From Cinema Symbolism Third Edition:
An astounding Jungian synchronicity (or Swedenborgian correspondence) occurred on the set of The Wizard of Oz that defies all rational explanation. The unbelievable story was told in Aljean Harmetz’s seminal The Making of the Wizard of Oz (1977),
“For Professor Marvel’s coat,” says Mary Mayer [a unit publicist on Oz], “they wanted grandeur gone to seed. A nice-looking coat but very tattered. So the Wardrobe Department went down to an old second-hand store on Main Street and bought a whole rack of coats. And Frank Morgan and the wardrobe man and Victor Flemming got together and chose one. It was kind of a Prince Albert coat. It was black broadcloth and it had a velvet collar, but the nap was all worn out off the velvet.” Helene Bowman recalls the coat as “ratty with age, a Prince Albert jacket with a green look.”
The coat fitted Morgan and had the right look of shabby gentility, and one hot afternoon Frank Morgan turned out the pocket. Inside was the name “L. Frank Baum.”
“We wired the tailor in Chicago,” says Mary Mayer, “and sent pictures. And the tailor sent back a notarized letter saying that the coat had been made for Frank Baum. Baum’s widow identified the coat, too, and after the picture was finished we presented it to her. But I could never get anyone to believe the story.”
The story was published once–as an example of the lies press agents are willing to tell in order get a story into print.[1]
[1] Aljean Harmetz, The Making of The Wizard of Oz (1977; repr., Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013), 241-242.
Robert W. Sullivan IV 