Oh, Yellow Brick Road...

It was 70 years ago today that The Wizard of Oz premiered at The Strand Theatre in the little lakeside town of Oconomowoc, Wis.

In honor, here is some trivia:

- The title role was written with W.C. Fields in mind. MGM executive Arthur Freed wanted Fields, and offered him $75,000. Fields supposedly wanted $100,000.

- Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Woodsman. However, he insisted that he would rather play the Scarecrow as his childhood idol, Fred Stone, had originated that role on stage in 1902.

- Buddy Ebsen had been cast as the Scarecrow but switched roles with Bolger. The aluminum powder makeup for the Tin Woodsman was toxic and Ebsen apparently had an allergic reaction to it as well. He left the picture, but his voice can still be heard in "Off to see the Wizard".

- Producer Mervyn LeRoy had originally intended to use MGM's Leo the Lion in the role of the Cowardly Lion and dub an actors voice in for the dialogue. However, that idea was dropped when Bert Lahr came up for consideration for the part.

- MGM had originally planned to incorporate a "stencil printing" process when Dorothy runs to open the farmhouse door before the film switches to Technicolor; each frame was to be hand-tinted to keep the inside of the door in sepia tone. This process-cumbersome, expensive, and ineffective-was abandoned in favor of a simpler and more clever alternative. The inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia, and the Dorothy who opens the door from the inside is not Judy Garland but her stand-in wearing a sepia-rinsed version of the famous gingham dress.

- Judy Garland's dress and blouse were in reality not white but pale pink. True white did not photograph properly in Technicolor and made the blue of her checked dress seem too bright.

- The movie's line "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." was voted as the #62 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.

- To compensate for the extreme make-up demands on this film, MGM recruited extra help from the studio mail room and courier service. As most of the Oz extras required prosthetic devices and application of prosthetics requires extensive training, make-up artists were each instructed in one area of prosthetic application and then formed an assembly line.

More at IMDB.