Daily Dialogue — November 1, 2010

“You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I’m going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!”

 — Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), The Wizard of Oz (1939), screenplay by Noel Langley and Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is villain’s last words suggested by Blue. 

Trivia: The famed Jitterbug number was in actuality a leftover of an abandoned subplot that was discarded in early rewrites of the script. In the original Oz movie there was to be a large subplot involving characters named Princess Betty and the Grand Duke of Oz, to be played by MGM contract players Betty Jaynes and Kenny Baker. Jaynes, known for her refined operatic style of singing, was supposed to offset Judy Garland’s jazz type of singing and a number was devised highlighting the differences. The Jitterbug number was devised by Harold Arlen and ‘E.Y Harburg’ to showcase Garland’s talents. Both Jaynes’ and Baker’s characters were deemed unnecessary in early script rewrites and were removed from the picture, as well as their subplot. However, the Jitterbug number survived in the script and was filmed for the movie, although it too was cut from the picture in early previews. A reference to the Jitterbug number survives in the Wicked Witch’s orders to Nikko, when she tells him to “send the insects on ahead to soften them up” before the Flying Monkeys take off.

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