Who really said it

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Not quite — the actual line is “that man behind the curtain” Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf Credited screenwriters, MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Disputed In copyright

In the film, the exposed Wizard (Frank Morgan) blusters “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” — the demonstrative is the joke, because he is pointing away from himself while standing in plain sight. The popular version smooths “that man” into the flatter “the man,” and the line is routinely credited to L. Frank Baum, whose 1900 novel contains no curtain at all.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! — The Wizard (Frank Morgan), The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (MGM, 1939)

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Turner Entertainment Co. (Warner Bros. Discovery), successor to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf — The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939). Theme: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The scene, as filmed

Work: The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Written by: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf — shared screenplay credit, with at least ten uncredited contributors
Spoken by: The Wizard / Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) — a fictional character
Based on: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum — which contains no curtain and no such line

[Toto pulls back the curtain, revealing the Wizard at the controls of the throne apparatus. Dorothy calls the others' attention to him.]

DOROTHY: Who are you?

OZ’S VOICE: Oh — I — Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Go — before I lose my temper! The Great and Powerful — Oz — has spoken!

[Dorothy pulls back the curtain to reveal the Wizard at the controls. He starts to speak into the microphone — then turns weakly back to Dorothy.]

DOROTHY: Who are you?

OZ’S VOICE: Well, I — I — I am the Great and Powerful — Wizard of Oz. The curtain scene

Reconstructed from MGM's cutting continuity, which records dialogue split across camera setups — the line is logged as “Oh — I — Pay no…” on one shot and “…attention to that man behind the curtain” on the next; the joins are ours, the words are not. One further precision: Wikiquote pairs the line with “The Great Oz has spoken!”, but in the continuity that exclamation lands a beat earlier, and what follows the curtain line is “The Great and Powerful — Oz — has spoken!”

MGM cutting continuity, last revised 15 March 1939

Read the shot-by-shot continuity script (PDF)

Wikiquote's transcription of the released film

How we verified this

The transcript. Wikiquote's page for the 1939 film ↗ transcribes the Wizard's dialogue as “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” and heads the page “Written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.”
The production document. MGM's own cutting continuity, last revised 15 March 1939 ↗, independently records the same wording — “…attention to that man behind the curtain” — and carries the three writers' names on its title page. Two records, made independently, agree on the demonstrative.
The origination check. Searching the complete 1900 novel at Project Gutenberg ↗ returns no occurrence of “curtain” and none of “pay no attention.” Baum instead has Toto tip over “the screen that stood in a corner,” exposing “a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face.” The film did not sharpen an existing line here — it invented one.
The authorship. Wikipedia's production history ↗ records that the credit is shared and that the script passed through at least ten writers, while Langley's biography ↗ details how Ryerson and Woolf revised his draft without his knowledge. We can name the three credited authors; we cannot honestly name which one wrote this sentence.

In copyright

The Wizard of Oz was released by MGM on 25 August 1939 — long after the 1931 threshold beyond which US works remain under copyright — so the film and its dialogue are firmly in copyright. Because screen writing is work-for-hire, the rights sit with the studio rather than with Langley, Ryerson or Woolf or their estates: Wikipedia records ↗ that home video releases are issued by Warner Home Video “via current rights holder Turner Entertainment Co.” Baum's 1900 novel is separately in the public domain, but the line quoted here is not from it.

Fact-check

Three ways this one goes wrong

Nobody is falsely credited here — the film is real and the scene is real. Three things go wrong anyway: the wording, the origin, and the author.

“the man behind the curtain” Drift

The film says that man. Both Wikiquote's transcription of the released film ↗ and MGM's own cutting continuity of 15 March 1939 ↗ read “that man behind the curtain.” The swap looks trivial and isn't: the Wizard is pointing away from himself, and “that” is what makes it a deflection rather than a description.

