The Real Reason the Wicked Witch of the West Is Green

When audiences first saw The Wizard of Oz in 1939, they were dazzled by the movie’s use of Technicolor. Dorothy’s ruby slippers sparkled, the yellow brick road gleamed and the Wicked Witch of the West appeared in a shocking shade of green skin. But L. Frank Baum’s original book never described her that way. 

In Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West is mean and scary but not green. “Now the Wicked Witch of the West had but one eye, yet that was as powerful as a telescope, and could see everywhere,” Baum wrote.

Illustrator W.W. Denslow depicted her as elderly with an eyepatch and braids.

Technicolor, an early motion picture color process invented in 1915, made advancements in the 1930s with a three-strip camera that captured red, green and blue light for vivid full-color images. Although earlier films had used color, The Wizard of Oz set a new standard.      

“The year 1939 was also a time of great advancement in the technology of making films,” writes Charles F. Adams in 1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood’s Greatest Year. “Sound recording was better, film was faster, cameras were more mobile and flexible, rear projection had been mastered, and pictures could now be made in full color.”

An early version of MGM’s movie script called for shooting the Kansas scenes in black and white (the final version was sepia), with Oz in full color. “It was an idea that was quickly accepted and that would become a legendary aspect of the movie,” Adams explains. 

To showcase Technicolor, Dorothy’s silver shoes from the books became ruby red, the Emerald City was made more dazzling and the witch’s skin was painted green.

Actor Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 movie, said the choice of making her face, neck and hands green was about contrast.    

“Black next to your skin seemed to give rise to a thin line of white on the edge of the black, which did not look like edging but rather a separation,” she wrote in the foreword of Aljean Harmetz’s book The Making of The Wizard of Oz. Using green solved that problem. 

Applying the paint took two hours. Once it was on, Hamilton said she was “immobilized.” “If I touched my costume, it would be streaked with green.”

The paint even left Hamilton’s skin tinged green for weeks after filming wrapped. “I suppose the stuff gradually sort of sunk into my skin,” she said, according to Harmetz’s book. “It must have been months before my face was really normal again.”

The copper-based paint they used was also toxic. During the filming of a stunt scene where Hamilton’s hat and broom are set on fire, the green paint caused serious burns to the actor’s right hand.

“There are only two colors you have to worry about: gold and green,” makeup artist Jack Young told Harmetz. “Gold is a sealer. It closes up the pores. And green is toxic because it’s made with copper.” The burn was so severe that Hamilton did not return to the studio for six weeks.

Against the bright yellows of the road and the reds of Dorothy’s slippers, the Witch’s green face dramatically popped. It also reinforced her role as a villain, setting her apart from the other characters in Oz.

“The Wizard of Oz [movie] goes further to differentiate the Witch as an Other,” wrote Priya Banwait and Ailea Merriam-Pigg in the book I Want to Do Bad Things: Modern Interpretations of Evil. “Her green skin and black attire make her the least colorful character of Oz.”

The Wizard of Oz made the green-skinned Wicked Witch iconic, and later adaptations of the story have embraced the look.

Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked and its adaptations reimagine the witch as a tragic hero. Named Elphaba, she has green skin due to an elixir her mother drank while pregnant. Similar to the 1939 film, the color symbolizes her outsider status and the prejudice she faces in the updated story—as well as the power she comes to harness. 

Actor Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba in the Wicked movies, told Elle magazine she chose traditional makeup over CGI, even though it took up to four hours to apply.

“I think, because Elphaba’s otherness is about the color of her skin, I immediately feel connected to it as a Black woman,” Ervio said. “The beauty is that it connects with anyone who feels like they’re the other—whether they are Black, whether they are queer or whether they are just... different.”