It’s been eighty-four years since The Wizard of Oz opened at the Loews Capital Theater in New York City on August 17, 1939.
It wasn’t the first attempt to capitalize on the L. Frank Baum novel. In fact, by the time 1939 rolled around, there had been a Broadway musical and at least three silent movies based on the book. But none of them captured hearts and minds like the story told on film in 1939.
Truth be told, it’s preeminence wasn’t a given, in that year in which Hitler was about to invade Poland, and it took the movie slightly over a decade to make back its $2.7 million (somewhere around $50 million today) budget.
Its real (reel?) resurgence came in 1956, when CBS broadcast it to the nation on network television, and it shortly thereafter became an annual event, at at time when such things were meaningful, because there really weren’t all that many other everyday entertainment alternatives. As a result, it’s now generally believed to be the most viewed film in movie history.
I remember watching it every year, after my own family moved to the United States in 1963. Although it took me some time to understand all the fuss that was made about the magical technological achievement of “Technicolor” in the “Oz” portion of the film, since I didn’t have a color television in my home until 1978. (Late in life, I figured out that that’s why I have so much cognitive dissonance about so many old movies. “Wait, What!” I say about The African Queen and Gone With The Wind, among others. “Who has defiled this movie by colorizing it??” Only to realize, eventually, that I’d only ever seen it in black-and-white because those were the only two shades available in my living room at the time…🤣)
It’s a great movie, and the story of its casting, and filming is epic in its own right, involving many times the number of actors and actresses who–in the end–won or earned the roles. Disturbing stories, typical of the time, of drug and physical abuse of the child actors–particularly Judy Garland–abound, and cast a pall on the otherwise delightful movie experience.
And then there were the Munchkins. Lord only knowns what would be made of them today. (Earlier this morning I was listening to a podcast in which one of the presenters bemoaned something similar to what I’ve called The Death of Imagination, observing that we are now at a point where we are supposed to look at these childhood “fantasy” movies (Disney’s original Snow White was the one in question), pretend that the imaginary characters portrayed therein are actually real, and then get offended on their behalf.)
I think that about nails it.
Lord.
I dread the next and latest politically correct and woke remake of The Wizard of Oz.
You know it’s only a matter of time.
