Margaret Hamilton

A look into how L. Frank Baum's classic novel was transformed into one of the most beloved films of all time including archival interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and rare musical outtakes.

Documentary about the making of the 1939 MGM classic film The Wizard of Oz. Includes interviews of cast and crew members, their families and fans of the film.

The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers payed up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and costume changes, tape rewinding, and the like. Executive producer Alexander Cohen estimated that the 5,800 Radio City Music Hall seats sold out at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. The show itself cost about $4 million to produce and was expected to yield around $2 million for the new addition to the Actors Fund retirement home in Englewood, N. J. ABC is reputed to have paid more than $5 million for the television rights.

When aging newspaper Editor Frank Miller is fired after decades of service and replaced by a computer, he cannot take this fate quietly. Frank becomes enraged and starts writing letters to his son, Richard, expressing his fury.

A Halloween-themed television special starring Paul Lynde which aired only once on October 29, 1976 on ABC. It features guest stars including Margaret Hamilton (who reprises her role as the Wicked Witch of the West), Billie Hayes (as Witchiepoo from H.R. Pufnstuf), Tim Conway, Roz Kelly, Florence Henderson, rock band KISS, Billy Barty, Betty White and, in an unbilled surprise appearance, Donny and Marie Osmond.

Revisit the enchanting Land of Oz as Dorothy and Toto return to find the Scarecrow as ruler of the Emerald City. Unfortunately for the new mayor, the wicked Mombi is conspiring to take over the city for herself. With the help of the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion and other familiar friends, the brave lass from Kansas sets out to save Oz. This animated musical film features an impressive voice cast, including Liza Minnelli and Ethel Merman.

After being run out of Las Vegas, reporter Carl Kolchak heads for Seattle and another reporting job with the local paper. It's not long before he is on the trail of another string of bizarre murders. It seems that every 21 years, for the past century, a killer kills a certain number of people, drains them of their blood and then disappears into the night. Kolchak is on his trail, but can he stop him?

Thief Duke Anderson—just released from ten years in jail—takes up with his old girlfriend in her posh apartment block, and makes plans to rob the entire building. What he doesn't know is that his every move is being recorded on audio and video, although he is not the subject of any surveillance.

Brewster is an owlish, intellectual boy who lives in a fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome. He has a dream: to take flight within the confines of the stadium. Brewster tells those he trusts of his dream, but displays a unique way of treating others who do not fit within his plans.

The new minister in a small town faces the challenge of winning over its eccentric citizens.

An eccentric Los Angeles dowager decides to fight back when her two greedy daughters attempt to have her declared legally insane.

A professor and his beautiful assistant investigate a murder which occurs in a supposedly haunted house.

In this hybrid of live-action and stop-motion animation, a young Hans Christian Andersen goes in search of knowledge in the Garden of Paradise in order to make his studies easier. Each time he falls asleep, he experiences in his dreams the different characters he would later write about in fairy tales including The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina and The Emperor's New Clothes.

A compilation of clips from 19 Abbott & Costello features: The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, In the Navy, Hit the Ice, Who Done It?, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Mexican Hayride, Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, Little Giant, In Society, Ride 'Em Cowboy, The Naughty Nineties, Buck Privates Come Home, Buck Privates, Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops, Lost in Alaska, Comin' Round the Mountain, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. - Written by Tom Weaver

An elderly motion picture artist drifts through a tenement block, devising a plan to change the lives of its dissatisfied residents with a dusting of Hollywood magic!

Reclusive Dr. Zorba has died and left his mansion to his nephew Cyrus and his family. They will need to search the house to find the doctor's fortune, but along with the property they have also inherited the occultist's collection of 13 ghosts.

A sinister criminal known only as "The Bat" attempts to locate a fortune in stolen securities supposedly hidden in the rambling mansion owned by spinster Cornelia Van Gorde.

