Wicked Witch of the West Flying Hat (Wizard of Oz)

A hat built to fly

The Wizard of Oz was shot in three-strip Technicolor between October 1938 and March 1939, under lights hot enough to push the set past 100 degrees. For the Wicked Witch of the West, MGM's costume designer, known simply as Adrian, made a tall, pointed hat of black wool bunting with a crown tilted to the rear.

Several hats were used in production. This one measures 19.5 inches across the brim, with a 13.75-inch crown set on a rear bias so the brim is 6.75 inches wide in front and 5.75 inches in back. The fabric is sewn over a heavy canvas base, an internal metal hoop holds the brim, and it still carries the black tulle veil that trailed behind the Witch in the wind.

What sets it apart is a thin elastic chinstrap, about 20 inches long, that secured the hat to Hamilton's head during the flying sequences. The audience first meets the Witch in one of them: during the tornado, Dorothy looks out her window and watches Miss Gulch, pedaling her bicycle through the storm, turn into the Witch on a broomstick.

Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents insisted she attend Wheelock College in Boston before turning to acting, and she worked as a kindergarten teacher. She began at the Cleveland Play House, where her first major role was the First Witch in Macbeth, and made her screen debut in MGM's Another Language in 1933.

She was not the first choice for the Witch. Gale Sondergaard was cast first, as a sly, glamorous witch, and withdrew when the character was changed into an ugly hag. Hamilton, an MGM contract player, replaced her on October 10, 1938, two days before filming began.

On December 23, 1938, during a second take of her fiery exit from Munchkinland, the trapdoor drop was delayed. Hamilton suffered a second-degree burn to her face and a third-degree burn to her hand and spent six weeks recovering. 'I won't sue,' she said later, 'because I know how this business works, and I would never work again. I will return to work on one condition: no more fireworks!' On February 11, 1939, her stunt double, Betty Danko, was hospitalized for 11 days when the smoking pipe rigged as the broomstick exploded during the skywriting scene.

The role defined her. The American Film Institute ranks the Wicked Witch as the fourth-greatest villain in Hollywood history and the greatest female villain. Hamilton, who loved children, worried the part gave them the wrong idea; in 1975 she appeared on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to show how putting on the costume turned her into the Witch. She died May 16, 1985, at 82.

1939

The film premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in August 1939 and opened across the United States on August 25. It cost $2.77 million to make. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two, for the song 'Over the Rainbow' and for Herbert Stothart's score; Judy Garland received a juvenile award.

It arrived in a crowded year. Gone with the Wind, which had pulled director Victor Fleming away from Oz to finish it, premiered in Atlanta in December. Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington also opened that year. Within days of the film's national release, war began in Europe: on September 3 a German submarine sank the British liner Athenia with 30 Americans among the dead, and on September 5 the United States declared its neutrality.

The film's second life came on television. Its 1956 broadcast on CBS reintroduced it to the public, and the Library of Congress calls it the most seen film in history. In 1989 it was among the first 25 films chosen for the National Film Registry.

From the MGM basement to Dallas

For decades studios treated old costumes as surplus. In early 1970, while helping set up MGM's huge auction of props and wardrobe, costumer Kent Warner found ruby slippers stored and forgotten in the wardrobe department's basement. Warner kept a large private collection and sold pieces from it. He sold one pair of ruby slippers to collector Michael Shaw in 1970, and Shaw acquired this hat from Warner along with those slippers.

Shaw, a former child actor, toured the hat and the slippers across the United States for more than a decade in his exhibition Hollywood on Tour, from the 1980s into the 1990s. The slippers were later lent to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and stolen in August 2005; the FBI recovered them in 2018, and they were returned to Shaw in 2024.

The hat was offered at auction on December 18, 2020, with an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. The sources do not record a sale, and the hat was later described as having changed hands only once in more than half a century.

In 2024 Shaw consigned the hat, the slippers and Dorothy's broom to a December sale, with promotional stops in New York, London and Tokyo. On December 7, 2024, in Dallas, the slippers sold for $32.5 million and the hat, after what was described as a lengthy bidding war, for $2.93 million. The night totaled $38,615,188, a record for an entertainment auction.

