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Description
Lets begin looking into another series with the Oz Trilogy starting with this classic film beloved by generations.

Dorothy Gale lives with her dog Toto on a Kansas farm belonging to her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Although she leads a good life with her aunt and uncle, along with the hard-working farmhands who all care for her, Dorothy feels trapped and stifled on the farm and wants to escape. Shortly after, shrewish neighbor Miss Almira Gulch arrives at the farm, declaring she had been bitten by Toto. She has obtained an order from the sheriff to euthanize him. In spite of Dorothy's pleas and Aunt Em's resistance, Miss Gulch takes Toto away but he escapes and returns to Dorothy; she decides to run away in order to ensure that Toto won't be put down. She meets Professor Marvel, a 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. In the chaos, she seeks shelter in her bedroom, where the window is blown in from its frame and hits her 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, who transforms into a witch on a broomstick. The house lands in the colourful 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. Enraged, the Wicked Witch swears revenge on Dorothy and vanishes. Glinda tells Dorothy to keep the slippers on and follow the yellow brick road to 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 Man, 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 city and are allowed to see the Wizard, who appears as a ghostly head. He agrees to grant their wishes if they prove their worth by bringing him the Witch's broomstick. Now Dorothy and her friends set out to retrieve the broomstick, and get their wishes fufilled.

Pros:
1. Dorothy is a very well done and developed protagonist.
2. Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Toto are very likeable supporting characters.
3. Great side and minor characters like the Wizard, Glinda, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, Professor Marvel, the Munchkins, the Doorman, the Carriage Driver, and the Guard.
4. The Wicked Witch is an amazing and even scary villain.
5. Stunning sets, costumes, and visuals.
6. Amazing special effects for the time.
7. Very well done and memorable songs like 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', 'The Munchkinland Sequence', 'If I Only Had a Brain/Heart/the Nerve', 'We're Off to See the Wizard', 'The Merry Old Land of Oz', and 'If I Were King of the Forest'. Accompanied by an amazing score by Harold Arlen.
8. Great performances from the cast.
9. A very good blend of adventure, comedy, drama, fantasy, and a bit of horror.
10. The story is amazingly written. It may not be 100% true to the book, but it captures the spirit of the book very well.
11. Although this isn't the first movie to use color, the seamless transition from the sepia world of Kansas to the colorful world of Oz is breathtaking.

Cons:
1. Glinda never tells Dorothy that the ruby slippers are her trick to going home until the end despite giving them to her. In the book, it wasn't Glinda (the Witch of the South in the book) who gave Dorothy the slippers, but her sister the Good Witch of the North. However, because the movie fused Glinda and the Good Witch of the North into one character, it just comes off as Glinda just putting Dorothy in danger.

Overall:
This film is thankfully still just as stunning and charming as it was when i first saw it when i was very young, and most likely when it was first released. This is an amazing fantasy/musical film, and is worthy of my Seal of Approval. I'd say go see it, but chances are, you already have.

Rating:
10/10 (Perfect)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Production on the film began when Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs showed that films adapted from popular children's stories and fairytale folklore could still be successful. 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.
2. The script went through several writers and revisions before the final shooting. Mervyn LeRoy's assistant, William H. Cannon, had submitted a brief four-page outline. 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. His vision was similar to Larry Semon's 1925 film adaptation of the story in which the magical elements are absent.
3. 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. 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.
4. They completed the final draft of the script on October 8, 1938, following numerous rewrites. 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.
5. 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. The plan was later dropped.
6. 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."
7. 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.
Several actresses were reportedly considered for the part of Dorothy, including Shirley Temple, at the time, the most prominent child star; Deanna Durbin, a relative newcomer, with a recognised operatic voice; and Judy Garland, the most experienced of the three. Officially, the decision to cast Garland was attributed to contractual issues.
8. Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Man and Buddy Ebsen was to play the Scarecrow. Bolger, however, longed to play the Scarecrow, as his childhood idol Fred Stone had done on stage in 1902; with that very performance, Stone had inspired him to become a vaudevillian in the first place. Now unhappy with his role as the Tin Man (reportedly claiming, "I'm not a tin performer; I'm fluid"), Bolger convinced producer Mervyn LeRoy to recast him in the part he so desired. Ebsen did not object; after going over the basics of the Scarecrow's distinctive gait with Bolger (as a professional dancer, Ebsen had been cast because the studio was confident he would be up to the task of replicating the famous "wobbly-walk" of Stone's Scarecrow), he recorded all of his songs, went through all the rehearsals as the Tin Man and began filming with the rest of the cast.
9. Bert Lahr was signed for the Cowardly Lion on July 25, 1938; the next month, Charles Grapewin was cast as Uncle Henry on August 12.
10. W. C. Fields was originally chosen for the title role of the Wizard, a role turned down by Ed Wynn as he thought the part was too small, but the studio ran out of patience after protracted haggling over Fields' fee. Wallace Beery lobbied for the role, but the studio refused to spare him during the long shooting schedule. Instead, another contract player, Frank Morgan, was cast on September 22.
