Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time,[5] it is the most commercially successful adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.[6] Directed primarily by Victor Fleming (who left the production to take over the troubled Gone with the Wind), the film stars Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale alongside Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr.
Characterized by its use of Technicolor, fantasy storytelling, musical score, and memorable characters, the film has become an American pop culture icon. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but lost to Gone with the Wind, also directed by Fleming. It did win in two other categories: Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow" and Best Original Score by Herbert Stothart. While the film was considered a critical success upon release in August 1939, it failed to make a profit for MGM until the 1949 re-release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,777,000 budget, not including promotional costs, which made it MGM's most expensive production at that time.[3][7][8]
The 1956 television broadcast premiere of the film on the CBS network reintroduced the film to the public; according to the Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in movie history.[6][9] It was among the first 25 films that inaugurated the National Film Registry list in 1989.[10] It is also one of the few films on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.[11] The film is among the top ten in the BFI (British Film Institute) list of 50 films to be seen by the age of 14.
The Wizard of Oz is the source of many quotes referenced in contemporary popular culture. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but others made uncredited contributions. The songs were written by Edgar "Yip" Harburg (lyrics) and Harold Arlen (music). The musical score and the incidental music were composed by Stothart.
Dorothy Gale lives with her dog Toto on a Kansas farm belonging to her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. One day, Toto bites neighbor Miss Almira Gulch on the leg, leading her to obtain an order from the sheriff to euthanize him. In spite of Dorothy's pleas and Aunt Em's resistance, Miss Gulch takes Toto away in a basket, but Toto escapes and returns to Dorothy; she decides to run away in order to ensure that Toto won't be euthanized. Not far from the farm, she meets Professor Marvel, a kind fortune teller who uses his crystal ball to make Dorothy believe that Aunt Em may be dying of a broken heart. Horrified, Dorothy rushes home as a storm approaches; a tornado forms, and Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and the farmhands take shelter in the storm cellar as Dorothy arrives home. Unable to be heard begging for entry, Dorothy seeks shelter in her bedroom. The window is blown in from its frame and hits Dorothy on the head, knocking her unconscious. The house is sent spinning into the air, and she awakens to see various figures fly by, including Miss Gulch on her bicycle, who transforms into a witch on a broomstick.
The house lands in Munchkinland in the Land of Oz. Glinda the Good Witch of the North and the Munchkins welcome her as a heroine, as the falling house has killed the Wicked Witch of the East. Her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, arrives to claim her ruby slippers, but Glinda transfers them onto Dorothy's feet first. Enraged, the Wicked Witch of the West swears revenge on Dorothy and vanishes. Glinda tells Dorothy to keep the slippers on and follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, where she can ask the Wizard of Oz to help her return home. On her journey, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, who wants a brain, the Tin Woodman, who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, who needs courage. Dorothy invites them to accompany her to Emerald City, where they can also ask the Wizard for help. Despite the Witch's attempts to stop them, they reach the Emerald City and are eventually allowed to see the Wizard, who appears as a ghostly head surrounded by fire and smoke. He agrees to grant their wishes if they prove their worth by bringing him the Witch's broomstick.
As the foursome and Toto make their way to the Witch's castle, the Witch captures Dorothy and plots to kill her and retrieve the slippers. Toto escapes and leads her three friends to the castle. They ambush three guards, don their uniforms and free Dorothy. The Witch and her guards chase and surround them. The Witch sets fire to the Scarecrow, causing Dorothy to toss a bucket of water, inadvertently splashing the Witch, who melts away; the guards rejoice and give Dorothy her broomstick.
Upon their return to the Emerald City, the Wizard stalls in fulfilling his promises until Toto pulls back a curtain and exposes the "Wizard" as a middle-aged man operating machinery and speaking into a microphone. Admitting to being a humbug, he insists that he is "a good man but a bad wizard." The Wizard then gives the Scarecrow a diploma, the Lion a medal and the Tin Man a ticking heart-shaped watch, helping them see that the attributes they sought were already within them. He then offers to take Dorothy and Toto home in his hot air balloon, revealing that he is also from Kansas and was originally a carnival worker before a tornado brought him to the Emerald City, whereupon he accepted the job as Wizard due to hard times.
As Dorothy and the Wizard prepare to depart, Toto becomes distracted by a cat and leaps from Dorothy's arms. As Dorothy pursues Toto, the balloon disembarks with the Wizard, leaving her behind. Glinda appears and tells Dorothy that the ruby slippers have the power to return her to Kansas. After sharing a tearful farewell with Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion, Dorothy follows Glinda's instructions: she must close her eyes, tap her heels together three times, and state repeatedly, "There's no place like home." Dorothy complies and she wakes up in her bedroom surrounded by her family and friends, including Toto. Everyone dismisses her adventure as a dream, but Dorothy insists it was real and says she will never run away from home again before declaring, "There's no place like home!"