How this hat is told apart

Only a few Wicked Witch hats from the film are known. One auctioneer who has handled three described them as identical in materials and design. What distinguishes this one is the inside: it is the only example reported with an internal MGM label just inside the rim, handwritten 'M. Hamilton 4461-164.' It also keeps its elastic chinstrap and tulle veil, and it is pictured in the book The Wizardry of Oz.

Other hats have sold for far less. A Wicked Witch hat sold at auction in 2010 for $240,000. Another, made of black wool with a chinstrap, was bought by a collector in 2019 for $100,000 and sold privately in 2024 for $250,000, a sale that led its seller to sue the auction house in January 2025, claiming it had steered him into a quick sale before the Shaw hat went to auction. The auction house called the claims false.

Accounts of how many chinstrap hats survive do not agree. A November 2025 auction announcement called the Shaw hat the only other known example with its original chinstrap, while the 2025 lawsuit coverage describes the 2019 hat as having one as well. Sources also give slightly different strap lengths, about 20 inches for the Shaw hat and 22 inches for the hat offered in December 2025.

The numbers

Release

August 25, 1939 (U.S.), after an August premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Budget

$2.77 million

Academy Awards

Five nominations including Best Picture; won Best Original Song and Best Original Score

Filming

Technicolor sequences shot October 1938 to March 1939

Hamilton's injury

Second-degree burn to the face, third-degree burn to the hand; six weeks off the set

Timeline

1. Dec 9, 1902

   Margaret Hamilton is born in Cleveland, Ohio.

2. Oct 10, 1938

   Hamilton replaces Gale Sondergaard as the Wicked Witch, two days before filming starts.

3. Dec 23, 1938

   Hamilton is burned on the face and hand during her fiery exit from Munchkinland.

4. Feb 11, 1939

   Stunt double Betty Danko is injured when the broomstick rig explodes during the skywriting scene.

5. Aug 25, 1939

   The Wizard of Oz opens across the United States.

6. 1956

   The film's first CBS broadcast introduces it to a television audience.

7. 1970

   Kent Warner finds ruby slippers while preparing MGM's studio auction; collector Michael Shaw acquires a pair of slippers and this hat from Warner.

8. 1975

   Hamilton appears on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to show children the Witch is only a costume.

9. May 16, 1985

   Hamilton dies at 82.

10. 1989

    The Wizard of Oz is named to the first class of the National Film Registry.

11. Aug 2005

    Shaw's ruby slippers are stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota.

12. Sep 4, 2018

    The FBI announces the recovery of the stolen slippers.

13. Dec 18, 2020

    The hat is offered at auction with a $100,000 to $150,000 estimate.

14. Dec 7, 2024

    The hat sells for $2.93 million in Dallas, the same night the ruby slippers bring $32.5 million.

15. Jan 2025

    The owner of a different Witch hat sues the auction house over his 2024 private sale.

The world in 1939

• Apr 30, 1939

  The New York World's Fair opens.

• May 1, 1939

  Batman makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #27.

• Jul 4, 1939

  Lou Gehrig gives his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium.

• Aug 2, 1939

  Albert Einstein signs the letter warning President Roosevelt about uranium and the atomic bomb.

• Sep 5, 1939

  The United States declares its neutrality in the new European war.

• Oct 24, 1939

  Nylon stockings go on sale for the first time, in Wilmington, Delaware.

• Dec 15, 1939

  Gone with the Wind premieres in Atlanta.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Wicked Witch of the West Flying Hat (Wizard of Oz) is number 28 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (13 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Margaret Hamilton was a kindergarten teacher before she became the screen's most famous witch.
• She got the part only two days before filming started, after Gale Sondergaard turned down a witch who would be ugly rather than glamorous.
• The hat's chinstrap existed because Hamilton had to keep it on while 'flying.'
• The hat is the only one reported to carry a handwritten MGM label reading 'M. Hamilton 4461-164.'
• A 2020 auction estimate put the hat at $100,000 to $150,000. Four years later it sold for $2.93 million.
• The hat and the ruby slippers toured the country together in Michael Shaw's Hollywood on Tour exhibition, and sold the same night decades later.