About The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939) is everybody's cherished favorite, perennial fantasy film musical from MGM during its golden years. For many seasons, it was featured regularly on network TV as a prime time event (its first two showings were on CBS television on November 3, 1956 and in December, 1959) and then annually for Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or Easter time. It soon became a classic institution and probably has been seen by more people than any other motion picture over three decades. All of its images (the Yellow Brick Road, the Kansas twister), characters (e.g., Auntie Em, Toto, Dorothy, the Wicked Witch), dialogue (e.g., "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" or the film's final line: "There's no place like home"), and music ("Over the Rainbow") have become indelibly remembered, and the classic film has been honored with dozens of books, TV shows, references in other films, and even by pop groups (singer Elton John with his Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road album, or Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon). Initially, however, the film was not commercially successful, but it was critically acclaimed. The popular film was brilliantly adapted from L. Frank Baum's venerated children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (written in 1899 and published in 1900) by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and E.A. Woolf, and a team of many uncredited scriptwriters (including Arthur Freed, Herman Mankiewicz, Sid Silvers, and Ogden Nash). The Wizard of Oz was first performed on-stage in 1902-03 in Chicago and New York. Then, it was made into a silent film in 1910 (as the short film The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with 9 year old Bebe Daniels as Dorothy), again in 1921, and in 1925 (with comedian Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame portraying the Tin Woodsman). Other versions included a Canadian black and white feature The Wizard of Oz (1933), a short animated version in 1938, The Wiz (1978) - Universal's Afro-American film of the Broadway musical, and Disney's live-action fantasy Return to Oz (1985). Because Buddy Ebsen (later noted for being cast as Jed Clampett in TV's The Beverly Hillbillies) was removed from the production as the original Tin Man because of an adverse allergic reaction to make-up, Jack Haley replaced him. [Haley was the father of producer Jack Haley, Jr., who was once married to Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli for five years in the 1970s.] There was also a near fatal accident on the set involving Margaret Hamilton. Two scenes, the Scarecrow's (Ray Bolger) dance, and the jitterbug dance were edited out of the final film - as was Ebsen's singing of "If I Only Had A Heart." [The magic world of OZ was named after the alphabetical letters O - Z on the bottom drawer of Baum's file cabinet.] There were a total of four directors who collaborated in the making of the film: first, Richard Thorpe (for two weeks) and then George Cukor (for two or three days). Victor Fleming (the credited director) was involved for four months, but was hired away by David O. Selznick to direct Gone With the Wind (1939). An uncredited King Vidor finished the production in ten more days, which consisted mostly of completing the film's opening and closing sepia sequences in Kansas. The back-story behind the chaos and confusion created by the many Munchkin extras was strangely and improbably documented in director Steve Rash's Under the Rainbow (1981), a tasteless comedy set in 1938 during the filming of Oz, that starred Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, and Eve Arden. The film perfectly integrated the musical numbers (songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. ('Yip') Harburg) with the action of the plot, enhancing and advancing the suspenseful narrative. Many of the film's characters played two roles - one in Kansas and their counterparts in the Land of Oz, the locale of the young hero's troubled dreams. The scenes in bleak Kansas were shot in drab sepia tone, with brilliant, vibrant, 3-strip Technicolor used for the fantasy scenes in the journey to Oz. The special effects, by Arnold Gillespie, included the cyclone sequence, the flying winged monkeys, the Emerald City views, the poppyfield, and the message written by the witch in the sky: "Surrender Dorothy." The beloved film in Hollywood's most classic year was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture (producer Mervyn LeRoy), Best Color Cinematography (Hal Rosson), Best Interior Decoration (Cedric Gibbons), Best Special Effects, Best Song ("Over the Rainbow" by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg) and Best Original Score (Herbert Stothart), and won only two Oscars - for its dual musical nominations. [It was competing against the domineering multiple Oscar winner, Gone With the Wind (1939).] Garland's star-making role was also presented with a Special Award for her "outstanding performance as a screen juvenile." Established 20th Century Fox star Shirley Temple and Universal's Deanna Durbin were both considered to play the lead role of Dorothy, but because of their unavailability (Temple was refused permission from Fox to work for MGM), the 1939 film version starred Judy Garland as the Kansas farmgirl. Garland had just completed the successful hit films Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) and Babes in Arms (1939) with Mickey Rooney.
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