11. An extensive talent search produced over a hundred little people to play Munchkins; this meant that most of the film's Oz sequences would have to already be shot before work on the Munchkinland sequence could begin. According to Munchkin actor Jerry Maren, the little people were each paid over $125 a week (equivalent to $2,300 today). Meinhardt Raabe, who played the coroner, revealed in the 1990 documentary The Making of the Wizard of Oz that the MGM costume and wardrobe department, under the direction of designer Adrian, had to design over 100 costumes for the Munchkin sequences. They then had to photograph and catalog each Munchkin in his or her costume so that they could correctly apply the same costume and makeup each day of production.
12. Gale Sondergaard was originally cast as the Wicked Witch. She became unhappy when the witch's persona shifted from sly and glamorous (thought to emulate the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) into the familiar "ugly hag". She turned down the role and was replaced on October 10, 1938, just three days before filming started, by MGM contract player Margaret Hamilton. Sondergaard said in an interview for a bonus feature on the DVD that she had no regrets about turning down the part, and would go on to play a glamorous villainess in Fox's version of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird in 1940; Margaret Hamilton played a role remarkably similar to the Wicked Witch in the Judy Garland film Babes in Arms.
13. According to Aljean Harmetz, the "gone-to-seed" coat worn by Morgan as the wizard was selected from a rack of coats purchased from a second-hand shop. According to legend, Morgan later discovered a label in the coat indicating it had once belonged to Baum, that Baum's widow confirmed this, and that the coat was eventually presented to her. But Baum biographer Michael Patrick Hearn says the Baum family denies ever seeing the coat or knowing of the story; Hamilton considered it to be a rumor concocted by the studio.
14. Filming for The Wizard of Oz started on October 13, 1938 on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio lot in Culver City, California, with Richard Thorpe as director, replacing the original director, Norman Taurog, who filmed a few early Technicolor tests and was then reassigned. Thorpe initially shot about two weeks of footage, nine days in total, involving Dorothy's first encounter with the Scarecrow, as well as a number of sequences in the Wicked Witch's castle, such as Dorothy's rescue, which, though unreleased, includes the only footage of Buddy Ebsen's Tin Man.
15. The production faced the challenge of simulating the Tin Man's costume. Several tests were done to find the right makeup and clothes for Ebsen. Ten days into the shoot, Ebsen suffered a reaction to the aluminum powder makeup he wore, though he did recall taking a breath one night without suffering any immediate effect. He was hospitalized in critical condition and subsequently was forced to leave the project; in a later interview (included on the 2005 DVD release of The Wizard of Oz), he recalled the studio heads appreciated the seriousness of his illness only after seeing him in the hospital. Filming halted while a replacement for him was found.
16. No full footage of Ebsen as the Tin Man has ever been released – only photographs taken during filming and makeup test photos. His replacement, Jack Haley, simply assumed he had been fired. The makeup used for Haley was quietly changed to an aluminum paste, with a layer of clown white greasepaint underneath to protect his skin; although it did not have the same dire effect on Haley, he did at one point suffer an eye infection from it. To keep down on production costs, Haley only re-recorded "If I Only Had a Heart" and solo lines during "If I Only Had the Nerve" and the scrapped song "The Jitterbug"; as such, Ebsen's voice can still be heard in the remaining songs featuring the Tin Man in group vocals.
17. LeRoy, after reviewing the footage and feeling Thorpe was rushing the production, adversely affecting the actors' performances, had Thorpe replaced. During reorganization on the production, George Cukor temporarily took over under LeRoy's guidance. Initially, the studio had made Garland wear a blond wig and heavy "baby-doll" makeup, and she played Dorothy in an exaggerated fashion; now, Cukor changed Garland's and Hamilton's makeup and costumes, and told Garland to "be herself". This meant that all the scenes Garland and Hamilton had already completed had to be discarded and reshot. Cukor also suggested that the studio cast Jack Haley, on loan from Fox, as the Tin Man.
18. Cukor did not actually shoot any scenes for the film, merely acting as something of a "creative advisor" to the troubled production and because of his prior commitment to direct Gone with the Wind, he left on November 3, 1938 when Victor Fleming assumed directorial responsibility. As director, Fleming chose not to shift the film from Cukor's creative realignment, as producer LeRoy had already pronounced his satisfaction with the new course the film was taking.
19. Production on the bulk of the Technicolor sequences was a long and exhausting process that ran for over six months, from October 1938 to March 1939. Most of the cast worked six days a week and had to arrive as early as 4 a.m. to be fitted with makeup and costumes, and often did not leave until 7 pm or later. Cumbersome makeup and costumes were made even more uncomfortable by the daylight-bright lighting the early Technicolor process required, which could heat the set to over 100 °F. Bolger later said that the frightening nature of the costumes prevented most of the Oz principals from eating in the studio commissary; the toxicity of Hamilton's copper-based makeup forced her to eat a liquid diet on shoot days. It took as many as twelve takes to have Toto run alongside the actors as they skipped down the yellow brick road.