The Christmas Tree is a 1958 Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-television film that was broadcast on NBC on December 14, 1958. It is based on the short story "An Affair at the Inn" by Charles J. Finger. A number of stars in short skits, including Carol Channing and Cyril Ritchard on skates.

Mr. Brink seems to bring death with him wherever he goes. But can a young boy and his grandfather change this dire situation?

A STRING OF BLUE BEADS is a slight little Christmas tale that was a pilot for an anthology series of short stories that never came to be. What makes this little film fascinating is it was one of the earliest color broadcasts on television and happily is one of the few early color productions for TV that can be seen in color now. Early color television productions seem to have had a limited color capability much like the early 1930's attempts at Technicolor. This actually adds to the charm of this little Christmas story giving in an "old time" feel.

Successful and well-liked, Dr. Noah Praetorius becomes the victim of a witchhunt at the hands of Professor Elwell, who disdains Praetorius's unorthodox medical views and also questions his relationship with the mysterious, ever-present Mr. Shunderson.

Al Stewart and Wilbert are magicians doing a stage act when they run into Wilbert's cousin, Dorothy McCoy. They find out that Wilbert's grandfather, Squeeze-box McCoy, had treasure hidden in the hills of Kentucky, which they go to find.

A horse trainer who has fallen on hard times looks to his horse, Broadway Bill, to finally win the big race.

Andy Clark discovers he was cheated out of a half interest in partner Mike's business, now a thriving dance hall in 1892 Chicago. Unable to win it back, Andy schemes to make Mike's position untenable. He also hopes to turn Ruby Summers, Mike's motor-mouthed burlesque queen, into a classier entertainer, and incidentally to make her his own. But at the last minute, Andy's revenge comes unravelled.

Saloon-bar singer Freddie gets very angry whenever boyfriend Blackie seems to be playing around. She always packs a six-shooter, so this is bad news for anything that happens to be in the way. As this is usually the local judge's rear-end, Freddie and friend Conchita are soon hiding out teaching school in the middle of nowhere.

Set in the rural south of the United States, a bereaved war widow learns to put aside her bitterness and grief as she grows to love a young orphan boy and his dog.

Peter Miles stars as Tom Tiflin, the little boy at the heart of this John Steinbeck story set in Salinas Valley. With his incompatible parents -- the city-loving Fred and country-happy Alice -- constantly bickering, Tom looks to cowboy Billy Buck for companionship and paternal love.

In this detective drama, a gumshoe must find a priceless hunk of jade. His several leads evaporate when the police succeed in killing all of the suspects.

Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright. Along the way, his car breaks down and a girl walking along the highway asks for a lift. It turns out she's a nice girl, named Perry, running away from a job at a gasoline station. Soon they're off to New York together, but part ways once they arrive. Time passes and Eddie is failing to sell his play; Perry is failing to find a job. Odd circumstances, involving an old pickpocket named Mandy, bring them together again.

An industrialist is urged to run for President, but this requires uncomfortable compromises on both political and marital levels.

Just as church services are letting out, a shabbily-dressed stranger is run over by an automobile in front of the church. The stranger is helped mentally and physically by the minister and congregation members, who help him regain his self-confidence and also to accept the death of his wife as she was about to embark from Europe, as a displaced person, to join him in America.

An orphan helps a doctor fight an epidemic in a small western town, in one of Allan Dwan’s closely observed studies in Americana.

Art editor Madeleine Damian carries on numerous loveless affairs. After a failed relationship with advertiser Felix Courtland, the increasingly depressed Madeleine attempts suicide. When Jack Garet, her secretary and former lover, tries to blackmail her, Madeleine resigns and seeks a reclusive life. Neighbor David Cousins befriends Madeleine, but soon Courtland and Garet discover her whereabouts and disrupt her new life.

Twenty-three years after scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock, who has been stuck in a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for years, is let go by his pompous boss, advertising tycoon J.E. Wagglebury, with nothing but a tiny pension. Harold, who never touches the stuff, takes a stiff drink with his new pal... and another, and another. What happened Wednesday?

