The Wizard of Oz 1939

The story

Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) lives on a Kansas farm, shown in sepia. Her dog Toto bites a landowner, Almira Gulch, who comes with an order to have him put down. Dorothy runs away, and a twister lifts the house and drops it in Munchkinland, in colour, on the Wicked Witch of the East. The Yellow Brick Road leads to the Emerald City and the Wizard.

On the road she picks up a Scarecrow who wants brains, a Tin Man who wants a heart and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage. The Wizard sets a price: bring him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy's bucket of water melts the Witch, the Wizard turns out to be a showman behind a curtain, and the film ends in Kansas with its most quoted line, "There's no place like home."

Baum's book, and the films before

The film is based on L. Frank Baum's novel of 1900. Two things changed. In the book Dorothy's magic shoes are silver; for the film they became ruby, which sources say was done so they would show up against the yellow road in Technicolor. And in the book Oz is a real country. The film makes it a long dream, on the reasoning, it is said, that audiences of 1939 would not accept a fantasy played straight.

It was not the first Oz film. The earliest surviving one is a 13-minute short made by Selig Polyscope in 1910, drawing on Baum's book and his 1902 stage musical. In 1925 Larry Semon made a feature-length silent version for Chadwick Pictures: Dorothy is eighteen, the three companions are farmhands in disguise, and Oliver Hardy plays a Tin Woodman who turns villain. It was not a success.

Four directors and a crowd of writers

Mervyn LeRoy produced, with Arthur Freed. Richard Thorpe directed for about eleven days in October 1938 and was replaced. George Cukor stayed a few days as an adviser, directing nothing. Victor Fleming took over until he left for Gone with the Wind, and King Vidor directed the last ten days, among them the Kansas scenes.

The credited writers are Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf. By the Library of Congress's count there were ten screenwriters in all, and others, among them Herman J. Mankiewicz and Yip Harburg, are named as contributors.

Casting changed too. Buddy Ebsen was first the Tin Man, having swapped parts with Ray Bolger. He had a toxic reaction to the aluminium dust in his make-up and was taken to hospital, on oxygen for two weeks by one account. Jack Haley took over, with a paste in place of the powder. Frank Morgan played Professor Marvel, the Wizard, the gatekeeper, the coachman and the guard.

Two injuries are documented. During Margaret Hamilton's exit from Munchkinland the flame came early and set fire to her copper-based green make-up, causing third-degree burns to her hands and face, and she was away for about three months. Her stunt double Betty Danko was badly hurt later, when a smoke device failed in the broomstick shots. Judy Garland, who was sixteen, was corseted to look younger, and biographers record that the studio kept her on pills to hold her weight down.

Colour and song

Oz was shot in three-strip Technicolor, and Kansas in black and white toned sepia. Colour was not new in 1939: features had been made in three-strip Technicolor since 1935. The film is remembered for how it used colour, not for being first. By most accounts the moment when Dorothy opens the door was done without an optical effect: the inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia and filmed in colour, and a stand-in in a sepia dress steps aside to let Garland through.

Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote the songs. After test screenings MGM considered cutting "Over the Rainbow", reportedly because it made the Kansas section too long and was thought undignified for a girl in a barnyard. Freed, LeRoy and Fleming fought to keep it. It won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and Herbert Stothart's music won for score.

Money, prizes and television

It was one of MGM's most expensive productions, at about $2.77 million, and it took about $3 million on first release, not enough to make a profit. The reissue of 1949 is said to have put it in the black.

At the Oscars of 29 February 1940 it lost Best Picture to Gone with the Wind, the film Victor Fleming had left it to direct. It won for its song and its score, and Garland received the special Juvenile Award.

The change came with television. CBS first broadcast it on 3 November 1956, with a Nielsen rating of 33.9, and a repeat in December 1959 drew more. Yearly showings turned it into a ritual.

The legends, sorted

The hanging Munchkin. Nothing of the kind is on screen. The shape in the trees in the forest scene is a large bird, said to have been on loan from the Los Angeles Zoo, and the story took hold only when poor home-video copies came out. No Munchkin actor died on set.

The Munchkin actors' behaviour. About 30 of the roughly 124 performers came from a European troupe then billed as Singer's Midgets. In 1967 Garland claimed they were drunks who had to be collected in butterfly nets. A fellow performer, Margaret Pellegrini, disputed this, saying only a couple of young men from Germany drank beer. It is recollection against recollection.

The asbestos snow. Often repeated, and not settled. Asbestos was in common use on film sets of the time, and it is widely reported that the snow falling on the poppy field was made of it. Other accounts say gypsum. Asbestos is also said to have been used for the Witch's burning broomstick.

Pink Floyd. The notion that The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) is a soundtrack to the film appeared in a Fort Wayne newspaper in August 1995. Gilmour called it work by a man with too much time on his hands, and Waters called it nonsense. Critics put it down to apophenia, seeing patterns where there are none.

Why it matters

It may be the most watched film there is. The Library of Congress says that because of its many television showings between 1956 and 1974 it has been seen by more viewers than any other film. That is the Library's claim.

It is on the registers. It was chosen for the first National Film Registry list in 1989. Since 2007 it has also been on UNESCO's Memory of the World register.

It showed what colour was for. Sepia Kansas and Technicolor Oz turn a technical novelty into the meaning of the story. The opening of that door is still the example everyone reaches for.