‘The Wizard of Oz’ Actress Suffered Unforgettable Pain After Being Burned on Set (Exclusive)

Despite the difficulties she faced, actress Margaret Hamilton “loved” her time on the 1939 classic, “Oz” expert and author John Fricke tells PEOPLE

• With Evil PEOPLE looks back in theaters The Wizard of Oz

• Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, suffered burns on set and removing makeup around the wounds caused untold pain

• She also had a greenish skin color in the months following filming

For Margaret Hamilton, the actress who starred in The Wicked Witch of the West, being green wasn’t always easy The Wizard of Oz.

In 1939, almost a century before Cynthia Erivo appeared in the origin story of the witch EvilIn 2019, Hamilton played the cocky, cackling villain who terrorizes the residents of the magical land of Oz.

And Hamilton – who died in 1985 at the age of 82 – endured a particularly painful “ordeal”, according to Oz expert John Fricke, author of. The Wizard of Oz, the official 50th anniversary picture story And The Wizard of Oz, an illustrated companion to the timeless film classic.

This was largely due to an accident she suffered while filming a scene with Judy Garland’s character, Dorothy, on the yellow brick road. After the witch tells the gingham-clad Kansan and her puppy Toto, “I’ll get you my pretty one and your little dog too,” she disappears in a cloud of red smoke and fire.

Fricke says Hamilton was instructed to stand on an elevator platform built into the floor of the yellow brick street, which would lower her (along with the broom she was holding) while red smoke obscured her exit. Once fully lowered beneath the set, the crew sent fire through nearby vents in the floor.

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And in those early days of Hollywood, long before CGI, “it had to be real fire,” Fricke notes.

“They rehearsed it over and over again one morning and they got it right on the first take. “Maggie said the line, she spun around, she got to the elevator, the smoke was rising, they dropped her through the floor, she cleared the floor, the fire was burning perfectly and there was great cheering on set,” said Fricke.

“But then it was lunchtime and everyone left. And as Maggie always said, when everyone came back after lunch, they were all a little less attentive and less money-conscious than they had been the first morning. And every time they tried to do a second take, there were misfires,” Fricke continues.

Director Victor Fleming – “a no-nonsense man” – became impatient with the technicians, says Fricke. “He read them the act of sedition in clear terms and language.”

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The next time they attempted to examine the scene, technicians started the fire through the vents before Hamilton had completely sunk into the ground.

“Her shoulders and her head and the broom straw and her hat, which also had the piece of gauze hanging on it, so much was still above the ground,” he says. “The gauze caught fire, the broom straw caught fire.”

Crew members stationed below to help Hamilton out of the platform elevator “quickly smothered the fire, but it wasn’t fast enough,” Fricke says. “The broom straw was located next to her face and near her right hand. And the result was that she had second degree burns on her face and third degree burns on her hand where the green makeup was.”

Fricke says crew members took Hamilton aside and told her they needed to clean her skin immediately so that the potentially toxic makeup, which contained copper, didn’t seep into the wound.

“’Mrs Hamilton, we need to remove this makeup from you. Green is poisonous and the copper will burn into your skin and essentially disfigure you if we don’t remove every bit of it from your face,'” they told Hamilton, according to Fricke, who became friends with the actress in the decade before her death.

“And they took the rubbing alcohol and cleansed their faces and their hands. And I’ve heard her tell this story many times. She said, “I have to scream.” She said, “I will never, as long as I live, forget the pain when they rubbed alcohol on those two burns,” Fricke says.

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Was the makeup itself responsible for the burns? Probably not. “According to what Maggie used to say, she was burned because the flames, which were closer than close, immediately jumped from the broom straw in her hand – and the dangling gauze from her hat – to her face and hand,” explains Fricke.

“It was a very small elevator shaft and the smoke and fire vents were immediately around its opening. And she suffered similar burns to anyone else who would have been caught in such a blast,” he continues. Still, removing the makeup was torture.

Hamilton recovered for six weeks and returned to complete filming the role. When she packed up, she took something of a souvenir with her: toned skin.

“She said that in the months after filming, people said, ‘You look a little green.’ Her skin had absorbed some of the green and it took a while for her to remove it from her skin or body,” says Fricke.

Despite all this, according to Fricke, Hamilton found making the film a positive experience. “She loved it,” he says. “She was very proud of it until she died.”

Wicked: Part One is now in the cinema, with Part Two The release is scheduled for November 21, 2025.