One regular piece of trivia about MGM's film adaptation of
The Wizard of Oz is that Shirley Temple was considered for the role of Dorothy. It's been reported many ways, some saying that Judy Garland was who the studio went with because they couldn't get Shirley Temple. Yet, there are people out there who say the story is entirely false and that the role was always intended for Judy Garland.
What is the answer? Did MGM want Shirley Temple? Or was Judy Garland the first choice?
I believe the answer is more likely both.
What we're missing here is context of who we're talking about when we say "MGM." There are many, many people involved in making a movie and running a movie studio.
The Wizard of Oz was the dream project of producer Mervyn LeRoy, who was the driving force behind the movie. And it seems that he was the one who envisioned it to launch Judy Garland to stardom.
However, MGM was owned by a big theater chain called Loews' (this is part of how Hollywood worked back then), and noting the estimated big cost of the movie, they asked LeRoy to look into loaning Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox.
The general public loved Shirley Temple, who had starred in a long series of films from Fox. Pint sized and her face framed in little golden curls, Shirley had talent in singing little songs, dancing, remembering her lines and generally looking cute. Even then-Oz historian Ruth Plumly Thompson had expressed interest in Temple playing Dorothy, saying that if such a project happened, promoting the books with Temple would be easy.
As it turned out, Temple was a fan of the books, and photos of Temple in her home revealed the Oz books on her shelf. She claimed in her autobiography
Child Star that when her mother said that she should play Dorothy, Temple said she'd rather
meet Dorothy. (I feel the same, Shirley.)
However, LeRoy had a specific version of Oz in mind. Previous versions of
The Wizard of Oz on stage and film had reduced Dorothy from a lead character to a side character, giving more presence to the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman. It would be easy to see Shirley Temple fitting the bill of a sweet little girl from Kansas who is whisked away to a magical world where she joins with a number of unusual friends played by comedy heavies who would basically take over the movie.
But that was not LeRoy's vision. His
Oz would return Dorothy to a focal character. Yes, there would still be big talent as Dorothy's friends, but they wouldn't crowd Dorothy out of the focus of the film. For that, he'd need his Dorothy to be a strong actress who would wow the audience with her talent. And this was not what Shirley Temple would offer. Imagine Shirley Temple singing "Over the Rainbow." It'd be cute, but not the strong ballad the movie would need to open with.
Roger Edens, who worked with Judy on her singing during her MGM years, went to 20th Century Fox to hear Shirley Temple sing in person. He reported back that Temple didn't have the range they wanted for their musical
Wizard of Oz, and so MGM kept Judy in the role, Loew's seemingly content that LeRoy and his crew knew what they were doing.
Fox would report that Shirley had lost the role of Dorothy, while Temple's mother was angry that a Fox producer claimed they had the
Oz rights when MGM had purchased them from Samuel Goldwyn.
There's some interesting after notes here. Getting Shirley Temple would have involved Fox loaning her to MGM. While they didn't loan her, they did loan Jack Haley to MGM, who took over as the Tin Man when Buddy Ebsen was hospitalized.
As a response to
The Wizard of Oz, Fox had Shirley Temple lead a film version of Maurice Maeterlinck's
The Blue Bird, a play that opened on Broadway in 1910 and like
Oz also had silent film adaptations. (Personal recommendation: the 1918 film.) Featuring a cast of unusual characters and children in lead roles, the play had two children seek the Blue Bird of Happiness through a series of strange lands before realizing the Blue Bird was at home all along. The moral was very reminiscent of that of MGM's
Wizard of Oz.
Fox's
Blue Bird was a flop, and so was Shirley Temple's next film
Young People. Her parents bought out her contract, and she was signed on at MGM, where they intended for her to star in projects with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, but it didn't work out and she only did one film with the studio. It seems
Oz screenwriter Noel Langley worked out a treatment for an
Oz sequel and it was floated that they'd have Temple as the lead, but it never got further than that.
Temple would do a series of unimpressive films with other studios before leaving film. She eventually began the
Shirley Temple's Storybook television show in 1958, with the show turning into
The Shirley Temple Show with regular color shows (the first season had color and black and white episodes), the premiere episode being
The Land of Oz, featuring Temple herself as Princess Ozma and Tip.
Well, in Shirley's own words, “Sometimes the gods know best.”