A U.S. Army sergeant is home on leave to reconnect with his girlfriend he hopes to marry. However, in the years he's been away, she's gotten a huge promotion where they used to work together - and has become engaged to another man.

Newlywed Janie's (Joan Leslie) World War II-veteran husband (Robert Hutton) goes to work at her father's (Edward Arnold) newspaper.

Two couples work through their issues in this backstage Broadway musical.

Evelyn, an emotionally vulnerable and unstable woman, stays at the home of her doctor Dan Proctor. There she meets and falls in love with his brother, Douglas, who is happily married to Ann. Evelyn then sets forth to break up the happy marriage and win the love of Douglas.

Cagney is a human dynamo as a drifter who helps save ailing Grace George from losing her newspaper. The pace is fast, and audiences of all ages will be pleased. The supporting cast, have all the small-town characterizations down pat -- with Margaret Hamilton a standout. Cagney himself, had genuine affection for this film, and listed it among his top five movie-making experiences at a retrospective the year before he died.

A young woman's husband has been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In order to be near him to try to help him get his sentence overturned, she moves into a boardinghouse near the prison whose residents are the wives of inmates.

Gil Carter and Art Croft ride into a small Nevada town plagued by cattle thieves. Initially suspected of being the rustlers themselves, Carter and Croft eventually join a posse out to get the criminals, who also may be involved in a recent shooting. When the posse closes in on a group that could be the fugitives, they must decide on a course of action, with numerous lives hanging in the balance.

Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé.

A young newlywed couple learns to make their new marriage work; trying to impress family, stay on budget, and remain as diplomatic towards each other as possible.

Mike Abbott just wants to spend a quiet evening at home with his wife, but her collection of zany friends make hash of his hopes.

Farce of identical twins and a wife who takes up real estate business.

When a gold digger starts to get a little old to ply her trade, she teaches a younger woman all her tricks.

Kitty Carroll, an attractive store model, volunteers to become a test subject for a machine that will make her invisible so that she can use her invisibility to exact revenge on her ex-boss.

In this low-budget musical, two sets of politically ambitious parents attempt to pair up their youngsters who unfortunately despise each other and only pretend to like each other to please their parents. On the nights they are to go out, they sneak out with their respective true loves. It all works well until the unwilling couple find themselves falling in love for real. songs include: "I'm Nobody's Sweetheart Now", and "Got Romance".

Victorian melodrama gets a big send-up in this spoof production of the old play "The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved." The play within the movie is the old one where evil villain Cribbs schemes to get his lusty clutches on the heroine by driving her naive husband to alcoholic ruin. Luckily, a temperance lecturer is on hand to set things straight, as is the great Buster Keaton as the drunkard's friend.

While on her way by stagecoach to visit relatives out west, Flower Belle Lee is held up by a masked bandit who also takes the coach's shipment of gold. When he abducts Flower Belle and they arrive in town, Flower Belle is suspected of being in collusion with the bandit.

Story of a lawyer, gangster and a floozy.

Mickey Moran, son of two vaudeville veterans, decides to put up his own vaudeville show with his girlfriend Patsy Barton. But child actress Rosalie wants to make a comeback and replace Patsy both professionally and as Mickey's girl.

A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up with the local mob boss and corrupt politicians and soon finds himself being framed for an arson and murder he didn't commit.

Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man as they make their way along the yellow brick road to talk with the Wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.

A boozy former veterinarian and a teenage orphan team together with dreams of entering a broken-down horse in the big race.

The story begins while Tommy Martin and his mother, Martha Martin say goodbye to Henry and Reuben Johnson. After having stopped by the Mennonite farm, where Tommy and Martha stay with the William and Annie Decker, the Johnsons are headed back to their hometown of Goshen. The balance of the film is concerned with both trying to get the necessary train fare and with Tommy clearing his name over a misunderstanding.

A publicist falls for his most difficult client's daughter.

