A few words about...™ The Wizard of Oz -- in Blu-ray - Page 5

Actually, there were three places where Young changed original editorial “…for the aesthetic greater good.” With the blessing and final approval of Ned Price, of course. The first was in the barnyard scene in reel one where there's a big hole in the chicken effects in between one of Dorothy’s lines. The chickens disappear for about 10 or 12 frames, though the noise floor and ambience are constant. So, Young cut in some chicken walla to smooth what seemed like a mistake.

The second departure from the accepted rendition was during a reel change when Toto is being taken from Dorothy. As she whimpers Toto’s name, there’s a stutter edit where an off camera Garland repeats the first few words of a line, “Oh, To, oh Toto.” The production team went back to the script and found no correspondence. So, the apparent mistake was excised, in the very real sense of the word!

The final change to the original comes in another reel hookup where the protagonists, hiding behind a rock, are watching the “Marching Winkies.” Here, the music meter jumps due to an unfortunately common occurrence. The original score was for an over 2 hour version and test screening convinced the studio to shorten the picture’s running time. So, out went a bunch of footage but without rescoring. Jim says, “I have this image of some suit going to the guy and saying, ‘We gotta loose 20 seconds right here…’ and he says, ‘But that edit will stink!‘ ‘I don't care, we’re loosing that 20 seconds!’ So, I recreated the music for the hookup so that the jump in meter comes underneath some dialog instead of in the clear.”