Podcast Episode Details

Most of the other roles were plugged in with various MGM contract players or veteran character actors who got salaries lasting only a few weeks.  Ray Bolger was initially asked to play the Tin Man although he had his heart set on the Scarecrow.  Buddy Ebsen didn’t really care who he played and his agreement to swap roles with Bolger and play the Tin Man had dire consequences.  A second tier actor Bert Lahr, better known for his Broadway comedic ability was cast as the Cowardly Lion.

The dog, Toto, depicted by Denslow seemed a straightforward small terrier but finding such an animal able to function in a soundstage environment amidst the typical commotion, lighting and sound effects became a formidable project in itself.  Dozens of visually suitable dogs were auditioned by LeRoy personally, none were even close to what the role technically required.  This process grew so unproductive that consideration was even given to dressing up an actor in a dog costume.  Finally, a professional dog trainer with previous experience providing animals to the motion picture industry heard about this unique talent search.  Carl Spitz was a German immigrant operating a ten acre kennel, dog boarding and training facility in the San Fernando Valley who occasionally padded his income with a movie role for one of his own trained pets.  The St. Bernard used in Clark Gable’s 1933 Call of the Wild was to date Spitz’ most famous canine movie star. Upon hearing about MGM’s difficulty in finding just the right animal, Spitz took a gamble on a small female Cairn terrier he owned named Terry.  Initially a dog dropped off by a customer for traditional training, Spitz kept the dog when the patron couldn’t afford to pay the bill and never came back to retrieve the animal.  Terry was so shy that Spitz figured he could never train it to work in films but, in 1934, an MGM director familiar with Spitz’ kennel was desperate enough to try and use Terry in a Shirley Temple film.  The dog performed beautifully and appeared in several subsequent movies but Spitz wasn’t sure the small, still somewhat timid a

Published on 4 years ago