress. In the next shot, the broom is practically touching her dress. (01:26:20)

brantlee

Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?

More quotes from The Wizard of Oz

Trivia: "Over the Rainbow", which the American Film Institute recently named the greatest movie song of all time, was nearly cut from the film.

More trivia for The Wizard of Oz

Question: At the very end of the movie after Dorothy says "Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home," normally, it fades out to the credits, but once - and only once - when I was very young, I thought I remembered seeing the camera pan away from her face and down to the foot of the bed where you see the ruby slippers tucked underneath the bed, then a fade to the credits. It is obviously a black-and-white shot, but there were the glittering shoes. Has anyone else seen this version of the ending?

Macalou

Answer: Another fine example of the Mandela Effect. None of the "making of" books reference this alternate ending. The original book ends with Dorothy losing the slippers on her journey back to Kansas.

wizard_of_gore

I also remember this scene; however, I remember it in a television movie, and it was at the beginning, not the end, of an entirely different movie.

Chosen answer: Yes. I'm sure I've seen that version. It shows that Dorothy didn't just dream about Oz and makes for a more satisfying conclusion. This version was original but edited out because it didn't follow the book's storyline for "Return to Oz" and the other long series of Oz books. The sequel pertains that she loses the slippers in transit back to her home and falls to the gnome king who destroys Oz which in turn causes Dorothy to return. So seeing the slippers at the end of the bed, while more satisfying, wouldn't really stay true to the Oz series.

I absolutely remember that version with the shoes at her bedside, but nobody I know remembers it.

Thank you! I remember that too but everyone I know thinks I'm nuts.

I remember that version and after that I expected to see the same ending but no I never saw that ending again. I got the response that no-one I know saw that ending of the movie where the ruby slippers being on her feet in her bed. Thank you for that answer. This was a long time mystery.

I absolutely remember that scene.

I remember that too - and I've asked so many people and they said no, I must have dreamed it. Thank you.

I saw that version once when I was a little kid too! I remember it vividly. Now I know I'm not crazy.

Answer: This seems to be one of those mass examples of people remembering something that never happened. There are also other variations, like people claiming to remember the film switching to color as the shot pans down to her slipper-clad feet, or the slippers being in color against the sepia-toned B&W footage. But sadly, it seems no officially released version of the film has had such an ending. It's similar to how everyone thinks Darth Vader says "Luke, I am your father," or how everyone thinks Humphrey Bogart says "Play it again, Sam!", even though neither of those lines are real, and people are merely incorrectly remembering them. The film is so ingrained in pop-culture, that people think they know it forwards-and-back, and false memories are created.

TedStixon

I agree that people think they remember things that never happened, but usually for things like this, remembering a scene wrong misquoting a movie lines, it comes from parody versions and people are (correctly) remembering the parody. I've never seen "Silence of the Lambs", but I know the line "Hello, Clarice" from films like "Cable Guy" and not from a false memory of the film.

Bishop73

Answer: https://criticsrant.com/mythbusters-dorothys-ruby-slippers/ This website gives some confirmation it's one of those myths that spread around and get mixed up in people's memories to being convinced they have seen it despite no evidence of it existing. In a film as big as the Wizard of Oz where die hard fans have collected original scripts, notes, and "lost" imagery over the years; we certainly would have something to back this up other than eye witness memory. Especially if it supposedly made it to the final print for viewing audiences as the original Wizard of Oz footage has been carefully preserved, as it's considered one of the most important films of all time. This footage wouldn't be completely lost if it made it to final showing print. Surely somebody would have posted it by now on YouTube. It is possible somebody made a skit or parody of this though contributing to the idea that it was actually in a print of the real movie.

Answer: I remember this being part of a special that was hosted by Angela Lansbury in 1990 and they showed that this ending was considered for the movie. For many years I couldn't remember why I remembered that ending and Angela Lansbury until I looked it up. I wish that it had been left like that. Kids always want their dreams to come true.

Answer: I and a friend of mine remember seeing the ruby slippers under Dorthy's bed at the end of the movie. Glad to know we didn't imagine it.

More questions & answers from The Wizard of Oz

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