Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: The Wizard of Oz

Screened: July 18, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Broethers (2005)
Selected By: Beth

What more can be said of Victor Fleming’s 1939 musical fantasy triumph, The Wizard of Oz, that hasn’t already been said before? It is the kind of film that proudly embodies the best features of cinema. It plucks out the affirming fable in L. Frank Baum’s original turn-of-the-century fantasy, wraps it in Broadway melody, and then adds movie-making opulence at its most wondrous. It is a glorious, shameless kind of film, one that succeeds and endures because of its fierce ambition to be a unprecedented work of imagination. What film before Oz contained such human warmth, such otherworldly delight, such grotesque terror, all in one package, and then had the audacity to add catchy show tunes?

At this point, perhaps we should just journey down the list of rumors and legends that swirl around the film. Most notoriously, no, the film does not capture an on-set Munchkin or stagehand suicide. Yes, actor Buddy Epson was slated to play the Tin Man, but was replaced by Jack Haley after the aluminum dust in his role’s makeup severely poisoned him. Yes, a second-hand coat purchased for Professor Marvel’s costume turned out to have been owned by Oz author L. Frank Baum. Yes, MGM originally wanted W.C. Fields to play the Wizard, and yes, the studio originally intended for the Cowardly Lion to be a live lion with a dubbed voice. Yes, many of Margaret Hamilton’s scenes as the Wicked Witch of the West were cut from the final film because they were deemed to frightening.

Yes, Terry the Dog, who plays Toto, was paid more than twice the rate received by the actors who portrayed the Munchkins. Yes, the original silver slippers of Baum’s novel were changed to ruby slippers to better show off the Technicolor film process. And, of course, yes, there are eerie synchronicities between this 1939 film and Pink Floyd’s 1973 concept album, Dark Side of the Moon. Since awareness of the phenomenon first surfaced on Usenet in the 1990s, it has been dismissed by the band and album engineer Alan Parsons, but this has not dissuaded film and Floyd devotees from exploring this odd coincidence.