Margaret Hamilton (actress)

Margaret Brainard Hamilton (December 9, 1902 – May 16, 1985) was an American actress and educator.

Hamilton made her debut as a "professional entertainer" on December 9, 1929, in a "program of 'heart rending songs'" in the Charles S. Brooks Theater at the Cleveland Play House.

Before she turned to acting exclusively, her parents insisted she attend Wheelock College in Boston, which she did, later becoming a kindergarten teacher.

Hamilton made her screen debut in the MGM film Another Language (1933) starring Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery.

She went on to appear in These Three (1936), Saratoga, You Only Live Once, When's Your Birthday?, Nothing Sacred (all 1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), Mae West's My Little Chickadee (with W. C. Fields, 1940), and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (with Harold Lloyd, 1947).

She strove to work as much as possible to support herself and her son; she never put herself under contract to any one studio and priced her services at $1,000 ($0 with inflation) a week.

On December 23, 1938, Hamilton suffered a second-degree burn on her face and a third-degree burn on her hand during a second take of her fiery exit from Munchkinland in which the trap door's drop was delayed to eliminate the brief glimpse of it seen in the final edit.

Hamilton had to recuperate in a hospital and at home for six weeks after the accident before returning to the set to complete her work on the film and refused to have anything further to do with fire for the rest of the filming.

After she recuperated, she said, "I won't sue, because I know how this business works, and I would never work again. I will return to work on one condition – no more fireworks!"

Garland visited Hamilton while the latter recuperated at home looking after her son.

Studio executives cut some of Hamilton's more frightening scenes, worrying they would frighten children too much.

Later in life, she would comment on the role of the witch in a light-hearted fashion.

During one interview, she joked:

"I was in need of money at the time, I had done about six pictures for MGM at the time, and my agent called. I said, 'Yes?' and he said 'Maggie, they want you to play a part on the Wizard.' I said to myself, 'Oh, boy, The Wizard of Oz! That has been my favorite book since I was four.' And I asked him what part, and he said, 'The Witch', and I said, 'The Witch?!' and he said, 'What else?'"

She was best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West and her Kansas counterpart Almira Gulch in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz.

A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actress in films for seven years before she was offered the role that defined her public image.

In later years, Hamilton appeared in films and made frequent cameo appearances on television sitcoms and commercials.

She also gained recognition for her work as an advocate of causes designed to benefit children and animals and retained a lifelong commitment to public education.

Hamilton was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and practiced her craft doing children's theater while she was a Junior League of Cleveland member.

In 1939, Hamilton played the role of the Wicked Witch of the West, opposite Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, creating not only her most famous role, but also one of the screen's most memorable villains.

Hamilton was cast after Gale Sondergaard, who was first considered for the role, albeit as a more glamorous witch with a musical scene, declined the role when the decision was made that the witch should appear ugly.

Hamilton's stand-in and stunt double for the Witch, Betty Danko, also suffered an on-set accident, on February 11, 1939.

Danko made the fiery entrance to Munchkinland, not Hamilton.

She was severely burned during the "Surrender Dorothy!"

skywriting sequence at the Emerald City.

Danko sat on a smoking pipe configured to look like the Witch's broomstick.

The pipe exploded on the third take of the scene.

She spent 11 days in the hospital and her legs were permanently scarred.

The studio hired a new stunt double, Aline Goodwin, to finish the broomstick-riding scene for Danko.

When asked about her experiences on the set of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton said her biggest fear was that her monstrous film role would give children the wrong idea of who she really was.

In reality, she cared deeply about children, frequently giving to charitable organizations.

She often remarked about children coming up to her and asking her why she had been so mean to Dorothy.

Hamilton co-starred opposite Buster Keaton and Richard Cromwell in a 1940s spoof of the long-running local melodrama The Drunkard, titled The Villain Still Pursued Her.

Later in the decade, she was in a little-known film noir, titled Bungalow 13 (1948), in which she again costarred opposite Cromwell.

Her crisp voice with rapid but clear enunciation was another trademark.

She appeared regularly in supporting roles in films until the early 1950s and sporadically thereafter.

Opposite Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, she played a heavily made-up witch in Comin' Round the Mountain, where her character and Costello go toe-to-toe with voodoo dolls made of each other.

She appeared, uncredited, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's People Will Talk (1951) as Sarah Pickett.

In 1960, producer/director William Castle cast Hamilton as a housekeeper in his 13 Ghosts horror film, in which 12-year-old lead Charles Herbert's character taunts her about being a witch, including the final scene, in which she is holding a broom in her hand.

She appeared on an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in 1975 where she explained to children she was only playing a role and showed how putting on a costume "transformed" her into the witch.