The Time I Gave A Ride to the Wicked Witch of the West

I have had many celebrity encounters over the years and previously blogged about meeting Danny Kaye and Liza Minnelli. But I saved this one for October.

It was the late '70s, and my mother was in charge of a fundraising dinner at my sister’s school. Mom needed someone to pick up their most famous alumna and drive her to the event. She voluntold me to do it -- and that is how I got to spend 40 minutes alone with one of the scariest villains in film history, The Wicked Witch of the West. She is ranked #4 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 Greatest Villains, behind only Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, and Darth Vader. 

Cleveland Native Margaret Hamilton

By the time I met her, actress Margaret Hamilton was in her late 70s. The Wizard of Oz film had been out for about forty years -- long enough for her to realize its legacy and the iconicity of her performance.

Shy, deferential, and unpracticed in conversing with adults, I mostly answered her questions about school, my interests, and college plans. In person, she proved a good witch: kind, gentle, and warm, she thanked me several times for taking the time to drive her when I could have been doing other things. We made small talk about her alma mater, Hathaway Brown School, to the extent that I knew anything at all as a mere sibling.

As we drove along, I finally mustered the conversational courage I sought to confide to her that as a child (maybe I was 15, but who’s counting?), I was so frightened by the Wizard of Oz scenes featuring her character that I had to watch through my hands and retreat to the adjacent stairs in case I needed to run away. Long before Wicked put things in perspective, I was paralyzed with fear by her antics, green face, cackle, and menace. She was the stuff of nightmares, I told her. 

To be completely honest, I was even somewhat apprehensive about escorting the actress Margaret Hamilton for fear that her most famous character, the witch, might somehow come to the fore.

Hamilton’s response will always stay with me. Knowingly, and compassionately, she told me that she had heard of similar reactions from countless others throughout the years. She did not just express this to me – in a 1975 interview with Mr. Rogers, she “laments how frightened children became of her portrayal and expresses a great surprise and sadness at this” (Horror Homeroom). 

The former teacher and advocate of causes benefitting children and animals was concerned that she might have inflicted some kind of psychic trauma on America’s youth. She even went so far as to say there were times when she regretted her choice to take the role. 

I felt the Wicked Witch of the West melting, melting all over again. I could see Margaret Hamilton for who she was -- a class act, a pioneering actress, and a humble legend.

In the end, as we arrived at the school, she told me she still thought she did the right thing by making the film. 

I assured her that she had.