- Director:
Victor
Fleming
- Genre: Children's/Family
- Movie
Type: Children's Fantasy, Musical Fantasy
- Themes:
Fantasy Lands, Finding a Way Back Home, Farm Life
- Main Cast:
Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley
- Release
Year: 1939
- Country: US
- Run
Time: 101 minutes
The third and definitive film adaptation of L.
Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy, this musical adventure is a
genuine family classic that made Judy
Garland a star for her heartfelt performance as Dorothy Gale, an
orphaned young girl unhappy with her drab black-and-white existence on
her aunt and uncle's dusty Kansas farm. Dorothy yearns to travel "over
the rainbow" to a different world, and she gets her wish when a tornado
whisks her and her little dog, Toto, to the Technicolorful land of Oz.
Having offended the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret
Hamilton), Dorothy is protected from the old crone's wrath by the
ruby slippers that she wears. At the suggestion of Glinda, the Good
Witch of the North (Billie
Burke), Dorothy heads down the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald
City, where dwells the all-powerful Wizard of Oz, who might be able to
help the girl return to Kansas. En route, she befriends a Scarecrow (Ray
Bolger), a Tin Man (Jack
Haley), and a Cowardly Lion (Bert
Lahr). The Scarecrow would like to have some brains, the Tin Man
craves a heart, and the Lion wants to attain courage; hoping that the
Wizard will help them too, they join Dorothy on her odyssey to the
Emerald City.
Garland was MGM's second choice for Dorothy after Shirley
Temple dropped out of the project; and Bolger was to have played
the Tin Man but talked co-star Buddy
Ebsen into switching roles. When Ebsen proved allergic to the
chemicals used in his silver makeup, he was replaced by Haley. Gale
Sondergaard was originally to have played the Wicked Witch of the
West in a glamorous fashion, until the decision was made to opt for
belligerent ugliness, and the Wizard was written for W.C.
Fields, who reportedly turned it down because MGM couldn't
meet his price. Although Victor
Fleming, who also directed Gone
With the Wind, was given sole directorial credit, several directors
were involved in the shooting, included King
Vidor, who shot the opening and closing black-and-white sequences. Harold
Arlen and E.Y. Harburg's now-classic Oscar-winning song "Over the
Rainbow" was nearly chopped from the picture after the first preview
because it "slowed down the action." The Wizard of Oz was too expensive
to post a large profit upon initial release; however, after a
disappointing reissue in 1955, it was sold to network television, where
its annual showings made it a classic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The lavish MGM production of L.
Frank Baum's children's book may have lost a million dollars on its
initial release, but its songcraft, technical artistry, star-making
performance from Judy
Garland, and unexpected TV success turned it into a perennial
classic. With future ace MGM musical producer Arthur
Freed lending producer Mervyn
LeRoy an uncredited hand in pre-production, Cedric
Gibbons' art direction, Adrian's
costumes, and Hal Rosson's sparkling cinematography maximized the
creative potential of Technicolor film, as Dorothy goes "over the
rainbow" from a sepia-toned black-and-white Kansas to a fantastically
rendered Oz of ruby slippers, emerald cities, and yellow brick roads.
