Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion dancing in the Haunted Forest after being "bit" by the Jitterbug
What appears to be the Jitterbug itself seen on screen for the first time in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True.
The Jitterbug (Outtake)
The Jitterbug - Cut from The Wizard of Oz
The "Jitterbug" is a musical number that was cut from MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939). Despite this, it is sometimes used in stage productions such as The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True before appearing with an associated character in Tom and Jerry: Back to Oz.
Composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. Harburg wrote the song in May 1938 and it was one of the first pieces they created for the film. The idea was that the Jitterbug is a tool of the Wicked Witch of the West - a blue and pink insect like a mosquito; its bite causes a person to break into a frenetic dance. The Witch sends the bug to attack Dorothy and her companions as they approach her castle, just before the Winged Monkeys swoop in to capture the heroine.
The six-minute sequence took fully five weeks to rehearse and film, at a cost of $80,000. It was cut from the movie because of a need to shorten the running time, and because studio executives feared that it would date the film. (When Harburg wrote his lyric in 1938, the word "jitterbug" had no larger meaning: in context, it was simply a bug that gave a person the jitters. While the movie was being made, though, the jitterbug craze in popular music and dance began and spread during 1939.) The sequence was also too upbeat, perhaps, for the darker tone of the materials around it. The original recording was on October 6, 1938 and featured Buddy Ebsen before he had to leave due to hospitalization from the Tin Man costume. It was then re-recorded on December 22, 1938 with Jack Haley.
The film footage of the musical number was not preserved; but an Arlen home movie of some of the shoot exists, and suggests what the result must have been like. Arlen's footage shows the quartet of protagonists dancing together, then Dorothy dancing with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man dancing with the Cowardly Lion, as the haunted forest sways around them and the trees clap their branches like hands. (It also shows one of the stagehands who moved the trees in time to the music.) The vocal track and the orchestration for the Jitterbug scene still exist; the number was included in a 1995 CD package of the film's music, and often features in modern stage productions of the musical, including the RSC and MUNY versions.
A trace of the lost sequence survives in the film, when the Witch tells Nikko that she will "send a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of" her would-be assassins.
Lyrics[]
The dialogue that begins the "Jitterbug" number would have consisted of:
- Dorothy: Did you hear what I just heard?
- Lion: That noise didn't come from no ordinary bird.
- Dorothy: It might be just a cricket or a critter in the trees.
- Tin Man: It's giving me the jitters in the joints around the knees.
- Scarecrow: I think I see a jijik, and he's fuzzy, and he's furry. I haven't got a brain, but I think I ought to worry.
- Tin Man: I haven't got a heart, but I've got a palpitation.
- Lion: As monarch of the forest, I don't like the situation (pronounced "sitchyashun")
- Dorothy: Are you gonna stand around and let him fill us with horror?
- Lion: I'd like to roar him down, but I lost my roarer.
- Tin Man: It's a whozis.
- Scarecrow: It's a whozis?
- Lion: It's a whatzis
- Tin Man: It's a whatzis?
- Lion: Whozat?
- Tin Man: Whozat?
- Scarecrow: Whozat?
- Dorothy: Whozat?
The meaning of the term "jijik" is left to the listener's imagination.
The Jitterbug number has been included in stage productions, such as the 1988 London production.
Tom and Jerry[]
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Tom and Jerry- Back to Oz - The Jitterbug
In Tom and Jerry: Back to Oz, the Jitterbug voiced by James Monroe Iglehart appears as a tiny anthropomorphic creature wearing a zoot suit. He has an analog in Kansas in the form of Calvin Carney, a circus barker. The characters' visual designs resemble Cab Calloway and/or Sammy Davis Jr. The bug's yellow suits and hat, red eyes, and green face are reminiscent of the character Stanley Ipkiss from the 1994 fantasy-comedy film The Mask. In the plot, the Nome King sends the Jitterbug to attack Dorothy and her friends, forcing them into a verbatim performance of the legendary lost number. However, Dorothy catches the Jitterbug in her basket, and eventually he helps defeat the Nome King.