Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 9, 1902, the last of four children born to Walter and Mary Jane Hamilton. The family lived in the more affluent part of town, mostly due to the father’s profession, attorney.
From a young age, Margaret knew that she wanted to be an actress. Her father, however, was a very practical man and insisted that Margaret have a proper education, something with which she could support herself if the acting thing didn’t pan out.
All working actresses (especially the ones in the movies) in the 1910s and 20s all seemed to have two things in common: they were gorgeous and glamourous, both things Margaret unfortunately was not.
Lucky for her, young Margaret had a second love: Children.
Margaret joined The Junior League of Cleveland, a non-profit organization for young woman to improve the social, cultural, and political fabric of civil society. And they liked to put on little plays and dramatic readings, so at least she got to experience some of the acting bug before heading off to Wheelock College in Boston.
In 1931, Margaret is living in New York and working as a kindergarten teacher when she met, then married Paul Boynton Meserve with whom she would have her only child, a son they named Hamilton Wadsworth (Meserve). The following year, she would appear in a stage play, but her big break came the next year, 1933, when she appeared in two movies. First, in a film called Zoo in Budapest, in which her character was so small, it didn’t even have a name (just a title: Matron for orphans, according to the script) and it was so small she wasn’t even mentioned anywhere in the credits. But it was the other film, Another Language, appearing opposite Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery that would mark the start of her Acting Career.
A Career Actress
Margaret Hamilton would ultimately become known for playing one character in particular which … well, when your episode of Sesame Street is Banned, and the show’s creators try to erase that episode off the face of the earth, that’s the kind of thing Hollywood likes to remember. I guess the real question is why we seem to have largely forgotten all the other work this actress did…?
By the time that she played her infamous character that would get her Banned from Sesame Street, she had appeared in roughly twenty-five films. After playing the character that would get her Banned, she probably made twice that many more. And these were no small films, either.
She was in Broadway Bill opposite Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter; she was in Victor Flemming’s Farmer Takes A Wife; she played opposite Henry Fonda in Way Down East and You Only Live Once and The Ox-Bow Incident; she was in Clark Gable and Jean Harlow’s Saratoga; she was in Edward G. Robinson’s A Slight Case of Murder; She was in Babes in Arms with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, she was in Mae West’s My Little Chickadee, Buster Keaton’s The Villian Still Pursued Her; and she made like Bungalow 13 and 13 Ghosts.
Margaret Hamilton didn’t just appear in the movies, but on television as well (in case you hadn’t guessed considering that whole Banned episode of Sesame Street I alluded to earlier.) She’s guest starred in shows such as Car 54, Where Are you? She was a series semi-regular in shows like The Adams Family and The Secret Room.
That Sesame Street Banned Episode
It is true. Margaret Hamilton appeared on Sesame Street in 1974. Almost instantly, the production company (as well as many of the PBS stations airing the episode) were flooded with complaints. Angry mothers across the country felt that Margaret was just too frightening, especially on a show geared toward children. This, clearly, was not Margaret’s intention.
Several years prior, Margaret Hamilton had an iconic role in a very popular movie, playing not one but two antagonists. The first time we see Margaret, she is playing Almira Gulch. She lives on a farm in rural Kansas next to the Gale family, which includes their teenage niece. The problem starts when the niece’s dog bites Almira, which apparently for some unknown reason allows Almira to take the dog and “dispose” of it so that it cannot bite her again. (Yeah, looking back it doesn’t make much sense now, but that’s how it went.) The niece adores the dog, though, and wants to protect it.
Before any resolution of the poor dog can be reached, a tornado comes and the niece is knocked unconscious and END OF ACT ONE.
Act two begins with the niece, Dorothy, exiting her house which is now in some magical land only to discover that it somehow dropped on some poor witch. But, it’s okay because most people didn’t like the witch very much, so a bunch of people sing a lovely ditty about how happy they are that she’s dead. Then, a good witch shows up, gives Dorothy the bad witch’s shoes for some reason that is never fully explained, and then Margaret Hamilton shows up.
She plays the now dead witch’s sister and she’s kind of mad that her sister is dead. She just wants her sister’s shoes, and really who can blame her? Dorothy, though, either can’t or won’t give her the shoes. In a puff, she vanishes back to her lair where she vows revenge on Dorothy (and her little dog, too) …
I won’t spoil the rest of the story for you, in case you’re one of the three people on the planet who hasn’t watched The Wizard of Oz. What I will say, though, is that Margaret Hamilton playing The Wicked Witch of the West was pretty scary. She was ugly (and green) and was a thorn in Dorothy’s side throughout the entire show. And did I mention she had flying monkeys?
Anyway…
Many years after The Wizard of Oz came out, Margaret Hamilton appeared on Sesame Street as The Wicked Witch of the West. She gets separated from her broom this time, threatens several people, (she even threatens to turn Big Bird into a Feather Duster) but in the end, she gets it back and vows never to set foot on Sesame Street ever again.
The Sesame Street version of The Wicked Witch of the West was far tamer than on The Wizard of Oz, but it still proved to be too scary for such small children.
Because of the negative publicity this got, Reeves Studios as well as PBS removed any and all traces of that episode so that it would never be aired again.
Spoiler alert … not all copies of the program were, in fact, destroyed as at least one copy did survive. You can watch it on YouTube.
A year later, and because of the Sesame Street controversy, Margaret Hamilton would appear on another Children’s television program the following year. Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood. This time, things would be different. This time, she wouldn’t appear as just The Wicked Witch of the West, but as herself. She wanted all the boys and girls to know that what you see on TV and in the movies isn’t real. She isn’t some Wicked Witch – that’s just a character she plays. See, kiddies, there’s nothing to be scared about.