20. All the Oz sequences were filmed in three-strip Technicolor. The opening and closing credits, as well as the Kansas sequences, were filmed in black and white and colored in a sepia-tone process. Sepia-toned film was also used in the scene where Aunt Em appears in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball.
21. In Hamilton's exit from Munchkinland, a concealed elevator was arranged to lower her below stage level as fire and smoke erupted to dramatize and conceal her exit. The first take ran well, but in the second take, the burst of fire came too soon. The flames set fire to her green, copper-based face paint, causing third-degree burns on her hands and face. She spent three months healing before returning to work.
22. On February 12, 1939, Fleming hastily replaced Cukor in directing Gone with the Wind. The next day, the studio assigned Fleming's friend, King Vidor, as director, in order to finish the filming of The Wizard of Oz (mainly the early sepia-toned Kansas sequences, including Garland's singing of "Over the Rainbow" and the tornado). Although the film was a hit in 1939, Vidor chose not to take public credit for his contribution until his friend died in 1949.
23. Arnold Gillespie was the special effects director for the film. Gillespie worked with the production using several visual effects techniques for the movie. Developing the tornado scene was especially costly. Gillespie used muslin cloth to make the tornado flexible after a previous attempt with rubber failed. He hung the 35 feet of muslin from a steel gantry and connected the bottom to a rod. By moving the gantry and rod, he was able to create the illusion of a tornado moving across the stage. Fuller's earth was sprayed from both the top and bottom using compressed air hoses to complete the effect. Dorothy's house was recreated by using a model.
24. The Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow masks were made of foam latex makeup created by makeup artist Jack Dawn, who was one of the first makeup artists to use this technique. Bolger was left with permanent lines around his mouth and chin from his mask. It took an hour each day to slowly peel the glued-on mask from his face. Hamilton received severe burns on her hands and face when there was an accident with the fire while filming her exit from Munchkinland. At the time, she was wearing her green makeup, which was usually removed with acetone due to its toxic copper content. Because of Hamilton's burns, makeup artist Jack Young removed the makeup with alcohol, to prevent infection. The Tin Man's costume was made of leather-covered buckram, and the oil used to grease his joints was made from chocolate syrup. The Cowardly Lion's costume was made from real lion skin and fur. For the "horse of a different color" scene, Jell-O powder was used to color the white horses. Asbestos was used to achieve some of the special effects, like the witch's burning broomstick and the fake snow that covers Dorothy as she sleeps in the field of poppies.
25. The songs were recorded in the studio's scoring stage before filming. Several of the recordings were completed while Ebsen was still with the cast. Therefore, although he had to be dropped from the cast because of a dangerous reaction to the aluminum powder makeup, his singing voice remained on the soundtrack (as mentioned in the notes for the CD Deluxe Edition). His voice can be heard in the group vocals of "We're Off to See the Wizard". Haley spoke with a distinct Boston accent and did not pronounce the "r" in "wizard." Ebsen was a Midwesterner, like Garland, and pronounced it clearly.
26. Bolger's original recording of "If I Only Had a Brain" was far more sedate than the version heard in the film. During filming, Cukor and LeRoy decided that a more energetic rendition would better suit Dorothy's initial meeting with the Scarecrow, and the song was rerecorded. The original version was thought to be lost until a copy was discovered in 2009.
27. Some musical pieces were filmed and deleted later, in the editing process. The song "The Jitterbug", written in a swing style, was intended for the sequence in which the group is journeying to the Witch's castle. Due to time constraints, the song was cut from the final theatrical version. The film footage for the song has been lost, although silent home film footage of rehearsals for the number has survived. The sound recording for the song, however, is intact and was included in the two-CD Rhino Records deluxe edition of the film soundtrack, as well as on the VHS and DVD editions of the film. A reference to "The Jitterbug" remains in the film: the Witch remarks to her flying monkeys that they should have no trouble apprehending Dorothy and her friends because "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them." Another musical number cut before release came right after the Wicked Witch of the West was melted and before Dorothy and her friends returned to the Wizard. This was a reprise of "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" (blended with "We're Off to See the Wizard" and "The Merry Old Land of Oz") with the lyrics altered to "Hail! Hail! The witch is dead!" This started with the Witch's guard saying "Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!" and dissolved to a huge celebration by the citizens of the Emerald City, who sing the song as they accompany Dorothy and her friends to see the Wizard. Today, the film of this scene is also lost, and only a few stills survive, along with a few seconds of footage used on several reissue trailers. The entire audio track still exists and is included on the two-CD Rhino Record deluxe edition of the film soundtrack. In addition, Garland was to sing a brief reprise of "Over the Rainbow" while Dorothy is trapped in the Witch's castle, but it was cut because it was considered too emotionally intense. The original soundtrack recording still exists, however, and was included as an extra in all home media releases from 1993 onwards.
