Making The Wizard of Oz
The production that would define Judy Garland’s public image, and from which she would spend decades trying to partially escape, began shooting at MGM’s Culver City lot on October 13, 1938. Garland was sixteen years old. The film had been in development since 1937, when MGM acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum’s novel, and the casting of the central role had gone through multiple configurations before landing on Garland.
Shirley Temple, who was at the time the most commercially successful child star in Hollywood, had been the first choice for the role of Dorothy. Temple was under contract at Twentieth Century Fox, and Fox declined to make her available. Deanna Durbin, who had been a fellow student at MGM’s contract players’ school before moving to Universal, was also considered. MGM’s eventual decision to cast Garland was driven partly by the process of elimination and partly by a genuine recognition that her voice was suited to the material in a way that the alternatives were not.
The physical management of Garland for the role was comprehensive. She was sixteen, and her body had developed beyond the prepubescent look that the studio associated with Dorothy’s character in the source novel. She was fitted with a corset, or breast binder, to flatten her adolescent figure and make her look younger than she was. Her naturally darker complexion was lightened with makeup. A wig was prepared for her, though her natural hair was ultimately used for most of the filming. Caps were placed on her teeth. Prosthetic additions were applied to alter the shape of her nose, though this was reportedly abandoned before or early in production as impractical. The goal in each of these physical interventions was the same: to make a sixteen-year-old girl look like an eleven-year-old character.