As one of the first iconic villains to hit the big screen, the Wicked Witch of the West lives in our collective memory. Those who’ve seen the original 1939 film The Wizard of Oz can hear the witch’s high-pitched cackle. We can recite her menacing line: “I’ll get you, my pretty! And your little dog, too!”
Margaret Hamilton played the role in the film when she was 35 years old. Even though she was only on screen for 12 minutes, her performance was unforgettable. While speaking to a live audience in her later years (exact time and place unknown), Hamilton shared the story of how she was cast, showcasing her delightful personality in the process.
Hamilton said she had done about six pictures for MGM before the opportunity to appear in The Wizard of Oz came along. Then she shared the details of that conversation with the audience:
“One day, my agent called and said, ‘Maggie, they’re really kind of interested in you for a part in The Wizard of Oz.’ And I said, ‘Oh gosh. Think of that,’ I said, ‘I loved that story from the time I was four years old. What is it?’ And he said, ‘Well, the Witch.’ And I said, ‘The Witch?!’ Then he said the final thing, he said, ‘Yes, what else?’”
The audience burst out laughing.
“I thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of an exciting part.’ But jeez, I had my, you know, my eyes on something else. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I didn’t think about the Witch. However, I ought to because I’d had that nose quite a long while.”
The audience busted up again.
The fact that she totally owned her prominent nose, a signature feature few in Hollywood would embrace today, is so refreshing. It’s especially notable considering the Wicked Witch was originally conceived as a bit more glamorous and beautiful in the film. Producer Mervyn LeRoy said he didn’t want the character to be hideous, as he didn’t want to “scare children away from the theatre.”
Hamilton is by no means hideous. But when LeRoy changed his mind about the character’s look, she fit it perfectly. When she tested for the role, she wore “the oldest, crummiest-looking clothes I could find, some dirty things that sort of hung on me like a Mother Hubbard, and then a little shawl.”
“There was no witch’s hat,” she said, “and I really looked more like an old hag. And I cackled and screamed and said a few lines from the script.”
The Wicked Witch of the West was born.
And scare children she did. People in the comments shared how terrified they were of her when they were kids:
“This woman scared the absolute s__t out of me when I was a child.”
“Gave me nightmares. Her and those flying monkeys. Yow!”
“Her witch scared the hell out of me as a child, and even as a man I still found her frightening.”
“That scene in the tornado where she turns from Almira Gulch on the bicycle, into the witch on the broomstick was absolutely terrifying when I was 6 years old.”
“She made the witch utterly terrifying! Job well done no doubt.”
“She scared me so much as a little kid. I was amazed to discover later that she had been, of all things, a *kindergarten teacher*!”
That’s right, this terrifying witch was a kindergarten teacher when she wasn’t acting.
She frightened audiences for generations. In fact, Hamilton’s appearance as the Wicked Witch on Sesame Street in 1976 was prohibited from airing after parents complained that their children were frightened. (Though Hamilton’s appearance wasn’t nearly as scary as her character in the film, the Sesame Street audience was very young.)
However, she also appeared on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as herself. Talking to Fred Rogers, she explained how she viewed the character of the Wicked Witch of the West:
“Sometimes the children feel she’s a very mean witch, and she does seem that way. But I always think two things about her: She does enjoy everything she does, whether it’s good or bad, she does enjoy it. She also is what we sometimes refer to as ‘frustrated.’ She’s very unhappy because she never gets what she wants, Mr. Rogers. Most of us get something we want along the line, but as far as we know that witch has never got what she wanted…”
She also dressed up as the Witch, but without the green makeup, showing kids that it was really just a nice lady in a costume all along.
Despite the fear she evoked with her most famous role, people loved Hamilton’s real-life character. Patty Duke, who worked with her on The Patty Duke Show in the 1960s, called Hamilton “the gentlest soul you could ever meet” in her memoir.
Folks in the comments on her casting story shared the same sentiment:
“A friend of mine had the opportunity to meet and have lunch with Mrs. Hamilton in Manhattan in the mid – 70’s after she had retired. He told me she was one most humble, kind, and sweetest lady you could ever meet….and insisted on picking up the check for their meal.”
“My mother met her in the late 60’s. She said she was nicest, sweetest person she had ever met.”
“She was my mother’s kindergarten teacher.”
“I met Margaret Hamilton while I was working at a drug store in Beverly Hills as a teenager in the early 1970s. The other young staff and I crouched down and marched around her chanting the Wicked Witch theme from the movie. Ms. Hamilton laughed and was so kind to us.”
“She’s so naturally charismatic. Not even acting, just being herself and telling a story and I was captivated. No wonder her performance was so mesmerizing. She’s just an awesome lady.”
“I remember her when I was a child and not just from the film. She was on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood as herself to show everyone she was a nice person and that the witch was just a character she played. She seemed like such a kind person.”
Hamilton died in 1985 at age 82. She is remembered today both for the characters she portrayed on screen and for the character she exemplified in real life.