28. Principal photography concluded with the Kansas sequences on March 16, 1939. Reshoots and pick-up shots were filmed throughout April and May and into June, under the direction of producer LeRoy. After the deletion of the "Over the Rainbow" reprise after subsequent test screenings in early June, Garland had to be brought back one more time to reshoot the "Auntie Em, I'm frightened!" scene without the song. The footage of Blandick's Aunt Em, as shot by Vidor, had already been set aside for rear-projection work, and was simply reused.
29. After Hamilton's torturous experience with the Munchkinland elevator, she refused to do the pick-ups for the scene in which she flies on a broomstick that billows smoke, so LeRoy had stunt double Betty Danko perform instead. Danko was severely injured due to a malfunction in the smoke mechanism.
30. At this point, the film began a long, arduous post-production. Herbert Stothart had to compose the film's background score, while A. Arnold Gillespie had to perfect the various special effects that the film required, including many of the rear projection shots. The MGM art department also had to create various matte paintings for the backgrounds of many of the scenes.
31. One significant innovation planned for the film was the use of stencil printing for the transition to Technicolor. Each frame was to be hand-tinted to maintain the sepia tone. However, this was abandoned because it was too expensive and labor-intensive, and MGM used a simpler and less-expensive variation on the process. During the reshoots in May, the inside of the farm house was painted sepia, and when Dorothy opens the door, it is not Garland, but her stand-in, Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia gingham dress, who then backs out of frame. Once the camera moves through the door, Garland steps back into frame in her bright blue gingham dress (as noted in DVD extras), and the sepia-painted door briefly tints her with the same color before she emerges from the house's shadow, into the bright glare of the Technicolor lighting. This also meant that the reshoots provided the first proper shot of Munchkinland. If one looks carefully, the brief cut to Dorothy looking around outside the house bisects a single long shot, from the inside of the doorway to the pan-around that finally ends in a reverse-angle as the ruins of the house are seen behind Dorothy and she comes to a stop at the foot of the small bridge.
32. Test screenings of the film began on June 5, 1939. Oz initially ran nearly two hours long. In 1939, the average movie ran for about 90 minutes. LeRoy and Fleming knew they needed to cut at least 15 minutes to get the film down to a manageable running time. Three sneak previews in Santa Barbara, Pomona and San Luis Obispo, California, guided LeRoy and Fleming in the cutting. Among the many cuts were "The Jitterbug" number, the Scarecrow's elaborate dance sequence following "If I Only Had a Brain", reprises of "Over the Rainbow" and "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead", and a number of smaller dialogue sequences. This left the final, mostly serious portion of the film with no songs, only the dramatic underscoring.
33. "Over the Rainbow" was almost deleted. MGM felt that it made the Kansas sequence too long, as well as being far over the heads of the target audience of children. The studio also thought that it was degrading for Garland to sing in a barnyard. LeRoy, uncredited associate producer Arthur Freed and director Fleming fought to keep it in, and they eventually won. The song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Song of the Year and came to be identified so strongly with Garland herself that she made it her signature song.
34. After the preview in San Luis Obispo in early July, the film was officially released in August 1939 at its current 101-minute running time.
35. The film was rereleased in theaters multiple times. The first was in 1949 for it's 10th anniversary. Although this re-issue used sepia tone, as in the original release, beginning with the 1955 re-issue, and continuing until the film's 50th anniversary VHS release in 1989, the opening Kansas sequences were shown in black and white instead of the sepia tone as originally printed. (This includes television showings.) The MGM "Children's Matinees" series re-released the film twice, in both 1970 and 1971. It was for this release that the film received a G rating from the MPAA. For the film's 60th anniversary, Warner Bros. released a "Special Edition" on November 6, 1998, digitally restored with remastered audio. In 2002, the film had a very limited re-release in U.S. theaters. On September 23, 2009, the film was re-released in select theaters for a one-night-only event in honor of its 70th anniversary and as a promotion for various new disc releases later in the month. An encore of this event took place in theaters on November 17, 2009. An IMAX 3D theatrical re-release played at 300 theaters in North America for one week only beginning September 20, 2013, as part of the film's 75th anniversary. In 2013, in preparation for its IMAX 3D release, the film was submitted to the MPAA for re-classification. According to MPAA rules, a film that has been altered in any way from its original version must be submitted for re-classification, and the 3-D conversion fell within that guideline. Surprisingly, the 3D version received a PG rating for "Some scary moments", although no change was made to the film's original story content. The 2D version still retains its G rating. The film was re-released on January 11 and 14, 2015, as part of the "TCM Presents" series by Turner Classic Movies. The film was re-released by Fathom Events on January 27, 29, 30, 2019 and February 3 and 5, 2019 as part of its 80th anniversary. It also had a one-week theatrical engagement in Dolby Cinema on October 25, 2019 to commemorate the anniversary.
36. Because of their iconic stature, the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the film are now among the most treasured and valuable film memorabilia in movie history. Dorothy actually wore Silver Shoes in the book series, but the color was changed to ruby to take advantage of the new Technicolor process. Adrian, MGM's chief costume designer, was responsible for the final design. There are five known pairs of the ruby slippers in existence.

