Silver or Red? The Wicked Tale of Copyrighted Slippers

With Wicked: For Good now in cinemas, there is one thing audiences are noticing straight away. Dorothy’s slippers are not ruby red… they are silver.

For some, the colour of a pair of shoes might seem irrelevant. But for fans of the 1939 film adaptation The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s sparkling slippers have always been unmistakably ruby red. So why not give the fans what they want? The answer is simple enough, just good old copyright law.

Contrary to popular belief, Dorothy’s slippers were never ruby red in the original story. At least not in the original source material. In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the slippers were described as silver. The ruby-red slippers we recognise today were actually an invention of the 1939 MGM film adaptation. The simple reason for this change was MGM’s new Technicolor technology. The original silver appearance simply did not have the visual pop that the vibrant ruby red did. The slippers were therefore switched to a captivating and sparkling ruby red. Technicolor made cinematic history and the red slippers became forever iconic.

So why doesn’t Wicked use the ruby red slippers, especially when the colour is so deeply rooted in public memory? This is where copyright steps in. MGM’s ruby slippers are considered an artistic creation of the 1939 film, and that particular design is still protected by copyright today. On the other hand, Baum’s original book is now in the public domain. As a result, Wicked is perfectly free to use the silver slippers from the novel, but the ruby-red design remains off-limits without permission.

The choice of silver has therefore nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with avoiding a hefty licensing agreement. Baum’s characters and original elements are fair game but MGM’s sparkling ruby embellishment is not.

Copyright can sometimes feel abstract and complicated, but Wicked offers a real-world example of how these rights shape what we see on screen. And the moral of the story? Before you click your heels together, make sure the rights you’re stepping into are actually yours to wear.