Around the time that America was getting used to superheroes with alter egos (Superman/Clark Kent, Batman/Bruce Wayne), this dual-identity bitch-witch rode her bicycle into Kansas, and her broom across Oz. In the supposedly gentle movie-’30s, the Wicked Witch (Miss Gulch in her Sunflower State incarnation) was an out-of-the-closet sadist, ever threatening to set the Scarecrow on fire and plant a swarm of bees in the Tin Woodman’s hollow chest. Her cackle and love of ornate curses make the WWW her own quote factory: “I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog, too.” “And now, my beauties, something with poison in it. Poppies, poppies, poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep. Now they’ll sleep!” Finally vanquished, she was stirred to bilious wonder: “Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?” Her last lines — “I’m melting! I’m melting!” — were capped with a final, self-pitying profundity: “What a world, what a world!” Her spirit, though, lived long enough to see a showbiz world that both treasured villainy and set it to music, when her poignant, arguably heroic backstory was told in the novel and hit Broadway musical Wicked.
