Does anyone know if Buddy Ebsen got any kind of settlement/compensation for what happened to him on the set of Wizard of Oz? From everything I’ve read he almost died, and was in recuperation for months. Snopes even says that the cast/crew didn’t realize what had happened to him, and just thought he was fired. I can’t find anything though, on whether he got paid for the work he did do and whether or not he got anything out of what happened. Does anyone know?
IIRC, Ebsen was under contract to MGM, so he continued to draw his salary. The studio may also have paid his medical bills.
Back then, the studios paid actors as employees. It’s not like today when actors are hired for a role and then left to fend. The studio would assign contract players to parts they thought you’d work out well with.
When Buddy Ebsen was cast in The Wizard of Oz in 1938, he was in the second year of his second two-year contract at MGM at a salary of $1,500 a week ($19,300 in 2005 dollars). (Judy Garland got only $500 per week.) Contract players were paid only for the weeks they actually worked during rehearsals, wardrobe and makeup tests, filming, and post-production publicity work.
After two weeks in the hospital, Ebsen recuperated for a month in San Diego. He considered suing MGM, but realized that the studio heads were the power moguls in town, and he didn’t want a reputation as trouble.
Slight hijack:
When I’d first heard this, about Ebsen being the original Tin Man, I only knew him from Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones, I always thought of his allergic reaction as providential. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of his early MGM films–Banjo on My Knee, Born to Dance, Captain January–and man, he woulda been 9 times better in that role than Jack Haley. I have a kind of dirty crush on the young Buddy Ebsen; he was kinda like a white trash Cillian Murphy. Very sexy, in a very contortionisty way.
I’d kinda hope he got paid. According to reputable sources, in siome long shots at the Witch’s castle it actually is footage of Ebsen in the Tin Man makeup. (I’ve looked for him in these shots, but can’t identify him – he looks a bit different from Jack Haley in stills I’ve seen). So, in a way, he still ended up being in the movie.
It’s him singing, too, in the group parts where they’re singing “We’re Off To See The Wizard.” If you listen closely, you can pick out his voice. They’d already recorded the songs, and the film was way over budget, so rather than re-record the songs where it was all of them singing, they just went ahead and used them.
The major differences between Buddy Ebsen’s makeup and Jack Haley’s makeup were the addition of rust accents, eye shadow, darkened lips, and a series of rivets was added around each ear and down the back of the head.
Aljean Harmetz, in her history of the production, says that all footage shot by director Richard Thorpe, before he was replaced, was discarded. Ebsen was out a day or two before Thorpe was.
Jack Haley also had a double, who was used whenever possible.