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And Your Little Dog, Too!

© Karen Barker Crowley

Like most famous actresses, Terry attended movie premieres with Hollywood’s elite. Her looks dazzled studio executives. Her acting was so good, she could convincingly play a member of the opposite sex.

But sometimes she was so shy she’d hide under the bed for weeks at a time.

Terry was the female Cairn terrier who played Toto in The Wizard of Oz. By the time she won the role of Dorothy’s faithful friend, Terry had already appeared in six films and worked with such stars as Shirley Temple and Spencer Tracy. Terry went on to work in movies into the 1940s, but after Oz, she was known forever as Toto.

Terry’s owner and trainer, a German immigrant named Carl Spitz, adopted her in 1933. Since 1927, Spitz had been running the Hollywood Dog Training School, which had turned out such famous alumni as Buck, the St. Bernard who starred with Clark Gable in Call of the Wild.

Spitz had no plans for little Terry to become a movie star. Terry’s original owner had left her with Spitz to be trained and had never returned. Even after the one-year-old pup overcame her shyness enough to come out from under the bed, Spitz still believed she was too timid to work. When an MGM director wanted to use Terry in a film, Spitz had his doubts. To his surprise, Terry performed well and was soon on her way to stardom.

When casting began for Oz, MGM Property Department workers were given a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and told to find a dog that looked like the one in the illustrations. No one in the department recognized the breed, so someone sent a copy of the drawings to Spitz. He knew right away that they needed a Cairn terrier, and he brought Terry to the studio.

MGM executives hired Terry on the spot. She began living the high life, which meant two weeks at Judy Garland’s house, a $125-a-week salary, and a trip to the movie’s glitzy premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Life in the spotlight wasn’t always glamorous, though. Terry was afraid of the powerful wind machines used on the set, and she suffered a sprained foot when one of the Witch’s guards accidentally stepped on her. Spitz rushed to find a replacement Toto while Terry recuperated, and she returned several weeks later to film the Munchkinland scenes, as good as new.

After Oz, Terry’s name was officially changed to Toto. She kept working until 1942, and she died of old age sometime around the end of World War II.