Wamego - Wizard of Oz

It is wonderful to be back with Bill but I will miss Steve and his sweet family. What an honor to be with them as they welcomed Grant into their family. I spent a long time just looking at him and soaking up the newborn feels. It was amazing to hold him on my last night there as he lay awake for quite some time just looking around his home.

We had a lot of fun visiting the Oz Museum. We sat and watched a 45 minute video about the making of the movie - wow! I knew there were issues and Buddy Epsen almost died because of the silver makeup in his lungs when he started as the Tin Man and the wicked witch was badly burned in a stunt but there were so many more issues and problems. It is amazing that it was ever finished needing 5 different directors - one of which actually took Judy Garland in back and slapped her hard across the face for having giggles. So many differing opinions from each director - including costumes that had to be remade and scenes reshot. They nearly count out Somewhere Over the Rainbow because they felt the film was to long. Shirley Temple was choice #1 as Dorothy. There wasno camera magic back then so everything you see was an actual stunt - the monkeys actually flew - the fire stunts are real fire. The list goes on and on. It actually was over budget and didn't make money when it was released to theaters that first year. It was only saved when it started to be shown on television each year.