Description
Lets begin looking into another series with the Oz Trilogy starting with this classic film beloved by generations.

Dorothy Gale lives with her dog Toto on a Kansas farm belonging to her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Although she leads a good life with her aunt and uncle, along with the hard-working farmhands who all care for her, Dorothy feels trapped and stifled on the farm and wants to escape. Shortly after, shrewish neighbor Miss Almira Gulch arrives at the farm, declaring she had been bitten by Toto. She has obtained an order from the sheriff to euthanize him. In spite of Dorothy's pleas and Aunt Em's resistance, Miss Gulch takes Toto away but he escapes and returns to Dorothy; she decides to run away in order to ensure that Toto won't be put down. She meets Professor Marvel, a 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. In the chaos, she seeks shelter in her bedroom, where the window is blown in from its frame and hits her 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, who transforms into a witch on a broomstick. The house lands in the colourful 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. Enraged, the Wicked Witch swears revenge on Dorothy and vanishes. Glinda tells Dorothy to keep the slippers on and follow the yellow brick road to 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 Man, 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 city and are allowed to see the Wizard, who appears as a ghostly head. He agrees to grant their wishes if they prove their worth by bringing him the Witch's broomstick. Now Dorothy and her friends set out to retrieve the broomstick, and get their wishes fufilled.

Pros:
1. Dorothy is a very well done and developed protagonist.
2. Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Toto are very likeable supporting characters.
3. Great side and minor characters like the Wizard, Glinda, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, Professor Marvel, the Munchkins, the Doorman, the Carriage Driver, and the Guard.
4. The Wicked Witch is an amazing and even scary villain.
5. Stunning sets, costumes, and visuals.
6. Amazing special effects for the time.
7. Very well done and memorable songs like 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', 'The Munchkinland Sequence', 'If I Only Had a Brain/Heart/the Nerve', 'We're Off to See the Wizard', 'The Merry Old Land of Oz', and 'If I Were King of the Forest'. Accompanied by an amazing score by Harold Arlen.
8. Great performances from the cast.
9. A very good blend of adventure, comedy, drama, fantasy, and a bit of horror.
10. The story is amazingly written. It may not be 100% true to the book, but it captures the spirit of the book very well.
11. Although this isn't the first movie to use color, the seamless transition from the sepia world of Kansas to the colorful world of Oz is breathtaking.

Cons:
1. Glinda never tells Dorothy that the ruby slippers are her trick to going home until the end despite giving them to her. In the book, it wasn't Glinda (the Witch of the South in the book) who gave Dorothy the slippers, but her sister the Good Witch of the North. However, because the movie fused Glinda and the Good Witch of the North into one character, it just comes off as Glinda just putting Dorothy in danger.

Overall:
This film is thankfully still just as stunning and charming as it was when i first saw it when i was very young, and most likely when it was first released. This is an amazing fantasy/musical film, and is worthy of my Seal of Approval. I'd say go see it, but chances are, you already have.

Rating:
10/10 (Perfect)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Production on the film began when Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs showed that films adapted from popular children's stories and fairytale folklore could still be successful. 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.
2. The script went through several writers and revisions before the final shooting. Mervyn LeRoy's assistant, William H. Cannon, had submitted a brief four-page outline. 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. His vision was similar to Larry Semon's 1925 film adaptation of the story in which the magical elements are absent.
3. 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. 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.
4. They completed the final draft of the script on October 8, 1938, following numerous rewrites. 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.
5. 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. The plan was later dropped.
6. 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."
7. 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.
Several actresses were reportedly considered for the part of Dorothy, including Shirley Temple, at the time, the most prominent child star; Deanna Durbin, a relative newcomer, with a recognised operatic voice; and Judy Garland, the most experienced of the three. Officially, the decision to cast Garland was attributed to contractual issues.
8. Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Man and Buddy Ebsen was to play the Scarecrow. Bolger, however, longed to play the Scarecrow, as his childhood idol Fred Stone had done on stage in 1902; with that very performance, Stone had inspired him to become a vaudevillian in the first place. Now unhappy with his role as the Tin Man (reportedly claiming, "I'm not a tin performer; I'm fluid"), Bolger convinced producer Mervyn LeRoy to recast him in the part he so desired. Ebsen did not object; after going over the basics of the Scarecrow's distinctive gait with Bolger (as a professional dancer, Ebsen had been cast because the studio was confident he would be up to the task of replicating the famous "wobbly-walk" of Stone's Scarecrow), he recorded all of his songs, went through all the rehearsals as the Tin Man and began filming with the rest of the cast.
9. Bert Lahr was signed for the Cowardly Lion on July 25, 1938; the next month, Charles Grapewin was cast as Uncle Henry on August 12.
10. W. C. Fields was originally chosen for the title role of the Wizard, a role turned down by Ed Wynn as he thought the part was too small, but the studio ran out of patience after protracted haggling over Fields' fee. Wallace Beery lobbied for the role, but the studio refused to spare him during the long shooting schedule. Instead, another contract player, Frank Morgan, was cast on September 22.
