More than that. The snow is asbestos. The copper-based make-up nearly burned Margaret Hamilton's face off in the elevator shot when she enters Munchkinland, and when she refused to do it again, the stunt double, Betty Danko, was also injured, but it was because one of the choreographers fell through the hole for the elevator and landed on her. Margaret Hamilton also (rightfully so) refused to do the surrender Dorothy scene because of the fire and smoke and the pipe underneath the broomstick exploded and put Betty in the hospital. Another metallic make-up problem- Buddy Ebsen was cast as Scarecrow, but changed to Tin Man (I can't recall if that was his request or if they remembered Ray Bolger existed), but he had a nasty reaction to the aluminium dust and was replaced by Jack Haley. And the aluminium dust was replaced with a paste that gave Jack Haley eye problems. (Fun fact, the studio had already recorded the music so Jack Haley only sings on his solo pieces, all the rest of the Tin Man's vocals in the movie as still Buddy Ebsen's, but who knows if he got paid after nearly dying.) Heck, they also had Bert Lahr on a liquid diet and he finally refused and was like, "I do not give a damn, take it off me and let me eat and put it back on. Do not care how long it takes." It was the 1930s- green smoothies hadn't been invented yet. This does not go into the shit that Judy Garland had to put up with in the process of making the movie, and I don't care what Mickey Rooney says, I absolutely believe Judy had it rougher than he did and it was in her best interests to never let on, not even to him, so when she says one thing and he says another, I think he does not know what the fuck he is talking about. He *agreed* to that role in Breakfast at Tiffany's, it's real easy to see a perspective where he's complicit about stuff that other people might take more seriously. And then the movie had the audacity to flop before it kinda re-bounded in the 1950s when they started showing it on TV.
And, I say all this, but, y'know, it's gonna be The Lord of the Rings that is the film that people are calling a barbarous display of humans suffering for art. John Rhys-Davies was miserable for most of shooting because, yep, he was allergic to the make-up. I've heard he had such a miserable time filming it that it's part of the reason his stunt double has the Fellowship tattoo and not him, like, he's not a tattoo guy anyway, and he was like, "I have been through enough, thanks." That's just one. It took 50 years for a lot of the Oz stuff to come out, so we've got 30 years to find out all the horrors that happened in those three years, too.
