What’s with the Green Face?
The Wicked Witch of the West scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Every time that she appeared in a scene from The Wizard of Oz, I would resort to using the customary strategy practiced by any normal, frightened child: I covered my face with both of my hands. This time-honored method would allow me to take the small, measured, one-eyed glimpses that a young child can bear when watching a frightening scene. Viewing the Wicked Witch of the West through a narrow opening between two fingers did not make her any less terrifying. Although, when you are a just a kid, any attempt to avoid full exposure to scary stuff does serve to provide some level of adequate security. Barely peeking at the wicked witch, as opposed to using unimpaired vision, made my encounter with her slightly more tolerable.
“I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog, too.” Surely, threatening promises that were delivered with a heinous cackle would have been disturbing enough. But it was most assuredly the creepy green face that always left a haunting impression upon my brain. This image would last for many months following one of our annual Wizard of Oz television broadcasts during the 1960’s.
One of the most unnerving portions of the movie occurs while Dorothy is locked in the tower of the wicked witch’s castle. I dreaded the scene during which Dorothy sees her Auntie Em’s image in the enormous crystal ball. I would wince and hold my breath during the moment when Auntie Em’s reflection would become blurry, and then mysteriously transform into the hideous, enlarged green face of the Wicked Witch.
As many times as I had seen the movie, I knew that the witch’s ghastly face would become larger-than-life within that damn crystal ball, and yet it petrified me each and every time that it happened. I would cringe while she mocked Dorothy’s desperate cries for Auntie Em with such cruelty. That extremely large green face, with the pinched eyebrows, and the pursed lips that ridiculed poor Dorothy’s forlorn predicament was brutal. That was the one image that stuck in my head for months. The memory of it still wrinkles my nose.
Since the early childhood years in the Bean household were restricted to viewing a black-and-white television set, Durwood was spared the full-color spectrum of the Wicked Witch as seen in all of her evil green. When Dorothy opened the front door of her fallen house, Durwood and his two sisters thought that Munchkin Land still looked like Kansas. Apparently, the Wicked Witch of the West was not as frightening in black-and-white.
After all, he did marry me.
