"The Wizard of Oz" - How Did They Pass? Quiz

Answer: Stroke

Lyman Baum (1856-1919) grew up in a family that had grown wealthy in the castor oil business. He worked as a small-town journalist, a chicken breeder and an actor before failing as the proprietor of a general store. At the age of 40 he tried his hand at writing.

His book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was an instant success and he went on to write more in the series. At age 62 he died of a congenital heart defect and never lived long enough to see his book turned into a successful movie. On a personal note, while in the "Wizard of Oz" store in Las Vegas, I got to meet his grandson and had a very nice, and very long conversation with him.

Answer: Suicide

Clara (1881-1962) continued her acting career after "The Wizard of Oz", mostly taking parts as a kindly spinster until 1950 when she retired. In 1962, after years of suffering near-blindness and arthritis, she attended a Palm Sunday service and returned to her hotel where she dressed in her finest clothes, wrote a suicide note, ingested a number of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head.

Answer: Heart attack

The first choice for the wizard was, W.C. Fields, but he turned it down as being too small a part. Frank Morgan (1890-1949) applied and not only got that part, but the part of Professor Marvel, the cabby in the Emerald City, a soldier, and the gatekeeper of the Emerald City as well.

He continued acting and earned another Oscar nomination for Tortilla Flat in 1942. In 1949 he passed away peacefully, in his sleep.

Answer: Heart problems

Margaret Hamilton (1902-1985) was a kindergarten teacher before moving into acting in 1933. Originally Gale Sondergaard got the part when they envisioned the witch as being glamorous, like the queen in "Snow White". But when they decided she should be green and ugly, Gale turned the part down and Margaret was hired.

It was a little strange that the ugly old witch was only 36 years old, nineteen years younger than the attractive Good Witch. Margaret died at the age of 82 from a heart attack.

Answer: Cancer

Bert Lahr (1895-1967) spent most of his career in vaudeville and on Broadway. He debuted in feature films in 1931, but aside from "The Wizard of Oz", he didn't have much of a movie career. Playing in a 1944 patriotic film "Meet the People", he uttered the phrase "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", a phrase later picked up by the cartoon character Snaglepuss. Bert was starring in the film "The Night They Raided Minsky's" when he succumbed to cancer, a disease he did not know he had.

The producers had to finish the film using a different actor in several scenes.

Answer: Natural causes

Billie Burke (1884-1970) was named after her father, a clown in the Barnum and Bailey Circus. She achieved success in the London theater circuit, then came to the U.S. and repeated the success in New York. She retired from the theater to start a family, but the stock market crash forced her to return to the working world.

She appeared in almost seventy films before her final retirement at the age of 75. Ten years later, she passed away from natural causes.

Answer: Heart problems

Ironically, after being presented with a very sturdy metal heart in "The Wizard of Oz", Jack Haley's real heart failed him and he died of a heart attack at the age of 79.

Answer: Cancer

Ray Bolger (1904-1987) was one of the few main characters in the movie who lived long enough to enjoy the movie's success after annual showings on TV made it the Hollywood icon that it is today. Originally cast as the Tin Man, Ray realized that his dance style was more suited to the scarecrow, and finally convinced the studio to switch his roles. Ironically, his big dance scene was cut out of the final movie. Ray was one of the more successful members of the cast, and when he died of bladder cancer he was able to leave a $2.5 million trust to the UCLA school of theater.

Answer: 13

Terry's owner and trainer, Carl Spitz, ran the Hollywood Dog Training School. Someone left Terry (1932-1945) to be trained and never came back to get her. When the call went out for a dog to play the part, he thought that she looked like some of the pictures of Toto in the books, so he bought her to the studio.

She was hired immediately. All was not dog treats and roses, however. She didn't like being in the basket. She cowered when the wind machines were turned on. And one of the witch's guards stepped on her paw and she had to take a couple of weeks to recover from it.

Her name was officially change to Toto and she went on to appear in another fourteen films, although "The Wizard of Oz" is the only one in which her name was mentioned in the credits.

She finally passed away from natural causes at the age of 13 in human years, and 91 in dog years.

Answer: Drug overdose

Judy Garland did very well after "The Wizard of Oz" was released, first in movies, then with a singing career. But by the 1960s things had begun to work against her. She developed a drinking problem and, as an honorary member of The Rat Pack, her drinking only got worse.

She was fired from several movies because of her drinking and her voice was no longer what it was. At the young age of 47, she was found one morning slumped over the toilet, dead of an overdose of sleeping pills.