Cast
Cast listing:
Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale
Frank Morgan as (in order of appearance) Professor Marvel/The Gatekeeper/The Carriage Driver/The Guard/The Wizard of Oz
Ray Bolger as "Hunk" / The Scarecrow
Jack Haley as "Hickory" / The Tin Man
Bert Lahr as "Zeke" / The Cowardly Lion
Billie Burke as Glinda
Margaret Hamilton as Miss Almira Gulch / The Wicked Witch of the West
Charley Grapewin as Uncle Henry
Pat Walshe as Nikko the Winged Monkey King
Clara Blandick as Auntie Em
Terry as Toto
Mitchell Lewis as the Winkie Guard Captain (credited only in the IMAX version)
Adriana Caselotti as the voice of Juliet in the Tin Man's song "If I Only Had a Heart" (uncredited)[12]
Production
Development
Production on the film began when Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) showed that films adapted from popular children's stories and fairytale folklore could still be successful.[13][14] In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s hugely popular novel from Samuel Goldwyn, who had toyed with the idea of making the film as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor who was under contract to the Goldwyn studios and whom Goldwyn wanted to cast as the Scarecrow.[14]
The script went through several writers and revisions before the final shooting.[15] Mervyn LeRoy's assistant, William H. Cannon, had submitted a brief four-page outline.[15] Because recent fantasy films had not fared well, he recommended toning down or removing the magical elements of the story. In his outline, the Scarecrow was a man so stupid that the only employment open to him was literally scaring crows from cornfields, while the Tin Woodman was a criminal so heartless he was sentenced to be placed in a tin suit for eternity, torture that softened him into somebody gentler and kinder.[15] His vision was similar to Larry Semon's 1925 film adaptation of the story in which the magical elements are absent.
Afterward, LeRoy hired screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who soon delivered a 17-page draft of the Kansas scenes and a few weeks later, a further 56 pages. He also hired Noel Langley and poet Ogden Nash to write separate versions of the story. None of these three knew about the others, and this was not an uncommon procedure. Nash delivered a four-page outline, Langley turned in a 43-page treatment and a full film script. He[who?] turned in three more, this time incorporating the songs that had been written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf submitted a script and were brought on board to touch up the writing. They would be responsible for making sure the story stayed true to the Baum book. However, producer Arthur Freed was unhappy with their work and reassigned it to Langley.[16] During filming, Victor Fleming and John Lee Mahin revised the script further, adding and cutting some scenes. Also, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr are known to have written some of their dialogue for the Kansas sequence.
They completed the final draft of the script on October 8, 1938, following numerous rewrites.[17] All in all, it was a mish-mash of many creative minds, but Langley, Ryerson, and Woolf got the film credits. Along with the contributors already mentioned, others who assisted with the adaptation without receiving credit include: Irving Brecher, Herbert Fields, Arthur Freed, Yip Harburg, Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz, Sid Silvers, Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, and King Vidor.[14]
In addition, songwriter Harburg's son (and biographer) Ernie Harburg reported:
So anyhow, Yip also wrote all the dialogue in that time and the setup to the songs and he also wrote the part where they give out the heart, the brains, and the nerve, because he was the final script editor. And he – there was eleven screenwriters on that – and he pulled the whole thing together, wrote his own lines and gave the thing a coherence and unity which made it a work of art. But he doesn't get credit for that. He gets lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, you see. But nevertheless, he put his influence on the thing.[18]
The original producers thought that a 1939 audience was too sophisticated to accept Oz as a straight-ahead fantasy; therefore, it was re-conceived as a lengthy, elaborate dream sequence. Because of a perceived need to attract a youthful audience through appealing to modern fads and styles, the score had featured a song called "The Jitterbug", and the script had featured a scene with a series of musical contests. A spoiled, selfish princess in Oz had outlawed all forms of music except classical and operetta and went up against Dorothy in a singing contest in which her swing style enchanted listeners and won the grand prize. This part was initially written for Betty Jaynes.[19] The plan was later dropped.
Another scene, which was removed before final script approval and never filmed, was an epilogue scene back in Kansas after Dorothy's return. Hunk (the Kansan counterpart to the Scarecrow) is leaving for an agricultural college and extracts a promise from Dorothy to write to him. The scene implies that romance will eventually develop between the two, which also may have been intended as an explanation for Dorothy's partiality for the Scarecrow over her other two companions. This plot idea was never totally dropped, but is especially noticeable in the final script when Dorothy, just before she is to leave Oz, tells the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss you most of all."[20]
Much attention was given to the use of color in the production, with the MGM production crew favoring some hues over others. It took the studio's art department almost a week to settle on the shade of yellow used for the yellow brick road.[21]
Casting
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