EXCLUSIVE: Secrets From Oz — Radar Takes Stroll Back Down Yellow Brick Road to Uncover Untold Tales About Wizard Movie Classic
Judy Garland landed the role of Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' after Shirley Temple's studio declined to release her for the film.
July 2 2026, Published 7:30 a.m. ET
The Wizard of Oz has great music and amazing chemistry among its cast.
"It's a perfect storm, no pun intended," William Stillman, coauthor of the book The Road to Oz, Breaking Celebrity News can reveal. What fans might not know, he hints, are the behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations that went on during the making of the 1939 classic.
Stillman and his writing partner, Jay Scarfone, cover all the backstage drama, starting with the fact that Judy Garland almost lost the part of Dorothy to Shirley Temple, who much more closely resembled the character L. Frank Baum described in his 1900 kids' novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Judy Garland's Hidden Ordeal
A new book has revealed the behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations that went on during the making of the 1939 classic.
When Temple's studio refused to let her out of her contract to star in the MGM vehicle, Garland secured the role, despite being older than Dorothy was originally written to be. The then-16-year-old had to have her breasts bound to appear younger, and a small piece of foam rubber was used to cover an imperfect gap on the bridge of her nose.
Garland was then encouraged to binge-diet because the camera made her 4'11" frame look pudgy, but Baum's daughter, Florence, helped the young actress cheat.
"We had become friends," Florence once recalled, "and Judy would have me – her hopeless slave – go to the commissary at noon and order a double portion of mashed potatoes and gravy and sneak it to her on set."
As this was going on, the young actress' energy level had to be kept up to maximize the limited time she was legally allowed to film scenes.
Surviving the Storm
William Stillman said Garland was given prescription barbiturates during the production of 'The Wizard of Oz' to help maintain her filming schedule.
Barbiturates were the studio's answer. "We're not talking about street drugs," Stillman noted, "but prescription medications that were, at that time, like vitamins. There was gross negligence," he adds, alluding to Judy's lifelong pill abuse and deadly overdose in 1969.
Other dangers plagued the set, including a fire in one scene that scorched the hands and face of Wicked Witch of the West actress Margaret Hamilton.
Falling sparks from a light during another scene nearly burned young Garland, but Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow, shielded her. The straw in his costume caught fire, however, and he needed to be hosed down with a fire extinguisher.
Judy Never Lost the Magic
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Ray Bolger shielded Garland from falling sparks on the set of 'The Wizard of Oz,' but his Scarecrow costume caught fire in the process.
Still, nothing can dampen the joy the film has brought to millions.
In 1959, Garland even happily sang along to the soundtrack while in the hospital as she watched the film's second airing on TV.
Husband Sid Luft is quoted in the book, recalling how she phoned home to their young children, Lorna and Joey, to reassure them that "Mommy was OK and the witch didn't really get her." The musical's charms, it seems, were irresistible to Judy in spite of the woes it once caused her.
The Road to Oz's authors write, "Above all, it has heart – and that's something about which even the Tin Man wouldn't quibble."
