You probably don’t recognize the name. She was a character actress who was very active in film and theater during the '30’s and '40’s. I can give you a hint to help you picture her, but the hint is so broad that it’s much more than a hint; it’s the answer. One of her movie lines was ranked 99th in the 2005 American Film Institute survey of the most memorable movie quotes: “I'll get you, my pretty . . . and your little dog, too!"
She wasn’t the producer’s first choice for the role of Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. (By the way, credit’s where it’s due: I’m getting most of this from Wikipedia.) Some pretty actress whom I’ve never heard of (Gale Sondergaard) turned down the role, because she was unwilling to allow herself to be made up to appear ugly. (That’s what vanity will get you.) Hamilton, never having been burdened with good looks, took the part, nailed it cold, and made it a part of movie history. It’s now hard to imagine anyone else in the role.
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| Selling the Wicked Witch of the West |
As scary as the Wicked Witch was in the movie, she apparently could have been scarier. The studio executives cut some of her more wicked scenes for fear of scaring children in the movie audience. (Wouldn’t you like to see those cut scenes?) Many years later, she did a reprise of her role as the Wicked Witch on Sesame Street in an episode about fear. Apparently, she did her job too well, because it scared the bejeebers out of the kids in TV land, and the complaints from their parents persuaded the Sesame Street executives to never air that episode again.
Apparently, Hamilton was cast against type when she was cast as the witch, because in real life she was apparently very loving and friendly toward children. She had been a kindergarten teacher before making a career of acting. She sat on the Beverly Hills Board of Education in the '50’s and was also a Sunday school teacher. She appeared as herself on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood in the mid-70’s to show children how makeup could make a person look scary but that it was just make-believe.
In the '60’s, she was a regular in the soap opera The Secret Storm; in the early '70’s, she was a regular in the cast of As the World Turns. She continued acting until just a few years before her death in 1985. Her last acting job was a guest appearance as a veteran reporter on The Lou Grant Show.
Sometime in the '70’s, while I was in college, I saw a commercial on TV in which a kindly, elderly lady was promoting some brand of coffee. “That’s the Wicked Witch of the West!” I exclaimed. Whoever I said it to was skeptical, and I had no way to confirm it. Until now. Wikipedia tells us that Ms. Hamilton made a series of commercials for Maxwell House coffee during the '70’s, in which she played the part of Cora, the owner of a general store, who thought highly of Maxwell House.
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| Selling coffee |
But she’ll always be a witch to me.
(And am I the only one who feels a twinge of pity for her near the end of the movie when she’s melting? When she’s shrunk down to nothing but a steaming pile of witch's clothes and while she’s barely moving what used to be her arms and her voice is growing more and more faint, her last words are, “What a world, what a world.” Kind of makes me sad.)
So here's to Margaret Hamilton--such a good wicked witch. To borrow from the lyrics of one of the songs in the movie: she was a whiz of a witch, if ever a witch there was.
