“The Wizard of Oz”’s Wicked Witch Actress Suffered Unforgettable Pain After Being Burned on Set (Exclusive)
Despite the difficulties she experienced, actress Margaret Hamilton "loved" her time on the 1939 classic, 'Oz' expert and author John Fricke tells PEOPLE
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Margaret Hamilton in 'The Wizard of Oz.'With Wicked in theaters, PEOPLE is looking back at The Wizard of Oz
Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was burned on set, and removing the makeup around the wounds caused unspeakable pain
She also had tinted green skin in the months after filming
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, nearly a century before Cynthia Erivo went viridescent for the witch’s origin story in Wicked, Hamilton famously played the campy, cackling villain who terrorizes the residents of the magical land of Oz.
And Hamilton — who died at age 82 in 1985 — went through a particularly painful “ordeal,” according to Oz expert John Fricke, the author of The Wizard of Oz, The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History and The Wizard of Oz, An Illustrated Companion to the Timeless Movie Classic.
That was largely due to an accident she suffered 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 pup Toto, “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog, too,” she disappears in a cloud of red smoke and fire.
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Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch and Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in 'The Wizard of Oz.'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 held) as the red smoke clouded her exit. Once she was fully lowered down underneath the set, the crew would send fire up through nearby vents in the floor.
Related: 'Wizard of Oz' Beats 'Star Wars' to Be Named Most Influential Movie of All Time — See the Full List!
And in these early days of Hollywood long before CGI, “it had to be real fire,” notes Fricke.
“They rehearsed it and rehearsed it all one morning and they got it on the first take. Maggie said the line, she whirled around, she got to the elevator, the smoke came up, they dropped her through the floor, she cleared the floor, the fire came up perfect and there was much exultation on the set,” according to Fricke.
“But then it was lunchtime, and they all went off. And as Maggie used to say, when everybody came back after lunch, they were all a little bit less attentive, less kind of on-the-money than they were first thing in the morning. And there were misfires every time they tried to get a second take,” continues Fricke.
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Margaret Hamilton in a promotional photo for 'The Wizard of Oz.'Director Victor Fleming — “a no-nonsense man’s man,” grew impatient with the technicians, says Fricke. “He read them the riot act in no uncertain terms and language.”
The next time they tried the scene, the technicians released the fire through the vents before Hamilton was fully submerged through the floor.
“Her shoulders and her head and the broom straw and her hat, which had that hanging piece of gauze from it as well, that much was still above the ground,” he says. “The gauze caught fire, the broom straw caught fire.”
Crew members who were stationed underneath to help Hamilton off the platform elevator “quickly smothered the fire, but it wasn't quick enough,” says Fricke. “The broom straw was next to the side of her face and near her right hand. And the upshot was that she had second-degree burns on her face, third-degree burns on her hand where the green makeup was.”
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Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in 'The Wizard of Oz,' in an undated photo.Fricke says the crew members whisked Hamilton to the side and told her they needed to clean her skin immediately so the potentially toxic makeup, which contained copper, didn’t seep into the wound.
"’Ms. Hamilton, We have to get this makeup off you. Green is toxic and the copper will burn into your skin and disfigure you in effect if we don't clear every bit of it off your face,’" they told Hamilton according to Fricke, who befriended the actress in the decade before her death.
“And they took the rubbing alcohol and cleared her face off and cleared her hand off. 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 of them rubbing alcohol on those two burns,’” Fricke says.
Was the makeup itself to blame for the burns? Probably not. “From what Maggie used to say, she was burned because the closer-than-close flames instantly leapt from the broomstraw in her hand — and the trailing gauze from her hat — to her face and hand,” explains Fricke.
“It was a very tiny elevator shaft and the smoke and fire vents were immediately around its opening. And she was burned much as anyone else would have been when caught in such a burst of fire,” he continues. Nevertheless, the makeup removal was excruciating.
Hamilton recuperated for six weeks and returned to finish filming the role. When she wrapped, she took something of a souvenir with her: Tinted skin.
“She said that in the months after filming, people said, ‘You look a little green.’ Her skin had absorbed some of the green and it took a while for her to get that off of her skin or out of her system,” says Fricke.
Despite all that, Hamilton considered making the movie to be a positive experience, according to Fricke. “She loved it,” he says. “She was very proud of it until the day she died.”
Wicked: Part One is in theaters now, with Part Two set for release Nov. 21, 2025.
