How the Munchkins Came to Sing

How the Munchkins Sang

Now as to the sound track-- Some of the little people could not sing on key. Others spoke English poorly and MGM wanted something unique for the sound track that matched the overall look and feel of the set/story. Herbert Stothart, the Music Director, called the vocal arranger Ken Darby in and told Ken that they had to come up with a created sound. Doug Shearer, the supervising sound recorder was also involved in this task. This next is a quote out of the 50th Anniversary Pictorial History of the Wizard of Oz by John Fricke, Jay Scarfone and William Stillman published by Warner Books.

“So I got my arithmetic going and I figured it out. Film speed is ninety feet per minute. I got together with Douglas Shearer; we recorded a metronome click track at the speed Herbert Stothart and I agreed would be the right tempo for the Munchkin sequence, along with a tone on the piano giving the key in which we wanted the music to finally be recorded. The arithmetic went like his: There are twelve halftones in an octave. I divided twelve into ninety feet per minute and got a quotient of seven and a half feet for each semitone. Next, I multiplied this by four, which gave me thirty feet per minute, equal to a major third. Then, subtracting thirty from ninety, we found we needed a machine that would play back our click track and piano key at sixty feet per minute and slow the vocal performances of the singer proportionately. That sounds like a lot of malarkey-but that's the way it had to be done.

It was Shearer's responsibility to create the special machinery that would make the recording at the slower pace. Then according to Darby, “We slowed down 'D-i-n-g-d-o-n-g-t-h-e-w-i-t-c-h-i-s-d-e-a-d . . .' I had all these so-called Ken Darby singers there, (adult professional singers) and when we played them back at ninety feet per minute, it was what you hear in the picture. Herb Stothart could put his downbeat to it and conduct to the click track we had made originally; it was in the right key, and the orchestra did not have to change pitch." (Darby also recalls, “for the Winkies we did the reverse, and it gave them a sepulcher kind of sound.")
Ken Darby

It is easy to see from this that it was not possible for the Munchkins to actually be singing on the set and sound the way the recordings were engineered. They all sound like they swallowed a helium balloon. It had just the effect that the studio wanted. Two other groups that were used to record the Munchkin's sounds were the King's Men Octet who did the Lollipop Guild voices and the Debutantes (a girls trio) who sang the Lullaby League song. It was not the Munchkins actual voices you are hearing but professional singers and some wonderfully talented folks in the music department at MGM. Ain't technology fun!