The boys fade back into the crowd as they all come forward and begin singing and dancing "We Welcome You to Munchkinland". Immediately after, three tough-looking Munchkin boys sing "We Represent the Lollipop Guild", actually the same tune as "Lullaby League", and they similarly welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland, the center Munchkin ( Jerry Maren) giving her a large round all-day sucker. In the next interval, three Munchkin girls in ballet outfits and dancing en pointe sing "We Represent the Lullaby League", and welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland. In addition, in 1934, there had been a film version of Babes in Toyland, which was presumably still recent in the memories of the audience. In 1903, the operetta had been written to compete with an early and successful Broadway rendition of The Wizard of Oz.
This has a notable though perhaps unintended subtlety. As the Munchkin soldiers march, looking vaguely like toys, some trumpeters issue a fanfare very similar to the fanfare at the beginning of the "March of the Toys" from Babes in Toyland. The Munchkins oblige, and sing "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" again. The coroner ( Meinhardt Raabe) avers that she is, and the mayor reiterates Glinda's advice to the Munchkins to spread the news. After its one verse, there is another interruption, as the city officials need to determine if the witch is "undeniably and reliably dead". Like several of the songs on the film's soundtrack, this one makes extensive use of rhyming wordplay, containing as many Hays Office-approved words rhyming with "witch" as the composers could think of: "itch", "which", "sitch"-uation, "rich", etc.Īfter a short interval in which two Munchkins present a bouquet to Dorothy, Glinda tells the Munchkins to "let the joyous news be spread" that "the wicked old witch at last is dead!" The Munchkins then sing the march-style number "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead".
The Munchkins soon join in and sing joyfully, perhaps not really understanding how she got there, but happy at the result. Dorothy begins singing, modestly explaining through descriptive phrasing that it "It Really Was No Miracle" it was the wind that brought the apparent miracle. “The people trying to get “ding ding the witch is dead” to number 1 in the charts disgust me,” wrote one Twitter user.The sequence starts with Glinda encouraging the fearful Munchkins to "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are" and meet Dorothy, who "fell from a star" named Kansas, so that "a miracle occurred". “Lets change that, lets make her legacy ‘The women who’s death led to ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ going to Number 1’.”īut despite the mounting popularity of the track, the Facebook campaign has met with disapproval in some quarters. In a post made on its Facebook page, one of the campaign’s organisers wrote: “There was a chance that thatchers legacy was either, ‘nation saviour’ or ‘nation destroyer’ depending on what side of good and evil you are on.
There are two other versions of the tune also picking up sales following the launch of the campaign: Ella Fitzgerald’s 1961 cover, which is at number 146 in the charts, and the Munchkins’ rendition, which is presently in at number 183.
And, as a consequence, Garland’s song from ’30s screen classic The Wizard of Oz has now sold over 10,600 digital copies, which the Official Singles Chart gatekeepers say is “roughly 5,000 copies away from a Top 3 placing at this mid-way stage.”