Why were the Kansas scenes filmed in black and white?
The Kansas scenes were filmed in black and white as a contrast to the bright colors of Oz, and also as a way to translate to film a technique Baum and Denslow had used in the book, using different colors in the pictures to show different locations. It is not true at all that MGM ran out of money, and had to resort to black and white as a cost cutting measure. MGM was the biggest, richest movie studio of its day, and could easily afford to film Kansas in color if they chose to. For the initial theatrical release, the Kansas scenes were actually processed with a sepia wash, so that Kansas actually looked like it was brown and white. This process was not used again until a 1980s videodisk release, the 1989 video release, and the 1998 theatrical rerelease, so for many years Kansas actually was in black and white. Two instances of sepia remained, however, even during the black and white years: Dorothy’s entrance into Munchkinland (which was actually shot in Technicolor with a double for Dor
