Search results
musical adaptation Robert Armbruster ... musical director (uncredited) Leo Arnaud ... orchestrator: Munchkinland musical sequence (uncredited) Edward Baravalle ... assistant scoring mixer (uncredited) David Crocov ... violin (uncredited) Peter P. Decek ... music recording engineer (uncredited)
Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man as they make their way along the yellow brick road to talk with the Wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.
People also ask
Why did Judy Garland play Dorothy Gale in 1939?
Is the Wizard of Oz based on a true story?
Did Dorothy die in the Wizard of Oz?
What color was Wizard of Oz filmed in?
- Overview
- THE WIZARD OF OZ Detailed Synopsis
- Cast
- Crew
- Precedents
- Background
- Miscellany
- Trivia
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore..."
― Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale (1939)
is a Hollywood musical produced by MGM in 1939.
A richly detailed watercolor painting of
It was one of the very first full length pictures along with few others, such as Gone With The Wind (1939) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), to be shot in Three Strip Technicolor instead of in all black and white or Two Strip Technicolor, The film was directed by Victor Fleming. The songs were written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, and one of them, "Over the Rainbow," won the Oscar for "Best Song of the Year." It was also the film that gave actress Judy Garland one of her most iconic roles. She won a Juvenile Academy Award for her performance as Dorothy Gale.
The movie is loosely based upon the original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. The book was originally published in the year 1900 and though the film version departs a great deal from the actual source material, leaving many characters out and dropping several elements in order for the story to translate on to the big screen for its time, The Wizard of Oz never loses the moral and tender message that the book gave and is known to be one of the most timeless, ceremonially watched family movies ever. The film is also famous for being traditionally played every year annually on various television stations during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The film starts out with credits, which open up with a very cloudy background in a black and white sepia tone.
After the film dedicates the picture to the ones young at heart, we open with the movie taking place in rural Kansas, also filmed in gloomy sepia tone. Although this movie was released in 1939, cars, phones, and household electricity, things that were a part of everyday life in the 30s, are never seen in any of the Kansas scenes, hinting that the movie is probably set in an even earlier time period. the first character we are introduced to is the protagonist and heroine of the tale named Dorothy Gale (played by late actress and singer Judy Garland). Dorothy is a girl in her early teens, and slightly troubled orphan seen running down the prairie dirt road with her little pet dog, Toto. They have just come from the unseen schoolhouse, as they return to Dorothy's Aunt Em (Clara Blandick) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin) who both live at an old farm up the road. After a disastrous encounter with the snooty and mean spirited neighbor, Miss Gulch, (Margaret Hamilton), Dorothy is in a deep dilemma. To her dismay, it seems as if no one at the farm cares or is interested in this as Dorothy tries to tell the adults about her problems. The adults around her are simply far too busy to be bothered by Dorothy and her childish nonsense as they are accessing the chicken coops and the baby chicks.
The other three wise cracking Kansas farmhands, Hunk (Ray Bolger), Hickory (Jack Haley), and Zeke (Bert Lahr), are also too busy at work on the wagon and pigpens and do not want to hear Dorothy rambling and ranting on about her misfortune that took place earlier that day. Everyone tells Dorothy to just try and stay out of the way and find some place where there isn't any trouble. However, Dorothy day dreams of a care-free and more colorful world, a land where there isn't any trouble. Dorothy starts to wonder if there really is such a place "over the rainbow".
Later that same day, Miss Gulch finally arrives on her bicycle to the Gale farm and announces to Uncle Henry that she will have Toto destroyed because he got into her garden, chased her old cat and even bit her when she hit him on the back with a rake in defence. She has gotten the local Sheriff to give her a legitimate order for Toto to be taken.
Despite Aunt Em defending her niece's dog, Miss Gulch insist that Toto is now hers. She takes the dog away from a crying Dorothy and in a basket on her bike to be put down. Dorothy is devastated and runs to her bedroom heartbroken. Luckily, while Miss Gulch is riding her bicycle down the dirt road, Toto is clever enough to jump out of the basket to escape and he loyally runs back to his owner, Dorothy.
Dorothy is delighted when Toto returns. But then she also realizes that Miss Gulch will return for him sooner or later. So Dorothy decides to pack her basket and a traveling suitcase to run far away to escape all her troubles.
•Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale
•Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel, The Doorman, Cabby, Guard, and the Wizard of Oz
•Ray Bolger as Hunk and the Scarecrow
•Jack Haley as Hickory and the Tin Man
•Bert Lahr as Zeke and the Cowardly Lion
•Billie Burke as Glinda the Good Witch of the North
•Art directors: Cedric Gibbons, William A. Horning
•Associate art director: Jack Martin Smith
•Assistant conductor: George Stoll
•Assistant directors: Al Shenberg, Wallace Worsley
•Choreographer: Bobby Connolly
•Assistant choreographers: Arthur "Cowboy" Appell, Dona Massin
The makers of The Wizard of Oz were strongly influenced by the success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which showed that a fantasy film could attract an enthusiastic adult audience - a trick that earlier Oz films, including those made by Baum's Oz Film Manufacturing Company, had failed to master. Many of the changes made in Baum's original story were designed to recreate the success of Disney's movie; some of these, like a beautiful Wicked Witch of the West (to be played by Gale Sondergaard), did not survive into the finished film.
