This month we dispel one of the most common Wizard of Oz “myth” understandings.
Myth: Dorothy keeps the Ruby Slippers.
Many fans of The Wizard of Oz retain a false memory of how the film ends. It seems there are legions of people who remember that once Dorothy awakens back in Kansas and exclaims, “There’s no place like home” to Auntie Em, the camera pans down to show the Ruby Slippers are still on her feet or under her bed. Those same fans swear they saw such a shot and insist it must have been cut out at some point. However, no such shot was ever considered, scripted or filmed for The Wizard of Oz. In fact, in the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy’s magic shoes fall off during her airborne flight home and are lost forever. We’ll chalk up such fan’s memories to wishful thinking that somehow the Wicked Witch of the West didn’t finally get ahold of the Ruby Slippers after all!