11. An extensive talent search produced over a hundred little people to play Munchkins; this meant that most of the film's Oz sequences would have to already be shot before work on the Munchkinland sequence could begin. According to Munchkin actor Jerry Maren, the little people were each paid over $125 a week (equivalent to $2,300 today). Meinhardt Raabe, who played the coroner, revealed in the 1990 documentary The Making of the Wizard of Oz that the MGM costume and wardrobe department, under the direction of designer Adrian, had to design over 100 costumes for the Munchkin sequences. They then had to photograph and catalog each Munchkin in his or her costume so that they could correctly apply the same costume and makeup each day of production.
12. Gale Sondergaard was originally cast as the Wicked Witch. She became unhappy when the witch's persona shifted from sly and glamorous (thought to emulate the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) into the familiar "ugly hag". She turned down the role and was replaced on October 10, 1938, just three days before filming started, by MGM contract player Margaret Hamilton. Sondergaard said in an interview for a bonus feature on the DVD that she had no regrets about turning down the part, and would go on to play a glamorous villainess in Fox's version of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird in 1940; Margaret Hamilton played a role remarkably similar to the Wicked Witch in the Judy Garland film Babes in Arms.
13. According to Aljean Harmetz, the "gone-to-seed" coat worn by Morgan as the wizard was selected from a rack of coats purchased from a second-hand shop. According to legend, Morgan later discovered a label in the coat indicating it had once belonged to Baum, that Baum's widow confirmed this, and that the coat was eventually presented to her. But Baum biographer Michael Patrick Hearn says the Baum family denies ever seeing the coat or knowing of the story; Hamilton considered it to be a rumor concocted by the studio.
14. Filming for The Wizard of Oz started on October 13, 1938 on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio lot in Culver City, California, with Richard Thorpe as director, replacing the original director, Norman Taurog, who filmed a few early Technicolor tests and was then reassigned. Thorpe initially shot about two weeks of footage, nine days in total, involving Dorothy's first encounter with the Scarecrow, as well as a number of sequences in the Wicked Witch's castle, such as Dorothy's rescue, which, though unreleased, includes the only footage of Buddy Ebsen's Tin Man.
15. The production faced the challenge of simulating the Tin Man's costume. Several tests were done to find the right makeup and clothes for Ebsen. Ten days into the shoot, Ebsen suffered a reaction to the aluminum powder makeup he wore, though he did recall taking a breath one night without suffering any immediate effect. He was hospitalized in critical condition and subsequently was forced to leave the project; in a later interview (included on the 2005 DVD release of The Wizard of Oz), he recalled the studio heads appreciated the seriousness of his illness only after seeing him in the hospital. Filming halted while a replacement for him was found.
16. No full footage of Ebsen as the Tin Man has ever been released – only photographs taken during filming and makeup test photos. His replacement, Jack Haley, simply assumed he had been fired. The makeup used for Haley was quietly changed to an aluminum paste, with a layer of clown white greasepaint underneath to protect his skin; although it did not have the same dire effect on Haley, he did at one point suffer an eye infection from it. To keep down on production costs, Haley only re-recorded "If I Only Had a Heart" and solo lines during "If I Only Had the Nerve" and the scrapped song "The Jitterbug"; as such, Ebsen's voice can still be heard in the remaining songs featuring the Tin Man in group vocals.
17. LeRoy, after reviewing the footage and feeling Thorpe was rushing the production, adversely affecting the actors' performances, had Thorpe replaced. During reorganization on the production, George Cukor temporarily took over under LeRoy's guidance. Initially, the studio had made Garland wear a blond wig and heavy "baby-doll" makeup, and she played Dorothy in an exaggerated fashion; now, Cukor changed Garland's and Hamilton's makeup and costumes, and told Garland to "be herself". This meant that all the scenes Garland and Hamilton had already completed had to be discarded and reshot. Cukor also suggested that the studio cast Jack Haley, on loan from Fox, as the Tin Man.
18. Cukor did not actually shoot any scenes for the film, merely acting as something of a "creative advisor" to the troubled production and because of his prior commitment to direct Gone with the Wind, he left on November 3, 1938 when Victor Fleming assumed directorial responsibility. As director, Fleming chose not to shift the film from Cukor's creative realignment, as producer LeRoy had already pronounced his satisfaction with the new course the film was taking.
19. Production on the bulk of the Technicolor sequences was a long and exhausting process that ran for over six months, from October 1938 to March 1939. Most of the cast worked six days a week and had to arrive as early as 4 a.m. to be fitted with makeup and costumes, and often did not leave until 7 pm or later. Cumbersome makeup and costumes were made even more uncomfortable by the daylight-bright lighting the early Technicolor process required, which could heat the set to over 100 °F. Bolger later said that the frightening nature of the costumes prevented most of the Oz principals from eating in the studio commissary; the toxicity of Hamilton's copper-based makeup forced her to eat a liquid diet on shoot days. It took as many as twelve takes to have Toto run alongside the actors as they skipped down the yellow brick road.
