GUEST
Roger Baum, author
The great grandson of Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum dropped by and confirmed that at least one of the legends surrounding the productionof the movie is true:
Roger Baum: "Frank Morgan was issued a jacket by the wardrobe department, and he didn’t like it, so they said why don’t you find a jacket that you think would work for you – he’s a pretty big star. He said, OK, I will. So he went out with another cast member and went to some of the used clothing stores in Hollywood. He’s looking through these and he finds this jacket. He says my golly, this is perfect. This is what I like, this is what I’d envisioned. So he gets the jacket and he buys it and he takes it back to the studio. Well, they tailor it up for him, fix it up."
"And he’s sitting in a dark studio one day and in the inside pocket, there’s a little stitched tag if you will, a label, and it's in handwriting – very visible but still very faded. Here is the name that appears to be L. Frank Baum. He looks at it and says ‘no, I can’t believe this,’ and he went on to other things. So one day when they’re walking across the studio, there’s a handful of them, he happened to look at it in the bright sunlight. And he opens up the coat and sure enough there is the name L. Frank Baum. Well, this is too good, this is beyond imagination, beyond storybooks."
"He takes it – Great Grandma used to visit the set, and visit with Judy Garland in particular, but she used to visit the set. So he went up to Great Grandma and said ‘Is this by any chance your husband’s coat? Because here’s the name and it looks like L. Frank Baum.’ And she looked at it and she literally broke down and cried. Because indeed it was a coat that he had that she had given away when he passed on. And here it ended up in the movie."