Winged Monkey Business

And monkeys that could fly.

The studio originally wanted to create the flying monkeys using cartoon animation, but decided instead to use hundreds of miniature monkeys made out of rubber. The six-inch high creations were supported by piano wire one-thousandth of an inch thick and hung from a moving trolley. Even more wires were needed to make the wings move up and down. Effects artists took painstaking care with the lighting and background so the wires – about 1,100 of them – would be invisible.

In The Making of The Wizard of Oz by Aljean Harmetz, special effects designer Buddy Gillespie remembered how difficult this was.

"It was tough to do because of the numbers of wires," he said. "If one wire broke in the middle of the scene and the monkey would go half-cocked, we’d have to do a retake."

The special effects department also asked the casting office for a dozen "small, thin men", and these actors were dressed in monkey costumes. Their outfits consisted of furry body suits, small jackets, rubber masks, wigs, and of course, large wings. Small motors, much like windshield-wiper motors, were hidden in the monkey suits to make the wings move up and down.

These full-size monkeys also flew on wires, and according to Harmetz, the wires were barely the diameter of a pencil lead. Nets and mattresses were placed around the set to protect the occasional falling monkey from injury.

The full-sized monkeys were promised $20 each for swooping down on Dorothy and her friends in the haunted forest. The actors understood this to mean that they’d receive $20 for each swoop, while MGM only wanted to pay them $20 a day. A dispute erupted, and the winged monkeys walked off the set, refusing to fly again until they got their full pay.

In The Making of The Wizard of Oz, Tin Man Jack Haley remembered it as "the most ludicrous thing you’d ever seen in your life."

"All those monkeys standing on chairs and shouting ..." he said. "I think the studio made some sort of settlement, gave them a little added money. But the monkeys were right. The studio was trying to make them believe they were playing a part. But it wasn’t a part. It was a stunt."

None of the monkeys had lines, but the "commandant" of the monkeys (the one who appeared most often with the Witch in her castle) was given a name – Nikko – and was listed in the credits. He was played by veteran vaudeville animal impersonator Pat Walshe.

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