Corrected entry: The Wizard claims to have been in Kansas when his balloon was whisked off to Oz, yet the balloon reads State Fair, Omaha. Omaha is in Nebraska, not Kansas.
Corrected entry: During the Tin Man's dance, you can see a stagehand caught unaware as he dashes behind the cheesy tree props as he tries to hide.
Correction: I looked and I looked and I looked (even in slow-motion on my DVD) - and, frankly, there's NO stagehand visible anywhere in the background.
Corrected entry: If it's so painful when Dorothy picks an apple from the talking trees, why do they pick their own apples to throw them at her?
Corrected entry: When Dorothy is handed the posy of flowers in MunchkinLand, most of them are blue, but when she steps onto the Yellow Brick Road, they turn to yellow.
Correction: Not a mistake: the posy of flowers countain flowers of a lot of colors. Depending on the positions we see it, the predominant color will be different.
Corrected entry: When the Wicked Witch tries to take the Ruby slippers from Dorothy, she screams before the sparks start shooting out of the Ruby slippers. (01:16:55)
Correction: So she felt the magic before anyone could see it...no mistake.
Corrected entry: Picky point, but hey, that's what this site is about. When the Wicked Witch is dying, you hear her screaming "I'm melting, I'm melting". She really isn't melting. She is changing from the solid state to the gaseous state, which is sublimation. Therefore, she is sublimating. Melting is changing from the solid state to the liquid state.
Correction: This is not true. The hat used on the witch in this scene was actually larger to give the appearance that her head was getting smaller to convey "melting." The Winkies were also told to keep their weapons lower to help her appear smaller. If the Witch was sublimating, they would have had to make it appear as if she vanished into a gas in mid-air, as opposed to melting, which is still somewhat solid and pulled down by gravity. However, once melted, she does indeed evaporate into a gas. Summary: first she melts, then she evaporates, she does not sublimate.
Corrected entry: The Director - Victor Fleming, was working on "Gone with the Wind" at the same time.
Correction: Not true. He moved on to Gone with the Wind when most of Oz was finished. King Vidor came in and finished the Kansas scenes.
Corrected entry: Before Dorothy walks on the pig sty, Uncle Henry can be seen on the far right side of the screen. He stops, stands there for about 10 seconds and then walks to the right. In the next shot he's gone. (00:03:45)
Correction: In this scene the camera never swings back far enough to see him again.
Corrected entry: In the poppy field the tin man says "this is terrible" but his lips don't match up with what he's saying. (00:55:55)
Correction: It's the Scarecrow that says, "This is terrible", not Tin Man.
Corrected entry: In the beginning, after the Wicked Witch talks to Glinda and Dorothy, she goes to disappear into the trap door. You can see she doesn't remember where the trap door is and has to go around in a circle to get to it. (00:30:45)
Correction: It does not appear that she is unable to find the trap door; she makes the circle to sweep her skirt around her for dramatic effect before she disappears.
Corrected entry: Before Dorothy goes home, she says a long and tearful goodbye to the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion. But originally she was going to fly off in a balloon with the Wizard, and just happened to jump out of the basket at the last second. Wouldn't she have already said her goodbyes before that? (Not that she wouldn't have said goodbye again, but the second time would have sounded a little different.)
Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. She was obviously going to say her goodbyes from inside the basket before taking off. When the balloon left without her she said her goodbyes on the ground instead.
Corrected entry: Judy Garland was actually born Frances Ethel Gumm, and changed her name in 1939.
Correction: Trivia, perhaps, but not for this movie.
Corrected entry: When The Scarecrow says that he can be released from the pole by 'Turning that nail', the pole holding him up is briefly shown - it's obvious that the pole goes up *inside* his jacket - therefore, he couldn't fall down & forward to be free of the pole; the best he could do is fall to the ground with a pole up the back of his shirt.
Correction: The pole is not up under his shirt - he's held up by wires.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Dorothy tells the scarecrow that he can go with her to see the wizard he yells "Hooray." If you listen closely you can hear him say 'hooray' quietly few seconds before this but his mouth isn't moving.
Correction: The audio here is not overdubbed and this doesn't happen.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Dorothy starts at the beginning of the yellow brick road, which is a spiral, at her second revolution, you can see the Mayor in the scene to the right. As Dorothy gets near the low huts the scene switches. As she goes out of town, you see the Mayor again alongside the road on the right.
Correction: He had plenty of time to get there.
Corrected entry: As Dorothy sings "Over the Rainbow" Toto is looking at his trainer off camera as he gets his cue to give her his paw. (00:07:25)
Correction: OR he's just looking around, as dogs do. A dog glancing over an actor's shoulder is hardly a movie mistake.
Corrected entry: The day Judy Garland died, a tornado struck Kansas.
Correction: Interesting coincidence, but not trivia for the film.
Corrected entry: When the Wicked Witch reaches down to take the ruby slippers off of Dorothy's feet, the shoes are glittering. Once the sparks start flying from the slippers, the glittering stops.
Correction: It's said in this movie that they have powerful magic. It's very likely that was the result of the powerful magic it had to use to make the sparks fly.
Corrected entry: In the opening shot, Dorothy is kneeling on the road to comfort Toto. As she stands up, you can see that she has three wet spots on her dress-front. When she arrives in the farmyard, the spots are gone.
Correction: There's a time lapse and possibly enough time for the spots to have dried.
Corrected entry: After the flying monkeys fly off with Dorothy, the Lion and the Tinman hurry over to the disassembled Scarecrow, who says "First they tore my legs off and threw them over THERE". But the legs are right below his chest; the Tinman immediately grabs them without having to reach far.
Correction: The Scarecrow is in a state of high anxiety, and he is overwhelmed by what they did to him. Now he and the others are facing dire circumstances, so it is merely the character's error as to where his lower limbs are, or he may have meant his feet or the straw stuffing that made up his legs which the Flying Monkeys had thrown aside, though whatever the case it's not a film mistake.
Correction: He didn't say the balloon was from Kansas, though. It's likely he got it at the Nebraska State Fair and has been using it since.
Bob Blumenfeld