Margaret Hamilton: Forever the Wicked Witch From The Wizard of Oz

Jul 17, 2011
Barry M. Grey

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West - Image © Warner Home Video

Margaret Hamilton spent 50 years acting in movies and TV, but she's remembered mostly for a single, iconic and very scary role.

With a hook nose, severe features and dour countenance, Margaret Hamilton was, sad to say, homely enough to be the ideal Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. That she spent most of her screen time torturing little Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) was ironic: off screen, the mild-mannered former schoolteacher truly adored kids.

In fact, according to memorabilia website Worthpoint.com, Hamilton once remarked, “I’ve frightened more children than practically anyone else. It always seems funny to me, too, because I love children so much.”

Margaret Hamilton Was Real-Life Schoolteacher to Famed Actors

Before turning full-time to acting, Hamilton taught kindergarten. Her students included future actors Jim Backus (James Dean’s father in Rebel Without a Cause and millionaire Thurston Howell III in TV’s Gilligan’s Island) and William Windom, whom she often tossed out of class for bad behavior.

Over the years, the character actress taught Sunday school, served three years on the Beverly Hills Board of Education and was deeply committed to both children’s and animal rights causes.

Hardly the stuff you’d expect from the world’s most famously green-faced, glowering witch.

Hamilton Hailed From Cleveland

Margaret Brainard Hamilton was born about two weeks before Christmas, 1902, in Cleveland. Gentle, thoughtful and slight – she stood just five feet tall – Hamilton nonetheless loomed large to generations of terrified kids who only knew her as the witch.

She showed early interest in performing and made her professional stage debut at 21. After college in Boston, Hamilton toured extensively, eventually appearing in nearly 40 shows in her lifetime, including 11 Broadway shows.

Those New York productions helped get Hamilton to Hollywood. She debuted on Broadway in 1932, in a supporting part in Another Language. A year later, she recreated the role in the movie version. Same deal for The Farmer Takes a Wife.

Margaret Hamilton Was a Single Parent Long Before the Term Was Popular

Away from acting, Margaret Hamilton found love with landscape architect Paul Meserve, whom she married in 1931. But the union turned unhappy, ending seven years later, two years after their son, Hamilton Wadsworth Meserve, was born.

She raised the boy alone.

The Wizard of Oz was Hamilton’s 26th picture, in a career that, until then, included such notable films as These Three (a bastardized version of Lillian Hellman’s lesbian-themed play The Children’s Hour), Frank Capra’s Broadway Bill, The Moon’s Our Home and the screwball classic Nothing Sacred.

By the time Oz came along, Hamilton’s screen persona was well established – that of a prim schoolmarm type, snappish maiden aunt or snoopy neighbor. There were nicer variations, too, which she described as “women with a heart of gold and a corset of steel.”

Gale Sondergaard Nearly Played the Wicked Witch

In 1938, producer Mervyn LeRoy was casting Oz. He rejected actress Gale Sondergaard for the dual role of Miss Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West; evidently the makeup couldn’t disguise Sondergaard’s exotic beauty. LeRoy then turned to Hamilton. When her agent broached the subject, she gushed, “Oh, I loved reading those books to my kindergarten children. Which role?”

The agent replied, “The witch.”

“The witch?”

“Yes,” he told her. “What else?”

Ouch.

You’d think she’d have guessed. After all, Hamilton already had played the part in a stage production years earlier in Cleveland.

Hamilton Shows Practical Side When Deciding Not to Sue MGM

Before accepting, the actress demanded at least six weeks work at her usual $1,000 a week salary. She should have demanded hazard pay; Hamilton was famously burned during filming in December, 1938. A trap door opened too slowly while special-effects flames surrounded the descending Witch. “I won’t sue (the studio, MGM),” she said when returning to the set a month later, “because I know how this business works and I would never work again. I will return to work on one condition: no more fire work.”

For years afterward, the movies’ most famous sorceress actually disdained the role, in part because she actually had only about 10 minutes of screen time. But decades later, when annual TV screenings brought Oz its overdue acclaim, Hamilton began adding to autograph requests the initials “WWW.”

Not for “world wide web.” For “Wicked Witch of the West.”

Overall, Hamilton appeared in nearly 70 features, including such notable pictures as My Little Chickadee; The Ox-Bow Incident the Tracy-Hepburn vehicle State of the Union; People Will Talk with Cary Grant; producer-director William Castle’s gimmicky 13 Ghosts; and director Robert Altman’s endearingly odd comedy Brewster McCloud.

Hamilton's Next Best-Known Role: Coffee-lovin' Cora

Hamilton also worked extensively in episodic television. Viewers also knew her as Cora, the New England storekeeper forever pitching the glories of Maxwell House coffee. But the Wicked Witch remained her signature role and Hamilton revisited her evil doppelganger often over the years in numerous TV guest appearances.

She also kept active in theater, appearing in Lincoln Center productions of Oklahoma! and Show Boat. Well into her seventies, Hamilton worked in repertory and regional companies, touring in a 1970s production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.

Everywhere she went, the WWW figuratively followed, and the actress who loved children felt compelled to frequently explain to them her green-faced counterpart was just a role – that it wasn’t really her.

Margaret Hamilton worked until two years before her 1985 death of a heart attack at age 82 in Connecticut. Her ashes were spread over her estate in Duchess County, New York.