American actress Margaret Hamilton was BOTD in 1902. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she acted in theatre groups as a child, and started her professional career with the Cleveland Play House (playing one of the witches in Shakespeare‘s Macbeth). At her parents’ insistence, she trained as a teacher at Wheelock College in Boston, working for seven years as a kindergarten teacher. She became well-known as a character actress, appearing on Broadway in the 1932 play Another Language, reprising her role (and making her screen debut) in the 1933 film adaptation. She worked steadily in Hollywood throughout the 1930s, appearing in These Three, a heavily censored adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s lesbian-themed play The Children’s Hour; Saratoga with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow; an adaptation of Mark Twain‘s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; and Babes in Arms with teen stars Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. In 1939, she reunited with Garland in MGM’s hit musical film The Wizard of Oz, playing the Wicked Witch of the West and her Kansas counterpart Almira Gulch. Hamilton’s wonderfully vaudevillian performance, featuring green make-up, a deranged cackle and camp line readings (memorably “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!“) made her an overnight star, and one of Hollywood’s most popular screen villains. Hamilton suffered serious burns while filming her fiery exit from Munchkinland, requiring hospitalisation and six weeks of recuperation before returning to complete her scenes. Her prolific post-Oz career included supporting roles in plays, films, radio series and, latterly, TV soap operas. In later life, she made cameo appearances as the Wicked Witch in stage versions of Oz and an episode of children’s TV show Sesame Street. Hamilton married Paul Meserve in 1931, with whom she had a son, divorcing him eight years later after publicly accusing him of physical abuse. She never remarried, referring to herself privately as a lesbian, though little is known about her later relationships. She died in 1985, aged 82.