Hamilton, a former schoolteacher who began acting in the early 1930s, made his acting debut in Another Language (1933) with Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery.
She played a villainous witch who fights with the comedians in Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s Comin’ Round the Mountain (1951), W.C. Fields’ My Little Chickadee (1940), and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938).
The Making of The Wizard of Oz claims that Hamilton’s injuries received after filming the Wicked Witch disappearing in a cloud of smoke caused him to abandon the production for six weeks.
She was meant to be lowered by a concealed elevator before the fire and smoke effects began, but they detonated when she was still above ground, resulting in second and third-degree burns.
Hamilton’s burns needed to be cleaned with acetone since the witch’s green body paint was made of copper, which is poisonous if it gets into the blood.
From 1931 to 1938, Hamilton was married to Paul Boynton Meserve; she then raised their son alone. She passed away from a heart attack in 1985 at the age of 82.