20. All the Oz sequences were filmed in three-strip Technicolor. The opening and closing credits, as well as the Kansas sequences, were filmed in black and white and colored in a sepia-tone process. Sepia-toned film was also used in the scene where Aunt Em appears in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball.
21. In Hamilton's exit from Munchkinland, a concealed elevator was arranged to lower her below stage level as fire and smoke erupted to dramatize and conceal her exit. The first take ran well, but in the second take, the burst of fire came too soon. The flames set fire to her green, copper-based face paint, causing third-degree burns on her hands and face. She spent three months healing before returning to work.
22. On February 12, 1939, Fleming hastily replaced Cukor in directing Gone with the Wind. The next day, the studio assigned Fleming's friend, King Vidor, as director, in order to finish the filming of The Wizard of Oz (mainly the early sepia-toned Kansas sequences, including Garland's singing of "Over the Rainbow" and the tornado). Although the film was a hit in 1939, Vidor chose not to take public credit for his contribution until his friend died in 1949.
23. Arnold Gillespie was the special effects director for the film. Gillespie worked with the production using several visual effects techniques for the movie. Developing the tornado scene was especially costly. Gillespie used muslin cloth to make the tornado flexible after a previous attempt with rubber failed. He hung the 35 feet of muslin from a steel gantry and connected the bottom to a rod. By moving the gantry and rod, he was able to create the illusion of a tornado moving across the stage. Fuller's earth was sprayed from both the top and bottom using compressed air hoses to complete the effect. Dorothy's house was recreated by using a model.
24. The Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow masks were made of foam latex makeup created by makeup artist Jack Dawn, who was one of the first makeup artists to use this technique. Bolger was left with permanent lines around his mouth and chin from his mask. It took an hour each day to slowly peel the glued-on mask from his face. Hamilton received severe burns on her hands and face when there was an accident with the fire while filming her exit from Munchkinland. At the time, she was wearing her green makeup, which was usually removed with acetone due to its toxic copper content. Because of Hamilton's burns, makeup artist Jack Young removed the makeup with alcohol, to prevent infection. The Tin Man's costume was made of leather-covered buckram, and the oil used to grease his joints was made from chocolate syrup. The Cowardly Lion's costume was made from real lion skin and fur. For the "horse of a different color" scene, Jell-O powder was used to color the white horses. Asbestos was used to achieve some of the special effects, like the witch's burning broomstick and the fake snow that covers Dorothy as she sleeps in the field of poppies.
25. The songs were recorded in the studio's scoring stage before filming. Several of the recordings were completed while Ebsen was still with the cast. Therefore, although he had to be dropped from the cast because of a dangerous reaction to the aluminum powder makeup, his singing voice remained on the soundtrack (as mentioned in the notes for the CD Deluxe Edition). His voice can be heard in the group vocals of "We're Off to See the Wizard". Haley spoke with a distinct Boston accent and did not pronounce the "r" in "wizard." Ebsen was a Midwesterner, like Garland, and pronounced it clearly.
26. Bolger's original recording of "If I Only Had a Brain" was far more sedate than the version heard in the film. During filming, Cukor and LeRoy decided that a more energetic rendition would better suit Dorothy's initial meeting with the Scarecrow, and the song was rerecorded. The original version was thought to be lost until a copy was discovered in 2009.
27. Some musical pieces were filmed and deleted later, in the editing process. The song "The Jitterbug", written in a swing style, was intended for the sequence in which the group is journeying to the Witch's castle. Due to time constraints, the song was cut from the final theatrical version. The film footage for the song has been lost, although silent home film footage of rehearsals for the number has survived. The sound recording for the song, however, is intact and was included in the two-CD Rhino Records deluxe edition of the film soundtrack, as well as on the VHS and DVD editions of the film. A reference to "The Jitterbug" remains in the film: the Witch remarks to her flying monkeys that they should have no trouble apprehending Dorothy and her friends because "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them." Another musical number cut before release came right after the Wicked Witch of the West was melted and before Dorothy and her friends returned to the Wizard. This was a reprise of "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" (blended with "We're Off to See the Wizard" and "The Merry Old Land of Oz") with the lyrics altered to "Hail! Hail! The witch is dead!" This started with the Witch's guard saying "Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!" and dissolved to a huge celebration by the citizens of the Emerald City, who sing the song as they accompany Dorothy and her friends to see the Wizard. Today, the film of this scene is also lost, and only a few stills survive, along with a few seconds of footage used on several reissue trailers. The entire audio track still exists and is included on the two-CD Rhino Record deluxe edition of the film soundtrack. In addition, Garland was to sing a brief reprise of "Over the Rainbow" while Dorothy is trapped in the Witch's castle, but it was cut because it was considered too emotionally intense. The original soundtrack recording still exists, however, and was included as an extra in all home media releases from 1993 onwards.