L. Frank Baum / The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) Not in the book

The line is regularly credited to Baum's novel, on the reasonable assumption that a famous Oz line is an Oz line. It isn't. A full-text search of the 1900 novel at Project Gutenberg ↗ finds the word “curtain” zero times. Baum's Wizard sits behind a screen, which Toto knocks over when the Lion roars, and his first words are “I am Oz, the Great and Terrible” followed by a plea not to be struck. The curtain, the bluster and the sentence are all the film's.

Frank Morgan, or “the Wizard” Speaker, not author

Quote collections routinely file the line under the actor or the character. Frank Morgan performed it; the Wizard is a fictional person and cannot write anything. The words belong to the credited screenwriters — per Wikipedia's production history ↗, “the screenplay is credited to Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, but includes contributions from other writers.”

The real sentence is “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” — written for MGM in 1939 under a shared credit to Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, spoken by Frank Morgan, and nowhere in the book it is credited to ↗.

Context

Why the line stuck

The line survives because it describes a manoeuvre with no dignity in it. The Wizard has already been seen — Toto has hauled the curtain aside, the control panel is in shot, the great floating head is revealed as a man working levers into a microphone — and rather than stop, he keeps the amplified voice running and instructs the room to disregard the evidence of its own eyes. He is not hiding. He is asking to be treated as though he were.

That is why the phrase migrated out of the film and into ordinary speech about politics, markets, monetary policy and public relations: it names the specific moment when a concealment has failed and the concealer brazens on anyway. The word the popular version drops is the one doing the work. That man is a man being pointed at. The man is a generic figure behind a generic curtain — the phrase becomes a comment about hidden power in general, which is roughly the opposite of the joke.

He is not hiding. He is asking to be treated as though he were.

What Baum actually wrote

Baum's 1900 novel stages the exposure differently and less theatrically. The Cowardly Lion roars to frighten the Wizard; the roar startles Toto, who jumps aside and knocks over a screen standing in the corner. Behind it is “a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face,” as surprised as they are, who says only: “I am Oz, the Great and Terrible — but don't strike me — please don't.”

There is no curtain, no bluster, and no attempt to talk his way out of it — Baum's Wizard folds immediately. The film's writers supplied the curtain, the failed brazen-out, and the line. The device of a concealed operator exposed by Toto is Baum's; the sentence people quote is not.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)en.wikiquote.org

Transcribes the released film's dialogue as “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” and credits the writing to Langley, Ryerson and Woolf, based on Baum's novel.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) — full textwww.gutenberg.org

Baum's original novel. Searchable proof that the word “curtain” never appears and the Wizard is exposed behind a screen instead.

MGM cutting continuity, rev. 15 March 1939 (PDF)www.sellingyourscreenplay.com

Shot-by-shot post-production script titled to Langley, Ryerson and Woolf, recording the line as delivered across camera setups.

Wikipedia: The Wizard of Ozen.wikipedia.org

Production history: the shared screenplay credit, the roster of uncredited writers, MGM's 25 August 1939 release, and Turner Entertainment as current rights holder.

Wikipedia: Noel Langleyen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the lead credited writer (1911–1980) and an account of how Ryerson and Woolf revised his draft.

A specimen of the drift in printmannerofspeaking.org

A public-speaking blog that prints the line as “the man behind the curtain” — an example of the popular wording in circulation, not a claim about the film.

The writers behind the curtain

Who actually wrote it

Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf

Credited screenwriters · The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939)

The 1939 screenplay carries a shared credit: Noel Langley (1911–1980) wrote the script that formed the basis of the film, and it was then revised by the writing team of Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf — revisions Langley disliked enough that he stripped many of them back out when producer Arthur Freed returned the script to him. At least ten writers passed over the material without credit, among them George Cukor, King Vidor and Irving Brecher. Because the credit is shared and the drafts were heavily reworked, the surviving credit does not establish which of the three actually wrote this particular line — it establishes only that the line is theirs collectively, and not the actor's or the character's.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming (Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939). Dialogue verified against the MGM cutting continuity, last revised 15 March 1939, and against Wikiquote's transcription of the released film.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain