Oscar Profile #164: Margaret Hamilton

Born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio to Jennie and Walter Hamilton, Margaret Hamilton expressed an early interest in acting but yielded to her parents’ wish that she get an education and dutifully went to college and taught school until the acting bug took hold. She never gave up her love of children and animals, however, even serving on the Beverly Hills School Board for a time and supporting numerous animal rights causes throughout her life.

Hamilton made her Broadway debut in 1932’s Another Language. She was the only one of the cast members to reprise her stage role on screen when it was made into a film the following year with Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery.

Never under contract with any studio, Hamilton freelanced for $1,000 per week, making more than 120 film and TV appearances, not including her public service announcements and long-running commercial character of Cora, the general store owner who only sold Maxwell House Coffee.

Films leading up to her signature portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz included There’s Always Tomorrow; Broadway Bill; The Farmer Takes a Wife; Chatterbox; These Three; Nothing Sacred; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Mother Carey’s Chickens and Stablemates.

Having loved The Wizard of Oz since the age of four and having taught it to her students in schools, Hamilton was thrilled to be given a role in the film version. When she asked her agent what role they wanted her to play, he replied “the witch”. “The witch?” she asked. The agent replied “what else?” That’s how one of the great iconic performances in screen history came to be.

Post Wizard of Oz films included Babes in Arms; My Little Chickadee; The Ox-Bow Incident; State of the Union ; The Sun Comes Up; The Red Pony; People Will Talk; 13 Ghosts; Brewster McCloud and The Anderson Tapes.

Last on Broadway in the 1969 revival of Our Town, Hamilton later replaced Hermione Gingold in the touring version of A Little Night Music with Jean Simmons.

Mostly on TV in the 1970s and 80s, Hamilton’s most memorable role during this period was in 1979’s Letter From Frank in which she played a warm-hearted grandmother alongside Art Carney, Maureen Stapleton, Mike Farrell, Michael J. Fox and Lew Ayres.

A distant cousin of matinee idol, later character actor, Neil Hamilton (1899-1984), Hamilton was married briefly in the 1930s but raised her son mostly on her own. The grandmother of four passed away on May 16, 1985. She was 82.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

CHATTERBOX (1936), directed by George Nichols, Jr.

An utterly charming backstage comedy-drama, the lovely Anne Shirley and handsome Phillips Holmes make an engaging couple, ably supported by Edward Ellis, Erik Rhodes, Granville Bates and Lucille Ball among others. Hamilton all but steals the film as Holmes’ supportive landlady and cupid.

MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKENS (1938), directed by Rowland V. Lee

Katharine Hepburn famously bought out her RKO contract rather than appear in this film. Joan Bennett also turned down the role that eventually went to Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers turned down the role that went to Anne Shirley,

Keeler, in her only non-singing role, and Shirley play sisters in 1898 New England, whose widowed mother (Fay Bainter) rents a house from agent Walter Brennan and along with her daughters and younger sons as well as boarder James Ellison fixes up the place. Enter Hamilton and her husband who make an offer to the owner he can’t refuse. Bainter and family are about to be put out on the street, when Ellison and the owner’s doctor son (Frank Albertson) come up with a plan to scare Hamilton and hubby out of their wits.

Superbly acted, especially by Bainter and Hamilton, the film belies the trouble it had getting off the ground with all its casting problems.

STABLEMATES (1938), directed by Sam Wood

A sadly under-appreciated gem, this film helped turn Mickey Rooney into the screen’s number one box-office star as a stable-boy/jockey who is given a horse in payment for his services. Wallace Beery co-stars as a mysterious vagrant who turns out to be a disgraced veterinarian. Hamilton comes as close as she ever did to playing a major film’s leading lady as the five times widowed farmwoman who takes shine to Beery and proposes to make him number six. Alas, the wily Beery fails to comply with her wishes.

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), directed by Victor Fleming

One of the best loved films of all time, thanks in major part to its pitch perfect cast including Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, the Munchkins and flying above them all, the irrepressible Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West. Those who’ve clocked her screen time say she’s only on screen for five minutes as the witch, but what five minutes! Still capable of scaring young children half to death, for decades after the film was made Hamilton could still hush an audience by repeating her signature line in the witch’s voice, “I’ll get you, my pretty…and your little dog, too!”

Giving the kind of performance Oscar’s supporting awards were made to honor, Hamilton was shockingly not even nominated for one of the screen’s most unforgettable incarnations.

13 GHOSTS (1960), directed by William Castle

Gimmicky horror film producer/director released this comedy/horror film in Illusion-O, special glasses you needed to wear in order to see the ghosts that inhabit the house into which a new family has moved.

Charles Herbert is the family’s precocious child. Jo Morrow is his teenage sister, Martin Milner her boyfriend and veterans Donald Woods and Rosemary DeCamp are his parents. Hamilton parodying her image lifts the film beyond mere camp.