In a recent interview, Ariana Grande said she sees her Wicked character, Glinda, as “a little bit in the closet.” Since both Kristen Chenowith, the originator of the role on Broadway, and Gregory Maguire, the author of the original Wicked novel, agreed, it was canon: Modern Glinda is queer.
Obviously, we have to clarify that we’re not speaking about the original Glinda who first shows up in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz as Glinda the Good Witch of the South. After all, could a character who was first created in 1900 be LGBTQ+? Surprisingly, the answer is yes—in a couple of different ways.
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Let’s start with arguably the most famous iteration of the character, Glinda from the massively popular 1939 film adaptation of the novel. Admittedly there’s not much in the film itself that hints at her romantic life—we honestly don’t get a whole lot of Glinda in that film at all. But there’s evidence Billie Burke, the actress that played her, was queer and had a relationship with the lesbian director Dorothy Arzner.
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Though she’s an American, born in Washington D.C., Burke started her career in 1903 as a West End actress. After a few years, she moved back to the States and became a film and Broadway star, marrying the big-name producer Florenz Ziegfeld in 1914. In 1932, they moved to Hollywood so she could resume her film career.
In 1933, Ziegfeld died. That same year, Burke and Arzner first worked together on the film Christopher Strong. The couple made two more films together between 1933 to 1937, Craig’s Wife in 1936 and The Bride Wore Red the following year.
In 1936, the Hollywood Reporter said the two were living together while the home Arzner shared with her longtime partner Marion Morgan was being renovated. At this time, Morgan was frequently on the East Coast, according to Behind the Screen by William J. Mann.
While Arzner was an out lesbian—something rare in the pre-Stonewall era—Burke was not. Rumors had swirled that Burke was into women, and Mann writes that another Paramount director, Andrew Stone, told him the two were having an affair. Arzner and Burke were photographed together at a movie premiere and appeared in a short newsreel. Mann says that Burke “hastily retreats from Arzner’s side” when she spies the camera, however.
Arzner and Burke’s love affair didn’t last, and Arzner stayed with Morgan until Morgan’s death in 1971. They were together for over 40 years.
Burke, despite being a mainstay in film and television until the late 1950s, kept her romantic life private. She never married after Ziegfeld’s death, and any other affairs she may have had were kept secret from the public. She mentions no other romantic partners in her second autobiography, With Powder On My Nose, which covers her post-Ziegfeld life.
Beyond Billie Burke’s personal life, there’s a surprising amount of queerness and playing with gender in Oz—though any self-respecting Friend of Dorothy doesn’t need to be told that. The queer community has embraced The Wizard of Oz as a coming out allegory for about as long as there’s been a queer community. But it’s not just the film—queerness can be found throughout Baum’s original books.
The central plot of 1904’s The Marvelous Land of Oz is about a young effeminate boy named Tip—who is actually Princess Ozma disguised as a young boy. (For a modern take, trans cartoonist Daisy McGuire’s Yellow Brick Ramble follows Ozma’s coming out story.) That book also hints at a deeper connection between the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman than just friendship, according to an Oz expert.
As for Glinda, in Baum’s later books, it’s revealed that as leader of the Quadling Country, she has an female-only army, and men are rare in her court. And in the final book Baum wrote, 1920’s Glinda of Oz, we find out that Glinda lives in her castle with 100 amazingly beautiful women. What lesbian doesn’t want to live together as part of a huge polycule?
The queer fandom of Oz in all its forms has continued for decades. It’s worth pointing out that Maguire, Wicked’s author, is also gay, and the film version of The Wizard of Oz meant a lot to him.
“When I was a child, I used to get the neighborhood kids together, and we would do a reenactment of the movie the day after it was on television … I always had to play the Scarecrow, because obviously I couldn’t be Dorothy,” Maguire told an Oz fan convention in 2019.
Finally, while Glinda’s current actress doesn’t identify as LGBTQ+ herself, Grande is an outspoken advocate for queer rights and has proven herself to be a good ally.
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