Scenario
The sequence starts with Glinda encouraging the fearful Munchkins to "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are" and meet Dorothy, who "fell from a star" named Kansas, so that "a miracle occurred."
Dorothy begins singing, modestly explaining through descriptive phrasing that it "It Really Was No Miracle"; it was the wind that brought the apparent miracle. The Munchkins soon join in and sing joyfully, perhaps not really understanding how she got there, but happy at the result.
Like several of the songs in the film's track, this one makes extensive use of rhyming wordplay, containing as many Hays Office-approved words rhyming with "witch" as the composers could think of: "itch", "which", "sitch"-uation, etc.
After a short interval in which two Munchkins present a bouquet to Dorothy, Glinda tells the Munchkins to spread the news that "the wicked old witch at last is dead!"
The Munchkins then sing the march-style number "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead." After its one verse, there is another interruption, as the city officials need to determine if the witch is "undeniably and reliably dead." The coroner (Meinhardt Raabe) avers that she is, and the mayor reiterates Glinda's advice to the Munchkins to spread the news. The Munchkins oblige, and sing "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead" again.
As the Munchkin soldiers march, looking vaguely like toys, some trumpeters issue a fanfare very similar to the fanfare at the beginning of the "March of the Toys" from Babes in Toyland. This has a notable though perhaps unintended subtlety. In 1903, the operetta had been written to compete with an early and successful Broadway rendition of The Wizard of Oz. In addition, in 1934, there had been a film version of Babes in Toyland, which was presumably still recent in the memories of the audience.
In the next interval, three Munchkin girls in ballet outfits and dancing en pointe sing "We Represent the Lullaby League," and welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland. Immediately after, three tough-looking Munchkin boys sing "We Represent the Lollipop Guild," actually the same tune as "Lullaby League," and they similarly welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland, the center Munchkin (Jerry Maren) giving her a large round all-day sucker. The boys fade back into the crowd as they all come forward and begin singing and dancing "We Welcome You to Munchkinland."
The Munchkins sing and dance merrily, with "Tra-la-la-la-la-la-las," until the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), the other witch's sister, bursts onto the scene in fire and brimstone, putting a sudden stop to the Munchkins' revelry, as her own well-known, sinister-sounding instrumental theme plays on the track.
Read more about this topic: Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead
Famous quotes containing the word scenario:
“This is the essential distinction—even opposition—between the painting and the film: the painting is composed subjectively, the film objectively. However highly we rate the function of the scenario writer—in actual practice it is rated very low—we must recognize that the film is not transposed directly and freely from the mind by means of a docile medium like paint, but must be cut piece-meal out of the lumbering material of the actual visible world.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)