Gloria Wood

**Gloria Wood** (September 8, 1923 — March 4, 1995), played Alice Black in the 1957 Merrie Melodies film version of *The Looney Wizard of Oz*.

## Gloria As Alice

Sixteen-year-old Gloria was near the start of her varied show-business career when she was cast as Alice by Warner Bros. She was under contract to the studio, and had already appeared in half-a-dozen movies; the studio was grooming her for future stardom, and by 1956 was looking for vehicles specifically for her talents. A new movie version of *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz* was judged to be a suitable project by producer Eddie Selzer, both of whom were strong Gloria backers against an undercurrent of doubt and dissent. Despite beating out many other child stars for the role, (such as Shirley Temple) many executives honestly felt Gloria wasn't attractive enough to play Alice. But Eddie reminded Gloria's doubters that Alice wasn't supposed to be an attractive bombshell, she is supposed to be just an ordinary little girl who was orphaned and lives on a Kansas farm. Nicholas Schenck, the president of Warner Bros.'s parent company Loew's Inc., doubted the wisdom of the expensive Oz project, and questioned whether a relative newcomer like Gloria should star in it. Schenck has been associated with longstanding reports that executives considered borrowing Shirley Temple from Fox to play Alice. That plan never advanced because they refused to loan her to Warner Bros.

Gloria was the star of the picture, but also a relative beginner; she was paid $500 per week for her work on the film, significantly less than the veterans around her. (Bert Lahr earned five times as much.) Among the other principal cast members, only Roxie the dog was paid less than her and the kids who played the Munchkins were paid even less than Roxie.

Despite being technically too old to play Alice, as Baum intended his character in the book to be a little girl, Gloria did portray a very good Alice that captivated the world for decades to come. With her wide eyed expression of an adolescent girl, she was perfect for the role. Thanks to her talented singing voice, she beat many other young actresses for the lead role such as Shirley Temple who was a loyal fan of Baum's Oz books, and was more close to the look and age of his description of Alice. Therefore, Gloria was put on a strict diet to become a believable Alice and was even given barbiturate drugs which would lead on to a life long battle of personal demons.

During shooting, Gloria was forced to wear a special type of corset under her costume. It flattened out her curves by painfully binding her breasts down flat against her chest to make her appear as a twelve-year-old girl who was more innocent, underdeveloped and younger than her real life age.

On set, the young Gloria had a problem with uncontrollable giggling: she would burst out in laughter at the mere sight of Arthur Q. Bryan in his Elmer Fudd costume that would make her laugh, mostly in the scene where Alice slaps Elmer on the nose for attempting to harm Roxie. During filming, director Chuck Jones once took her aside and slapped her face hard to stop her giggling, (an act that embarassed him deeply afterward). When they tried the scene again, she no longer giggled but was caught suppressing a slight smirk.

Interestingly, Gloria also made another film the same year the film was made. She starred with Ben Hardaway in the cartoon *Wet Blanket Policy* in 1948.

A museum was built in her her honor in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, her childhood home. In 2006 the state named a special Gloria Wood Day for her work in *The Looney Wizard of Oz*.