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The Man Behind The Curtain

© Karen Barker Crowley

When casting began for The Wizard of Oz, MGM executives searched for a famous comedian to fill the tile role. Little did they know that the perfect Wizard was right under their noses.

Their first choice, W.C. Fields, wanted more money. Comedian Ed Wynn felt the part was too small and he, too, turned it down. That’s when Frank Morgan, a 48-year-old character actor under contract with MGM, demanded an audition.

In the book The Making of The Wizard of Oz, author Aljean Harmetz quotes Oz screenwriter Noel Langley: "[Morgan] begged for [the part]. He said, 'Let me go onto a stage and do an ad-lib test.' He did all the scenes as they were in the script. He knew the script backward ... And it was marvelous, as funny as Buster Keaton."

It turned out that Morgan landed not just one part, but five. When screenwriters Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf took over the Oz script, they suggested adding additional characters for the actor who played the Wizard. "This would give us a chance to use a man like Frank Morgan without having the audience feel cheated because they didn’t see enough of him," the pair wrote in a memo to MGM execs.

Now Morgan would also play Professor Marvel, the Emerald City gatekeeper, the cabby, and the Emerald City soldier. Between the Kansas and Emerald City scenes, he spent only a few weeks working on the film, but he was one of the highest-paid actors on the Oz set. His $2,500-a-week salary was equal to that of Cowardly Lion Bert Lahr’s, and second only to Scarecrow Ray Bolger’s $3,000 a week.

According to Harmetz, Morgan carried a secret to the set with him each day. The small, black suitcase he carried at all times contained a "miniature bar." He managed to hide his drinking from his co-stars, however, who remembered him as kind and professional. In The Making of The Wizard of Oz, Wicked Witch Margaret Hamilton remembered, "He was very lovable, very sweet, very considerate, one of the nicest people I ever knew."

Morgan had dozens of films under his belt by the time he appeared in Oz. He was born Francis Phillip Wupperman on June 1, 1890 in New York City. He was one of eleven children in a well-to-do family. When his older brother, Ralph, took up acting, Morgan decided to do the same. He made his Broadway debut in 1914 and appeared in his first silent film, The Suspect, in 1916.

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