Lent ample support by vaudeville vets Ray
Bolger, Jack
Haley, and Bert
Lahr, neophyte Garland delivered a touching performance as Dorothy,
proving that she had the acting talent to match her superb singing. As
with Gone
With the Wind, the film went through several directors and Victor
Fleming got the credit; King
Vidor directed the Kansas sequences, including Garland's solo "Over
the Rainbow." Almost cut for the sake of pacing, "Over the Rainbow"
became an Oscar winner for Best Song and a Garland standard. Although
the 2.7-million-dollar film wilted at the box office, The Wizard of Oz
was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture (which it lost
to Gone
With the Wind), winning for Herbert
Stothart's score and Harold
Arlen and E.Y. Harburg's song. It was the first feature sold for
prime-time TV telecast, and its 1956 TV debut was a ratings hit, finally
turning it into the crowd-pleasing blockbuster that MGM had
always meant it to be. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Cast
Billie
Burke - Glinda, the Good Witch; Margaret
Hamilton - Miss Gulch; Pat Walshe - Nikko;
Clara
Blandick - Auntie Em; Billy
Bletcher - Mayor/Lollypop Guild; Ray
Bolger - Hunk; Harlan
Briggs - Uncle Henry's Double; Tyler
Brooke - Ozmite; Adriana
Caselotti - Juliet; Pinto Colvig - Munchkin;
Billy
Curtis - City Father; Abe Dinovitch - Munchkin;
Major Doyle - Munchkin (uncredited); Daisy
Earles - Munchkin Villager; Harry Earles
- Guild Singer; Charles
Grapewin - Uncle Henry; Jack
Haley - Hickory; Charles
Irwin - Ozmite; Lois
January - Cat Owner; Bert
Lahr - Zeke; Mitchell
Lewis - Head Winkie; Walter
Miller - Bespectacled Munchkin; Yvonne Moray
- League Dancer; Frank
Morgan - Prof. Marvel; Lillian Porter - Munchkin
(uncredited); Jimmy Rosen - Munchkin (uncredited);
The Singer Midgets - Munchkins; Terry
- Toto; Carol Tevis - Munchkin; Bobby
Watson - Ozmite; Buddy
Ebsen - Tin Woodman on "We're Off to See the Wizard"; Oliver
Smith - Ozmite; George
Ministeri - Coach Driver; Jerry
Maren - Guild Leader; Harry Monty - Winged
Monkey/Munchkin; Lee Murray - Winged Monkey; "Little
Billy" Rhodes - Barrister; Gus
Wayne - Munchkin; Clarence
Swensen - Munchkin; Frank Packard - Munchkin
(uncredited); Mickey
Carroll - Munchkin; The Munchkins; Meinhardt
Raabe - Munchkin Coroner
Fairy Tale Companion:The Wizard of Oz
Wizard of Oz, The (film: USA, 1939),
the most celebrated fairy‐tale film ever made, and the most memorable
version of the story. Initially a box‐office failure, it has over the
decades been given repeated, well‐received television screenings and
thereby achieved iconic status. In public discussion it is taken for
granted that absolutely everyone knows Dorothy (played by Judy Garland),
the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. Fragments of the
film's dialogue—such as ‘Toto, I have a feeling that we're not in
Kansas anymore’, ‘Are you a good witch or a bad witch?’, ‘Follow the
yellow brick road’, ‘Leaving so soon, my pretty?’ and ‘I'll get you, and
your little dog too!’—have become part of conversational currency. On
the internet the film, plus L. Frank Baum's
original 1900 book, have together spawned over 30 different websites
dedicated to Oz clubs, quizzes, festivals, and facsimile Dorothy
dresses.
Before this MGM adaptation, there were various short
silent Oz films, some produced by Baum himself. The major silent
version, made in the 1920s (USA, 1925), is known today mainly for the
fact that Oliver Hardy, before he teamed up with Stan Laurel, took the
part of the Tin Woodman, but in its day it was conceived and marketed as
a vehicle for the acrobatic blank‐faced clown Larry Semon, who played
the Scarecrow and also directed. Owing rather little to Baum's plot, it
starts in a Ruritanian kind of Oz where Prime Minister Kruel, having
secretly deposited the baby Princess Dorothy of Oz on a Kansas farm 18
years previously, schemes to seize the throne for himself. Agents sent
to Kansas to get rid of the evidence that would support her royal claim
are thwarted by the Scarecrow, who is devoted to Dorothy. When a cyclone
transports Dorothy and the Scarecrow to Oz, the Tin Woodman joins the
party, Dorothy meets Prince Kynde, and the Scarecrow has an encounter
with a den of angry lions. By means of a series of comic stunts, the
Scarecrow confounds all Kruel's machinations, then generously renounces
his love for Dorothy, who marries Prince Kynde and assumes her rightful
place on the throne of Oz.
The MGM film follows Baum's plotline
more closely than Semon had done, but changes it significantly in tone.
Baum, rejecting the ‘blood‐curdling incident’ and ‘fearsome moral’
associated particularly with the Grimms'
stories, wrote that his intention was to leave out the ‘heartaches and
nightmares' of fairy tales, while retaining their ‘wonderment and joy’.
The MGM version could have stuck with Baum and merely delivered singable
songs, joyful jokes, merry Munchkins, and Technicolor choreography, but
it does not do that. If it had, it would probably be no more remembered
today than Semon's film is, even though the film's durability has much
to do with the outstanding musical score by Harold Arlen and E. Y. ‘Yip’
Harburg. Instead it gives full, fearsome force to the Wicked Witch of
the West, and allows her callous minions, the Winged Monkeys, none of
the extenuation that the book offers. In this way it is closer to Grimm
and to Disney's
Snow
White than it is to Baum. In the UK both Snow White and The
Wizard of Oz were given an ‘A’ certificate at the time of first
release, the force of which was that children on their own could not be
admitted to a cinema when either of these films was being screened.
