The Wizard of Oz

Corrected entry: When Dorothy and her friends meet the wizard for the first time, the wizard scares the lion so much that he faints. Dorothy starts saying to the wizard "frightening him like that when he came to you for help-"etc, watch the scarecrow. He is trying to make the lion wake up by tapping/slapping his face but he is only hitting air and not coming into contact with the lions face at all.

Correction: He was fanning the lion's face with his hand.

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

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.

cinecena

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?

Correction: The tree never said it was "painful". It only said it wasn't right for Dorothy to pick the apples just because she wanted to.

cinecena

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.

cinecena

Corrected entry: When Dorothy is knocked unconscious there is a brown pillowcase on her bed. Several shots later when she wakes up it's white. (00:17:05)

????

Correction: The reason why it changed from brown to white is because it went from sepia toned to color. The original scene was shot in black and white, so it was originally white, but the people who re-mastered it thought that the sepia tone would look better. The pillowcase was always white: it was just the way that it was remastered in sepia that made it look brown.

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.

violets69

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.

BocaDavie

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.)

Krista

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.

BocaDavie

Correction: Trivia, perhaps, but not for this movie.

Phixius

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.

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.

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)

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Dorothy: There's no place like home.

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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.

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