While Ebsen was recovering from his illness, producer Mervyn LeRoy hired Jack Haley to replace him. The aluminum dust used in Ebsen’s makeup had caused an allergic reaction or infection in his lungs that left him scarcely able to breathe, and he ended up spending two weeks in the hospital and another month recuperating in San Diego. If this continued, I wouldn’t even be able to take a breath. The cramps in my arms advanced into my chest to the muscles that controlled my breathing. What was happening to me? Next came the worst. My wife tried to pull my arm straight with some success, just as my toes began to curl then my feet and legs bent backward at the knees. My arms were cramping from my fingers upward and curling simultaneously so that I could not use one arm to uncurl the other. For a time I could control this unusual cramping by forcibly straightening out my fingers and toes. My fingers began to cramp, and then my toes. Then I would gasp for another quick breath with the same result. I would breathe and exhale and then get the panicky feeling I hadn’t breathed at all. My first symptoms had been a noticeable shortness of breath. It was several days later when my cramps began.
As Ebsen described the onset of symptoms in his autobiography: Nine days later, he was rushed to the hospital and placed in an oxygen tent when his lungs failed.
When The Wizard of Oz began principal photography on 12 October 1938, Ebsen had finished all his costume and makeup tests, recorded his songs for the film soundtrack, and completed four weeks of rehearsal. They tried a variety of materials for his clothing (real tin, silver paper, cardboard covered with silver cloth) and makeup before finally settling on aluminum dust (applied over clown white) for the latter.
Buddy ebsen how to#
MGM initially had no idea exactly how to costume Ebsen for his role.
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Buddy Ebsen (later to become familiar to generations of TV viewers as Jed clampett, the patriarch of The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom family), was originally intended for the role of the Scarecrow, but Ray Bolger eventually managed to convince MGM to allow him to swap parts with Ebsen (not, as is often claimed, because a clause in Bolger’s contract stipulated that he could play the part of the Scarecrow if MGM ever made The Wizard of Oz). As part of the shifting casting that often goes on in the lead-up to motion picture productions, the person first cast to play the Tin Woodman in MGM’s 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz was Ray Bolger.
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