The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch Actress Suffered Unforgettable Pain After Being Burned on Set (Exclusive)

• WITH Wicked in theaters, PEOPLE look back on The Wizard of Oz
• Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was burned on the set, and removing the makeup around the wounds caused indescribable pain
• She also had green colored skin in the months after the shoot

It wasn’t always easy being green for Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

In 1939, almost a century before Cynthia Erivo died of a witch origin story in WickedHamilton famously played the jovial, sarcastic villain who terrorizes the inhabitants of the magical land of Oz.

And Hamilton – who died aged 82 in 1985 – went through a particularly painful “ordeal”, according to Oz expert John Fricke, author The Wizard of Oz, The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History and The Wizard of Oz, an illustrated companion to the timeless film classic.

This was greatly contributed to by an accident she had while filming a scene with Judy Garland’s character Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road. After the witch tells the gingham-clad Kansan and her puppy Toto, “I’ll get you both my pretty dog ​​and your little dog,” she disappears in a cloud of red smoke and fire.

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch and Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty

Fricke says Hamilton was instructed to stand on an elevator platform built into the floor of the yellow brick road, which would lower her down (along with the broom she was holding) as red smoke obscured her exit. Once fully lowered below the set, the crew would send fire through nearby openings in the floor.

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And in these early days of Hollywood long before CGI, “it had to be real fire,” notes Fricke.

“They practiced it and practiced it all morning and they got it in the first frame. “Maggie said the line, turned around, got to the elevator, there was smoke, they threw her through the floor, she cleared the floor, the fire lit up perfectly and there was a lot of excitement on the set,” according to Fricke.

“But then it was lunchtime and everyone left. And as Maggie used to say, when they all came back after lunch, they were all a little less attentive, less on the money than they had been in the morning. And there was a misfire every time they tried to get a second try,” Fricke continues.

Margaret Hamilton in a promotional photo for ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

Virgil Apger/John Kobal Foundation/Getty

Director Victor Fleming—”a no-nonsense man”—became impatient with technicians, Fricke says. “He read them the riot act in very clear terms and language.”

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The next time they rehearsed the scene, the technicians released fire through the vents before Hamilton was completely submerged through the floor.

“Her shoulders and her head and the broom straw and her hat, with that piece of gauze hanging from it, that much was still above the ground,” he says. “The cheesecloth caught fire, the broom straw caught fire.”

Crew members stationed below to help Hamilton off the elevator platform “quickly put out the fire, but it wasn’t quick enough,” Fricke says. “The broom straw was next to her face and near her right hand. And the result was that she had second-degree burns on her face, third-degree burns on her arm where the green makeup was.”

Margaret Hamilton, actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, in an undated photo.

Collection of John Springer/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty

Fricke says crew members pulled Hamilton aside and told her they needed to clean her skin immediately so the potentially toxic makeup, which contained copper, wouldn’t seep into the wound.

“‘Ms. Hamilton, we have to get this makeup off you. The green is poisonous, and the copper will burn into your skin and disfigure you if we don’t get every bit of it off your face,'” Hamilton was told, according to Fricke, who befriended the actress in a decade before her death.

“And they took alcohol and cleaned her face and hand. And I’ve heard her tell this story many times. She said, ‘I’m going to have to scream.’ She said, ‘I will never, as long as I live, forget that pain when they rubbed alcohol on those two burns,’ says Fricke.

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Was the makeup itself to blame for the burns? Probably not. “According to what Maggie used to say, she was burned because the flames that were closer than close immediately jumped from the broomstick in her hand — and the gauze that was pulled from her hat — to her face and hand,” explains Fricke.

“It was a very small elevator shaft, and the smoke and fire vents were right around the opening. And she was burned like anyone else would be when caught in such a burst of fire,” he continues. However, removing the makeup was a pain.

Hamilton recuperated for six weeks and returned to finish filming the role. When she wrapped herself up, she took something with her as a souvenir: dyed leather.

“She said that in the months after the shoot, people were saying, ‘You look a little green.’ Her skin absorbed some of the green and it took her a while to get it off her skin or out of her body,” says Fricke.

Despite all that, Hamilton found making the film a positive experience, says Fricke. “She loved it,” he says. “She was very proud of it until the day she died.”

Wicked: Part One it’s in theaters now, with The second part set for release on November 21, 2025.

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Source: HIS Education