As a negative example, the filmmakers could look to the 1933 Paramount version of Alice in Wonderland, a notorious critical and popular flop. The film had boasted a distinguished cast of stars and character actors, including Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Edna May Oliver, Charlie Ruggles, Sterling Holloway, and Edward Everett Horton - who were generally unrecognizable under their heavy makeup. For The Wizard of Oz, care was taken so that the actors in heavy costume and makeup remained recognizable.
Making the filmMervyn LeRoy produced the film, with Arthur Freed as assistant producer. Its genesis was complex, employing multiple directors and screenwriters. Fleming had the director's credit, though George Cukor, Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, and King Vidor also worked on the project. An early plan to have Busby Berkeley direct the musical numbers never panned out.
Noel Langley is credited with adapting the original book, and Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf are credited as the authors of the screenplay - though more than a dozen individuals, including Herman Mankiewicz, were involved in various ways. The multiple versions of the film's script have been preserved; they make a stack five feet thick.
Jack Dawn designed the makeup for the characters. Makeup man Jack Young had the daily job of turning Margaret Hamilton into the Wicked Witch, while Charles Schram was responsible for the Cowardly Lion. By August 1938, the studio had set up a special annex where personnel drafted from the mail room and messenger service were trained in makeup; some of these people remained in the craft afterward. Still, so many actors and extras needed makeup in some scenes that the studio issued an open call to the local craft unions for free-lance hairdressers and makeup men.
Special effects for the movie were created by Buddy Gillespie and filmed by Max Fabian. Warren Newcombe created shots involving matte paintings for backgrounds, using techniques he originated. Sixty-five sets were used; the most complex was the Munchkinland set. As many as 150 painters may have worked on the film. Four separate horses were tinted for the Horse of a Different Color sequence.
Betty Danko, Hamilton's stunt double, was badly injured in an accident on the set; Hamilton suffered burns in another incident. Two of the flying monkeys were hospitalized after falling from the wires that made them "fly." Ray Bolger wore a suit protected with asbestos for the scene in which the Witch sets the Scarecrow on fire. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Woodman, but endured a severe allergic reaction to the aluminum makeup the character wore; he had to be replaced by Jack Haley.
The film was edited by Fleming and Blanche Sewell; Fleming worked in the editing room in the evening, after directing Gone With the Wind during the day.
Billie Burke played a beautiful witch, at the age of 55; Margaret Hamilton played an ugly witch, at the age of 36. Hamilton found it unpleasant to eat while in costume: her green makeup got onto her food.
During the Tin Woodman's solo dance, a puff of "steam" is emitted from his funnel hat. MGM technicians simulated the steam with a puff of talcum powder.
For the poppy-field scene, stagehands planted 40,000 artificial flowers into the floor of the set on Stage 29 at the MGM studio.
More than 300 extras were used for the Emerald City scenes.
Despite the remarkable aspects of the production, the MGM publicity department perpetrated wild exaggerations of the relevant facts. MGM publicity director Howard Strickling released a 32-page memo that claimed that 9200 actors "faced the camera" in the film, that 3200 costumes were created, and 6200 personnel "on all branches of production" worked on the project. His numbers were nonsense (yielding one costume for every three actors, for example). In fact, about 500 performers appeared in the film, and a thousand costumes were created. MGM had fewer than 4000 employees in total in the late 1930s, and not all of them worked on The Wizard of Oz.
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/movies/Wizard-of-Oz/Angry-Apple-Tree/
•The film airs once a year on TBS in the United States. The most recent airing was on Thanksgiving 2023.
•The Yellow Brick Road was actually wood painted yellow.
•The Cowardly Lion's costume was actually made from real lion pelts.
•At one point MGM's Leo the Lion was considered for the role of the Cowardly Lion.
•Margaret Hamilton suffered severe burns from pyrotechnics on set. She returned on the condition that she wouldn't have to do any more scenes with explosions. Her stunt double, Betty Danko, was used for them. However, whilst filming the scene where the Witch skywrites ''Surrender Dorothy'' with her broom, the broom exploded and Danko was sent flying through the air and was badly injured.
•There is a rumour that one of the Munchkin actors committed suicide on the set. This urban legend is referred to as The Hanging Munchkin by fans.
Box office. $29.7 million. The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). An adaptation of L. Frank Baum 's 1900 children's fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it was primarily directed by Victor Fleming, who left production to take over the troubled Gone with the Wind.
The Wizard of Oz: Directed by Victor Fleming, King Vidor. With Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr. Young Dorothy Gale and her dog Toto are swept away by a tornado from their Kansas farm to the magical Land of Oz, and embark on a quest with three new friends to see the Wizard, who can return her to her home and fulfill the others' wishes.
- (417K)
- Adventure, Family, Fantasy
- Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy
- 1939-08-25
May 15, 2023 · So, follow the Yellow Brick Road through our guide to The Wizard of Oz cast. Book The Wizard of Oz tickets on London Theatre. Georgina Onuorah plays Dorothy. Wearing those famous ruby slippers is the super-talented rising star Georgina Onuorah. She reprises the role of Dorothy from the 2022 Leicester Curve production, in which she received ...
Jun 17, 2019 · E ighty years ago, in the summer of 1939, 16-year-old Judy Garland appeared on cinema screens as the orphan Dorothy Gale, dreaming of escape from bleak, monochrome Kansas. “Find yourself a place ...
