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Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

© Karen Barker Crowley

When Professor Marvel tells Dorothy that Aunt Em is sick, she rushes home in the middle of a twister. When Dorothy is frightened in the witch’s castle, it’s Aunt Em’s face she sees in the crystal ball. Dorothy even carries a photo of Aunt Em in her basket, and longs to return home to her, and yet we know very little about Dorothy’s beloved mother figure back in Kansas.

The MGM movie never reveals what happened to Dorothy’s real mother and father. L. Frank Baum merely tells us that Dorothy was an orphan and lived with "Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife." In the first chapter of the book, he describes her in this way:

"When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt and never smiled now."

Baum didn’t keep poor Henry and Em on the depressing Kansas prairie forever, though. In his sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, the two of them are magically whisked to Oz and invited to live there forever. When Aunt Em sees the magnificent Emerald City, she exclaims, "It beats the Topeka Hotel!"

Aunt Em was brought to life on the big screen by character actress Clara Blandick, who was born on an American ship docked in a Hong Kong harbor on June 4, 1881. Not much else is known about Blandick until she became an actress early in the twentieth century.

She began her long acting career on the stage, where she was usually cast in leading roles. Her movie career was a much different story, however. Although Blandick appeared in an amazing 118 films between 1914 and 1950 and worked with such stars as Clark Gable, Bette Davis, and Gene Kelly, she almost always had bit parts and was rarely listed in the credits.

In fact, her name doesn’t appear at all in the opening credits of The Wizard of Oz, and she is billed last in the closing credits, right below Pat Walshe, who played the head winged monkey. She worked just one week on the film that would immortalize her, and she received $750 for her efforts.

Blandick retired from acting in 1950. After suffering from various health problems, including severe arthritis, for 12 more years, 80-year-old Blandick took an overdose of sleeping pills and ended her own life on April 15, 1962. She is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.

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