Margaret Hamilton

The Real Fire Behind the Green Paint

Margaret Hamilton had nerves of steel. In 1938 she nearly lost her life filming a scene for The Wizard of Oz when her copper makeup caught fire during a magnesium explosion. It was no camera trick or laboratory visual effect.

She spent six weeks in the hospital with second- and third-degree burns on her face and hands. But the contract was the contract. So she returned to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer set with one non-negotiable condition: she would never go near the pyrotechnics or the trapdoor mechanisms that nearly killed her.

And the studio agreed, because no one could replace that sharp gaze.

She was born in Cleveland in 1902. Before stepping onto a stage, she worked as an early childhood teacher, and that teaching vocation stayed with her until the end of her life. But the theater called to her with a force she could not ignore in the 1930s.

She made her big-screen debut in Another Language in 1933. Her look did not fit the beauty standards of Hollywood divas. She knew it perfectly well. That is why she specialized in stern women, spinsterish aunts and nosy neighbors who were scary or funny depending on the script.

A Preschool Teacher on the California Soundstages

In 1939 she accepted the role of the Wicked Witch of the West mainly for the money. She had a young son to support, and bills were piling up after her divorce. She was paid a thousand dollars a week to play absolute evil in a world of yellow brick roads.

She was deeply worried that children were afraid of her off screen. In 1975 she agreed to appear on the children's show Sesame Street to explain that her character was just a costume and a role-play game. The episode drew so many complaints from parents whose children were terrified that the network decided never to air it again.

She never sought outright top billing on posters.

She preferred the security of supporting roles, where she could steal scenes without carrying the weight of the box office. She worked with directors of the caliber of John Ford on The Whole Town's Talking in 1935. She also appeared in light comedies such as The Sin of Harold Diddlebock in 1947, directed by Preston Sturges.

Her career didn't stop when movies began to change. In the 1950s she turned to television and Broadway theater. She appeared in shows such as The Addams Family, playing Grandma Hester Frump in 1966.

The refuge of instant coffee and the final years

During the 1970s her face became a familiar sight in American homes for reasons far removed from fantasy films. In 1970 she began shooting a series of commercials for the Maxwell House coffee brand. She played Cora, a friendly shopkeeper who always had a hot cup of coffee ready for her customers.

That work gave her a financial stability that the movies had denied her for years.

But the weight of her character 1939 cast a shadow that was far too long. Whenever she could, she made a point of saying that her greatest pride was not frightening generations of viewers but her work on the Beverly Hills school board. She defended public education with the same ferocity her character showed in chasing a pair of ruby slippers.

She died of a heart attack at a nursing home in Salisbury, Connecticut, on May 16, 1985. She was 82 years old. Her remains were cremated, and her ashes were scattered across fields in Amenia, New York. At her death, her net worth was estimated at less than one million dollars.