The
Witch's nightmare‐causing powers are further strengthened by giving her
a counterpart—Miss Gulch—in Kansas. This idea of validating a dream or
fantasy by having some of the actors play two characters, one in each
world, is common to a range of films (e.g. The Five Thousand Fingers
of Doctor T), the convention being that, when the child wakes up, he
or she is holding something tangible from the dream world which proves
that it is as real as home. In addition, a film‐child returning from
another world usually has some newly acquired self‐confidence or skill
which makes it possible to solve the problem which first created the
need for escape. In The Wizard of Oz neither of these things
happens. Dorothy does not produce the ruby slippers to prove—even to
herself—that Oz really is ‘a place, not a dream’; and, more disturbingly
for a perceptive child in an audience, she does not bring with her from
Oz anything that will help her solve the problem of Miss Gulch. Whether
or not this was the makers' intention, part of the film's ‘heartache’
comes from the fact that, though the Wicked Witch has been disposed of,
Miss Gulch is still alive; and the legal warrant condemning Toto to
death, which was what caused Dorothy to wish to fly away over the
rainbow, is still in force when she comes back.
The film's status
in the popular imagination has led to a sequel, Return to Oz,
numerous television parodies, and a parallel black version set in 1970s
New York. This was The Wiz (USA, 1978), which derived from a
successful Broadway musical (see The
Wizard of Oz, stage versions). Though the credits acknowledge Baum,
the storyline is actually based on the MGM film, and indeed presumes
audience knowledge of it. For nearly everything in it (except the death
warrant on Toto's head), The Wiz finds a New York equivalent.
Dorothy, an unadventurous 24‐year‐old Harlem schoolteacher, chases Toto
when he runs off in the snow, and hits a tornado which blows them
through an electrical sign advertising a product called ‘Oz’. Upon
landing, Dorothy kills witch Evermean, who had turned the Munchkins into
graffiti; on her death they gratefully unpeel themselves from walls. En
route for the Emerald City Dorothy finds a brainless scarecrow
trying to protect a small patch of sunflowers against derisive crows; a
heartless tinman buried under fairground junk at Coney Island; and a
cowardly lion lurking inside the stone monuments of the New York Public
Library. On Poppy Street, a neon‐lit alley populated by cocaine pushers,
Dorothy and the lion succumb to the drugged atmosphere, but are revived
by the tinman's tears of grief. At other points in the story the Wicked
Witch of the West, Evillene, is presented as a sweat shop owner; her
Flying Monkeys as a squad of motorcyclists; and Oz himself as a failed
politician and a complete fraud. Climactically, Dorothy's three friends
are comforted by being told that they have already displayed plenty of
brains, heart, and courage: ‘Believe in Yourself’, sing Dorothy and
Glinda, before the magic slippers take Dorothy back home to Harlem.
Among
other fantasies that testify to the position of The Wizard of Oz
as a standard reference point is Zardoz (UK, 1973). Set in 2293,
it depicts the masses as worshipping a giant flying godhead named
Zardoz. Gradually Zed, one of his Exterminators (reminiscent of the
Winged Monkeys), realizes that the god whom he serves does not really
exist at all, but is merely a man‐made invention named by a joker who
was also a cinephile. The film thus assumes that adult audiences in the
1970s were able to unravel the meanings packed into the name Zardoz, and
at the same time prophesies that when The Wizard of Oz is over
350 years old, and industrial society has collapsed, there will still be
some who use it as mythology. By contrast, Rainbow (UK/Canada,
1995), set in 1990s New Jersey, invokes Dorothy and Toto rather than the
Wizard. With the help of a computer, four children and a dog find the
end of a rainbow and are carried along by it till it drops them in
Kansas. One has taken nuggets of gold from the rainbow, thereby
upsetting its balance; as a result the temperature rises drastically,
colour fades from everything, society begins to break down. With all
plants about to be destroyed by the disappearance of green, the children
manage to restore gold to the rainbow. The moral the film illustrates
is that ecology begins at home: like Dorothy, we don't need to look
further than our own back yard.
Bibliography - Harmetz, Aljean, The Making of
the Wizard of Oz (1978).
- Rushdie, Salman, The Wizard of
Oz (1992).
— Terry Staples |
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