A financially-strapped mother and her children relocate from the city to a small rural town.

Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with forclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.

Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending to be pirates, attending their own funeral and witnessing a murder.

When a small-town girl is incorrectly diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an unknowing newspaper columnist turns her into a national heroine.

Theater manager James Guthrie's (Melvyn Douglas) career depends on famed soprano Elsa Terry (Grace Moore) singing in his Buenos Aires opera house, however, Elsa breaks the contract in favor of a more lucrative deal in Paris. Desperate, James begins showering her with flowers and candy in an attempt to woo her to the Argentinian opera house. When Elsa overhears James confess to his friend Pancho that he'd be willing to resort to kidnapping to get Elsa to Argentina, she mistakenly believes his motives to be solely romantic.

A horse breeder's granddaughter falls in love with a gambler in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Stalwart Appalachian woman finds romance as she struggles to better herself and her people amid prejudice and familial abuse.

A small town drunk beats a teetotal banker guilty of a shady transaction.

Some shady characters discover that a sad sack nightclub bus boy has the ability to predict outcomes of races and other events through astrology.

Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a break after being released from prison. When he is framed for murder, Taylor is forced to flee with his wife Joan Graham and baby. While escaping prison after being sentenced to death, Taylor becomes a real murderer, condemning himself and Joan to a life of crime and death on the road.

A man convicted of murder escapes from jail and hides out in the home of a small town newspaper publisher who has befriended him. She knows who the real killer is.

Late one night, secretary Paula Young (Ann Harding) leaves the office of her boss, Stanley Whittaker (Douglas Dumbrille, locking the door and taking the stairs to avoid being seen by the elevator operator (Frank Jenks). The next morning, the cleaning lady finds Whittaker's dead body, an apparent suicide. Police Lieutenant Poole (Moroni Olsen) finds a letter signed by Whittaker in which the deceased states he embezzled $75,000. Soon, however, he suspects otherwise and, after investigating, arrests widower James "Jim" Trent (Walter Abel), the vice president of Whittaker.

A writer and an actress meet and marry without really knowing each other--they are even unaware that both bride and groom are equally famous. During the honeymoon, all hell breaks loose as a comedic war of the sexes leads inevitably to love.

Martha and Karen graduate from college and turn an old Massachusetts farm into a school for girls. The friends are aided in their venture by local doctor Joe Cardin, who begins a relationship with Karen, and a prominent woman whose granddaughter, Mary, later enrolls in the new school. Mary soon reveals herself to be a spiteful child and tells a scandalous lie about Martha and Joe that threatens to destroy the lives of all involved.

Teenage orphan Jenny Yates becomes starstruck when a revival of an old Victorian melodrama passes through her small New England town, to the disapproval of her stern grandfather, Uriah. Stowing away in the car of Philip Greene, a wealthy young man working with the theater troupe, Jenny talks her way into the play's lead role. But director Archie Fisher doesn't tell her that the new version of the play is meant as a spoof.

A family living on a farm in Maine takes in a young woman to stay with them, not knowing that the woman is not quite what she seems and has a secret in her past that she hasn't told them about.

A farmer tries to convince a girl to leave her life on a canal boat to live with him on his farm.

Tycoon J.L. Higgins controls his whole family, but one of his sons- in-law, Dan Brooks and his daughter Alice are fed up with that. Brooks quits his job as manager of J.L.'s paper box factory and devotes his life to his racing horse Broadway Bill, but his bank- roll is thin and the luck is against him, he is arrested because of $150 he owes somebody for horse food, but suddenly a planed fraud by somebody else seems to offer him a chance...

A bored couple facing middle-age succumbs to wandering eyes.

Ignored by his ever-busy wife and children, a middle-aged businessman finds companionship with a former female employee.

A prominent New York attorney defends his estranged wife's lover, who's been charged with the murder of a model in Greenwich Village.

A newlywed discovers that she and her husband's snobby family speak different languages.