To Discover the Language of My Soul.....: Margaret Hamilton

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton

Actress

December 9, 1902 - May 16, 1985

In honor of the first day of October, leading up to Halloween, I've decided that I'm going to start this month off with one of the "scariest" actresses in Hollywood history: The Wicked Witch of the West, Margaret Hamilton.

Margaret Hamiliton is perhaps best known for her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. She is also known as the Maxwell House lady, Cora in the 1970s.

Margaret Hamiliton in a publicity still for the film

Hamilton was born in Ohio in 1902, and moved to Hollywood in 1933, intending to make it as an actress after teaching elementary school in Boston. She married Paul Meserve on June 13, 1931, and their son Hamilton was born on June 12, 1936, the couple divorced in 1938; Margaret claimed mental and physical cruelty.

She got her most famous role, the Wicked Witch of the West, on October 10, 1938, after the actress originally given the role pulled out, due to the change of character for the witch. After 25 films, this was her big break.

The Famous Rubby slipper scene

During the filming of her leaving Munchkinland- on December 28, 1938- the copper within the paint Margaret wore on her face and hands caught fire, and she suffered third degree burns to her face and hands. She nearly quit, but came back after a month off on the condition that she not work with fire anymore.

The famous 'I'm Melting!' Scene from The Wizard of Oz

When she died, she did over sixty films and various television appearances, including appearances as Grandma Frump in The Addams Family, and Clara in The Partridge Family.

Margaret, the famous Wicked Witch of the West, died of a heart attack on May 16, 1985 at age eighty-two.

"I've frightened more children than practically anyone else. It always seems to funny to me; too, because I love children so much."- Margaret Hamilton, 1957

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The Photograph in the Music Box

April 15, 1912

“They recovered two children that had been in first class. One was identified as Loraine Allison. The other was never identified.”

The RMS Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic on April 15, 1912, taking thousands with her. Though the majority of the survivors are first and second class, and the majority of the victims third and crew, there were a few casualties among the upper classes that have long since been forgotten with the passage of time.

Among the casualties is a young girl; never claimed, she is later referred to as Victim 281 and buried in Halifax. All that is left of this innocent girl is a fading photograph in a music box buried in the wall of an apartment building in Manhattan- discovered nearly a century later by Shaynee Wilcox, the daughter of the new tenants. Armed with only the faded photograph of the young girl, Shaynee’s determined to discover
her true identity, and finally lay to rest the spirit of one of the Titanic’s youngest victims. As she uncovers clue after clue, Shaynee soon discovers that, not only does the girl have a link to the Titanic sinking, but she also has a link to Shaynee herself.

The Romantic Egotists

“I grew up among the great artists of Paris- Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley; Ezra Pound and William Faulkner, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice Toklas, and
of course my parents Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.”

It is with these very words, that Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald takes us back to those long ago nights in Paris; when the
world was still recovering from the destruction of the Great War, when Russia was trying to reassemble the shattered pieces of itself after the bloody fall of the Romanov dynasty and Germany was allowing a man called Hitler to start taking control.

In Paris, the wave of painters, writers, dancers and playwrights’ crashes upon its shores like the Allies upon the European coast. Sex, drugs and alcohol run the streets of grand ol’ Paris, corrupting the mind and setting in motion the wheels of rebellion. It is here, in Paris, at 27 Rue de Fleurus, that a group of expatriate Americans meet and begin turning out some of the greatest literature, art and dance of the twentieth century. The child of the couple forever known as the “Romantic Egotists”- the real beautiful and damned- Scottie tries
hard to come into her own during those muggy Paris nights, despite the constant push and pull of her mother’s erratic behavior and her father’s egotistic criticisms. Here, among the sting of smoke and smell of alcohol, surrounded by lust, love and sex, young Scottie sips her first taste of jealousy, and
discovers the cost of being famous. Into this world, Frances Fitzgerald is thrust, a silent witness to the trials, tribulations, darkness and light of a generation defined as forever “Lost.”

The Sound of Sickness

"Sickness has returned.
Cover your ears and hold your breath.
Breathing in could result in death."

Alexi Michaels has been surrounded by Tuberculosis his entire life. With his mother, he places docent at the Waverly Hills Sanitarium to tourists in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, telling them the history of this sad and disturbing chapter in Kentucky's history.

That same evening, while taking a private night tour of the decaying building, Alexi meets Marit, a fourteen-year-old girl who resides at the Sanitarium while she slowly dies from TB. She's watched and waited for Alexi to arrive, spending decades within Waverly's rotting walls, a spiritual shell of the girl she once was.

Over time, Alexi begins to win Marit's trust, and using a series of family photographs, Marit tells him of her unfortunate story. She knows all the secrets and stories of the hospital, including those of her unlucky family members- both hospital resident and worker.

But Marit has a secret. A secret that sent her to an early grave. A secret she's willing to share with Alexi if he gives her something in return.

Something that, to Marit- like every other patient at Waverly Hills- is worth more than its weight in gold.