Sesame Street Episode 847 with Margaret Hamilton

[Colbynfriends]

That's probably why they're not proud of it then.

 

[Blue Frackle]

OMG, there is actually recent discussion on this.

We should never give up hope on this episode, though I believe as long as SS remains on the air, we will never see this or the Snuffy divorce episode.

And nobody on the internet bothered to say if they saw the episode once. There is absolutely NOTHING on the internet giving more information about the episode.

THIS is what gets me. With 'Cracks' there were a legion of people combining ideas and memories of the short, but this is dead silence. One airing; you think someone must've seen it, though there's a bit more info than you give credit for here: http://lostmediawiki.com/Sesame_Street:_Episode_847_(Lost_"Wicked_Witch_of_the_West"_Episode;_1976)

What if they can't show it now because of an issue with MGM (who produced the 1939 Wizard of Oz Movie) or Margret Hamilton's estate / family relating to the episode? Copyright issues or royalty fees. Pretty sure when they aired and showed clips of R2 and C3PO Lucasfilm may have gotten some sort of payment out of it at the time.

Interesting take; this would be a total bummer if true.

The reason they banned it was because it scared kids too much because of the witch's behavior and there were angry parent letters.

Yup, and 40 years after the fact I wonder how much it matters to them; heck, I think tons of people would shell out dough for a lost SS episodes collection. This episode far more interests me than the divorce one, but package those two back-to-back and oh boy.

---

Okay, so I dug a little deeper and it appears at least some people on the forum have seen it, who are probably long inactive: http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/margaret-hamilton-on-sesame-street.22236/#post-432437

I think the issue is CTW really has no reason to release it. What do they care about the oldheads and some obscure episode?

It probably wasn't that bad; it's probably just that some cackling witch scared kids, but the aura of this episode is too unreal and we're too far gone.

I will be going to see the CTW archives very soon, and hopefully I can find something about it- for example, an angry letter's parent, or a screenshot of the episode, or even kids watching the episode itself on the TV!

Episode rundowns exist, so that may be the best bet for at least something, a la this one for the 'Cracks' research:

I mean, we could email people, but it just seems like an impossible feat.

 

[gravy]

I think the issue is CTW really has no reason to release it. What do they care about the oldheads and some obscure episode?

I mean, we could email people, but it just seems like an impossible feat.

Impossible? I think it is. We just need lots of answers from the cast. Besides, we did a good job of finding ''Test Show Gordon'', why can't we figure this out?

It probably wasn't that bad; it's probably just that some cackling witch scared kids, but the aura of this episode is too unreal and we're too far gone.

But it just seems so interesting!

Yup, and 40 years after the fact I wonder how much it matters to them; heck, I think tons of people would shell out dough for a lost SS episodes collection.

They deserve the money. I mean, sure they could be greedy people only want the money, but people have been searching for that episode for a very loonng time, in which if somebody gets anything else, everybody is gonna go crazy. We only get brief descriptions of the episodes instead of any evidence, such as a script or a picture.

Overall... What you've gathered up helped a lot, but only by a bit. I hope you kind of understand what I'm saying. But I just have to say- you're a genius.

 

[Colbynfriends]

Apparently she made an appearance on Mr. Rogers as well. Maybe it was around the same time?

 

[gravy]

Apparently she made an appearance on Mr. Rogers as well. Maybe it was around the same time?

That was actually in 1975, a year before the SST episode aired.

 

[Drtooth]

What if they can't show it now because of an issue with MGM (who produced the 1939 Wizard of Oz Movie) or Margret Hamilton's estate / family relating to the episode? Copyright issues or royalty fees. Pretty sure when they aired and showed clips of R2 and C3PO Lucasfilm may have gotten some sort of payment out of it at the time.

I'd say that's more than likely the case. Whatever red tape and character rights that's in MGM's court. It's not like this is some obscure film that wouldn't make sense outside of a small cult following. This is the most iconic film of all time, so iconic that every other Wizard of Oz retelling was a flop...at least until Wicked hit. If it was a parody, they wouldn't have much of a problem, but this is a character name checked and played by the original actress. As far as the Star Wars characters are concerned, Lucas has always had a good relationship with Henson, so by extension, I'm sure he had one with Sesame Workshop. And I'm sure Disney's probably got a good enough relationship with SW that releasing that wasn't much of a problem either. After all, they have to deal with them for Kermit rights, so that's not much of a stretch.

Still, you wonder how much of the archive has yet to be digitized if it hasn't already.

 

[minor muppetz]

What if they can't show it now because of an issue with MGM (who produced the 1939 Wizard of Oz Movie) or Margret Hamilton's estate / family relating to the episode?

Actually, Warner Bros. has owned the rights to the film since 1997. And Warner Home Video has the video rights to Sesame Street, so I imagine that would make it easier to clear. They'd probably still have to deal with Margret Hamilton's estate over royalties, though.

I wonder if there would be clearance issues with Warner. On one hand, The Wizard of Oz is in the public domain (I assume the characters are as well, but on the other hand, the witch was made to look like she did in the movie, and I believe other adaptations are not easily allowed to have a green witch because of it.

I wonder how aware the people at Sesame Workshop are of this episode's existence/controversy. Pretty much all of the info Muppet Wiki has comes from documents at the CTW Archives. I've never seen anything official about this in recent years. There's no mention of it in the 40th anniversary book, for example.

1. Yes, there is a chance SW has the tape somewhere safe, but some think it could have been destroyed in fear of it airing again.

I have heard of examples of other things being done to prevent airing banned episodes by mistake. I've read that for a banned episode of You Can;t Do That on Television, they put a sticker that said "do not air" on the master tape. And I've read that some of the Looney Tunes shorts that Cartoon Network won't air are not at the station's headquarters. I believe I've read that one employee has a box of the "censored eleven" at home so they don't accidentally air on the channel, and I've read that after CN obtained the rights to every short, Warner Bros. simply didn't send a number of controversial shorts to the station ("Injunn Trouble", the last WB short from the classic years, is the only one I know of off-hand).

 

[gravy]

I have heard of examples of other things being done to prevent airing banned episodes by mistake. I've read that for a banned episode of You Can;t Do That on Television, they put a sticker that said "do not air" on the master tape. And I've read that some of the Looney Tunes shorts that Cartoon Network won't air are not at the station's headquarters. I believe I've read that one employee has a box of the "censored eleven" at home so they don't accidentally air on the channel, and I've read that after CN obtained the rights to every short, Warner Bros. simply didn't send a number of controversial shorts to the station ("Injunn Trouble", the last WB short from the classic years, is the only one I know of off-hand).

That actually could be a possibility.

 

[Colbynfriends]

I wonder if there would be clearance issues with Warner. On one hand, The Wizard of Oz is in the public domain (I assume the characters are as well, but on the other hand, the witch was made to look like she did in the movie, and I believe other adaptations are not easily allowed to have a green witch because of it.

Yes, that's possible. That version of the character, and I think the other depictions (Dorothy, Tin Man), may be subject to copyright by Warner Brothers (thanks for the correction on that). Here's an article about it as well.

I'll get you, my pretty, and your little copyright too!

 

[gravy]

Yes, that's possible. That version of the character, and I think the other depictions (Dorothy, Tin Man), may be subject to copyright by Warner Brothers (thanks for the correction on that). Here's an article about it as well.

I'll get you, my pretty, and your little copyright too!

What? So something in the public domain gets adapted and gets copyrighted. I can't complain, though. There really isn't much we can do about. If they DO want to show the episode again, I guess Sesame Workshop and Warner need to talk things out.