On May 14, 1975, Fred Rogers came through his front door holding a few photographs of a guest who was coming to visit. Children watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that day had probably seen her face before, usually from behind the couch. A little while later, a small, gray-haired woman was waiting on his porch. She was Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, and she had come to Pittsburgh to set something right.
For more than 35 years, the witch who melted in The Wizard of Oz had been frightening children every time the movie aired on television. Hamilton never stopped feeling bad about that. What she did about it on public television, gently and without a trace of green makeup, is one of the sweetest stories in children’s TV.
Why Were Children So Scared Of Margaret Hamilton?
The irony was that few actresses loved children more. Born December 9, 1902, in Cleveland, Hamilton started her working life as a kindergarten teacher, according to both MeTV and Remind Magazine, and she kept up her affection for kids long after Hollywood found her. In 1939, MGM cast her as Miss Gulch and her cackling alter ego, and the role nearly cost her dearly. A costume fire during filming left her with severe burns and kept her off the set for about a month, Remind reported.
Her performance was so good that it worked a little too well. Once the film began airing on television, each new generation of kids met the witch in the family living room, and many of them never quite got over her. Hamilton heard about it constantly. “Sometimes, Mr. Rogers, I’m a little unhappy because lots of children are quite scared by her,” she would eventually admit on camera. The invitation to say so came about almost by accident.
How Did Margaret Hamilton End Up On ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’?
It started with a letter. David Newell, who played the speedy delivery man Mr. McFeely, saw a note Hamilton had written to the public TV station WNET, and it closed with a line that caught his eye: “And give Mister Rogers a hug for me,” according to Pittsburgh Magazine. Fred Rogers, who believed children should see that frightening things are not always what they seem, invited her to the show.
Newell picked her up at the airport himself and took her to the William Penn Hotel, where, to his surprise, she ate breakfast at a restaurant called the Yellow Brick Road. The two became fast friends. But first there was a television episode to make, and Rogers had something special planned for the afternoon.
What Did Margaret Hamilton Tell Children About The Witch?
Earlier in the episode, Rogers visited a costume shop and saw the very outfit Hamilton wore in The Wizard of Oz, and he learned to fold a paper witch’s hat, according to the episode guide at The Neighborhood Archive. Then, back at the house, Hamilton put the costume on, hat and all, right in front of the camera. Without the green paint, she looked like exactly what she was, a kind grandmother who was happy to talk about her grandchildren.
She explained the witch the way a good teacher would. The character “enjoys everything that she does,” Hamilton said, but she is “very unhappy because she never gets what she wants,” as MeTV recounted. She told Rogers that children’s fear “always makes me feel a little sad,” and she reminded them of the most important thing of all: “When you understand, when you realize it’s just pretend.” Rogers closed the episode by talking with viewers about the difference between real things and make-believe ones. Not every TV witch visit that decade went so smoothly, though.
The Friendship That Came Out Of The Neighborhood
The following February, Hamilton put on the costume again for Sesame Street, and that episode went the other way entirely. As our story on the Sesame Street episode that was banned for being too scary explains, parents complained and it was pulled. In Mister Rogers’ gentler neighborhood, she kept coming back. She returned to the show several times in the following years, and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe even welcomed a royal visitor in her honor, Princess Margaret H. Lizard, an old college friend of King Friday.
Her bond with the Pittsburgh crew outlasted the cameras. Hamilton called the Newell family every Sunday night, and she came to town to hold his newborn son, Taylor. “She was almost like an aunt,” Newell told Pittsburgh Magazine. Margaret Hamilton died on May 16, 1985, at 82. The children who once hid from her witch grew up and showed the movie to their own kids, and thanks to one afternoon on a porch in Pittsburgh, a few of them knew the secret. It was just pretend, and the lady in the black hat had loved them all along.
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