28. Principal photography concluded with the Kansas sequences on March 16, 1939. Reshoots and pick-up shots were filmed throughout April and May and into June, under the direction of producer LeRoy. After the deletion of the "Over the Rainbow" reprise after subsequent test screenings in early June, Garland had to be brought back one more time to reshoot the "Auntie Em, I'm frightened!" scene without the song. The footage of Blandick's Aunt Em, as shot by Vidor, had already been set aside for rear-projection work, and was simply reused.
29. After Hamilton's torturous experience with the Munchkinland elevator, she refused to do the pick-ups for the scene in which she flies on a broomstick that billows smoke, so LeRoy had stunt double Betty Danko perform instead. Danko was severely injured due to a malfunction in the smoke mechanism.
30. At this point, the film began a long, arduous post-production. Herbert Stothart had to compose the film's background score, while A. Arnold Gillespie had to perfect the various special effects that the film required, including many of the rear projection shots. The MGM art department also had to create various matte paintings for the backgrounds of many of the scenes.
31. One significant innovation planned for the film was the use of stencil printing for the transition to Technicolor. Each frame was to be hand-tinted to maintain the sepia tone. However, this was abandoned because it was too expensive and labor-intensive, and MGM used a simpler and less-expensive variation on the process. During the reshoots in May, the inside of the farm house was painted sepia, and when Dorothy opens the door, it is not Garland, but her stand-in, Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia gingham dress, who then backs out of frame. Once the camera moves through the door, Garland steps back into frame in her bright blue gingham dress (as noted in DVD extras), and the sepia-painted door briefly tints her with the same color before she emerges from the house's shadow, into the bright glare of the Technicolor lighting. This also meant that the reshoots provided the first proper shot of Munchkinland. If one looks carefully, the brief cut to Dorothy looking around outside the house bisects a single long shot, from the inside of the doorway to the pan-around that finally ends in a reverse-angle as the ruins of the house are seen behind Dorothy and she comes to a stop at the foot of the small bridge.
32. Test screenings of the film began on June 5, 1939. Oz initially ran nearly two hours long. In 1939, the average movie ran for about 90 minutes. LeRoy and Fleming knew they needed to cut at least 15 minutes to get the film down to a manageable running time. Three sneak previews in Santa Barbara, Pomona and San Luis Obispo, California, guided LeRoy and Fleming in the cutting. Among the many cuts were "The Jitterbug" number, the Scarecrow's elaborate dance sequence following "If I Only Had a Brain", reprises of "Over the Rainbow" and "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead", and a number of smaller dialogue sequences. This left the final, mostly serious portion of the film with no songs, only the dramatic underscoring.
33. "Over the Rainbow" was almost deleted. MGM felt that it made the Kansas sequence too long, as well as being far over the heads of the target audience of children. The studio also thought that it was degrading for Garland to sing in a barnyard. LeRoy, uncredited associate producer Arthur Freed and director Fleming fought to keep it in, and they eventually won. The song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Song of the Year and came to be identified so strongly with Garland herself that she made it her signature song.
34. After the preview in San Luis Obispo in early July, the film was officially released in August 1939 at its current 101-minute running time.
35. The film was rereleased in theaters multiple times. The first was in 1949 for it's 10th anniversary. Although this re-issue used sepia tone, as in the original release, beginning with the 1955 re-issue, and continuing until the film's 50th anniversary VHS release in 1989, the opening Kansas sequences were shown in black and white instead of the sepia tone as originally printed. (This includes television showings.) The MGM "Children's Matinees" series re-released the film twice, in both 1970 and 1971. It was for this release that the film received a G rating from the MPAA. For the film's 60th anniversary, Warner Bros. released a "Special Edition" on November 6, 1998, digitally restored with remastered audio. In 2002, the film had a very limited re-release in U.S. theaters. On September 23, 2009, the film was re-released in select theaters for a one-night-only event in honor of its 70th anniversary and as a promotion for various new disc releases later in the month. An encore of this event took place in theaters on November 17, 2009. An IMAX 3D theatrical re-release played at 300 theaters in North America for one week only beginning September 20, 2013, as part of the film's 75th anniversary. In 2013, in preparation for its IMAX 3D release, the film was submitted to the MPAA for re-classification. According to MPAA rules, a film that has been altered in any way from its original version must be submitted for re-classification, and the 3-D conversion fell within that guideline. Surprisingly, the 3D version received a PG rating for "Some scary moments", although no change was made to the film's original story content. The 2D version still retains its G rating. The film was re-released on January 11 and 14, 2015, as part of the "TCM Presents" series by Turner Classic Movies. The film was re-released by Fathom Events on January 27, 29, 30, 2019 and February 3 and 5, 2019 as part of its 80th anniversary. It also had a one-week theatrical engagement in Dolby Cinema on October 25, 2019 to commemorate the anniversary.
36. Because of their iconic stature, the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the film are now among the most treasured and valuable film memorabilia in movie history. Dorothy actually wore Silver Shoes in the book series, but the color was changed to ruby to take advantage of the new Technicolor process. Adrian, MGM's chief costume designer, was responsible for the final design. There are five known pairs of the ruby slippers in existence.