As The Wizard of Oz began playing in theatres across the country from late August into September 1939, the reviews poured in. Most were sensational accolades for the sets, trick photography, songs, and cast. On September 1, movie editor David B. Kaufman declared The Wizard of Oz “one of the ten best pictures of 1939, if not the best thus far produced this year.” When Kaufman asked Garland if the film was any good in her opinion, she chimed in, “I’ll say it’s good, the best picture I’ve ever been in.” Highest critic marks singled out both Garland’s and Bert Lahr’s performances. Of the former, Louella O. Parsons wrote, “Judy Garland is a surprisingly well-liked young lady. Her Wizard of Oz turned the trick and puts her in line for the Academy Award® ”; while the journalist Dorothy Kingsley advocated, “Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz should get some kind of a special Academy Award®.” The Associated Press listed Lahr’s farcical turn among the “Ten Best ‘Scene-Stealers’ in 1939 Movies” alongside Hattie McDaniel’s Gone with the Wind Mammy and “The Bells” of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The Wizard of Oz is among the parade of the season’s new pictures advertised on a walkway en route to the 1939 World’s Fair (the famed Trylon and Perisphere are visible in the distance). The Wizard of Oz alumni who attended the Fair were Jack Haley, seen with son Jack, Jr. (above), and Frank Morgan.
A good number of seasoned critics recalled the turn-of-the-century stage musical in their reviews. Famed Broadway columnist Walter Winchell summed up The Wizard of Oz as “[the] old Montgomery and Stone forget-me-not, brightened up with color and nifties and looking very audience-catching.” Some of the more charming reviews came verbatim from children. One little Zanesville, Ohio, boy became exasperated with Judy Garland after seeing the film a second time: “[T]hat girl said she’d never run away from home again, but darned if she didn’t do it!” Even Pathfinder magazine declared: “Children especially will love this film, and grown-ups will find it an eye-filling escape from politics and war scares.”
On a rare break from performing at the Capitol Theatre, Mickey and Judy share a photo op with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia at the Fair.
Among movie house owners, operators, and managers, The Wizard of Oz ranked tops in record-breaking box office. One enthusiastic rave affirmed, “A perfect picture in every way and one of the world’s masterpieces in picture making and one of the leading pictures of the year . . . good for a return date any old time.” Further business feedback in the theatre industry reported that publicity tie-ups for the film included gimmicks, stunts, and contests, all of which were boosted by a touring van sent by M-G-M to pivotal cities across the country, featuring the miniature black Shetland ponies—conveniently named “Wizard” and “Oz”—that steered the picture’s Munchkinland coach. Accompanied by animal trainer Captain Volney Phifer, owner of M-G-M’s Leo the Lion, the ponies could reportedly walk a wire, sleep in bed, and count by pawing with their hooves. The tour began in New York on August 25, 1939, with the Capitol Theatre opening, and continued through early October. Child-size versions of the movie costumes were outfitted for those lucky children chosen to don them for the local press. Well acquainted in the ways of showmanship, L. Frank Baum would have beamed.
The elaborate marquee for Columbia, South Carolina’s, Palmetto Theatre in 1939.
SINCE ITS 1939 DEBUT, IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE FILM HAS BEEN ENJOYED BY MORE THAN A BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE.
By year’s close, Parents’ Magazine named Mervyn LeRoy winner of their annual award for best picture produced for family audiences. The Wizard of Oz made 1939’s top ten lists for Film Daily and Showmen’s Trade Review—for which it placed among the top twenty-five money-makers of 1939—and was voted a Boxoffice magazine Blue Ribbon Award winner by the National Screen Council for September 1939. Photoplay magazine included the film on its list of “Outstanding Pictures of 1939” Gold Medal Award nominees. The Wizard of Oz was also appointed another distinction by the university humor publication Harvard Lampoon, in its spoof recap of movie “worsts” for 1939: “most colossal flop of the year”—a claim refuted by Hollywood columnist Jimmie Fidler, who countered by accurately citing the film’s above-average box office. The truth was somewhere in between: The Wizard of Oz was a box-office success, but, on paper, it failed to break even due to its exorbitant production fees.
Today, The Wizard of Oz has been universally embraced as one of the greatest and most enduring films of all time. Since its 1939 debut, it is estimated that the film has been enjoyed by more than a billion people worldwide. In 1978, The Wizard of Oz was named one of the ten best American films ever made by the thirty-five thousand members of the American Film Institute. On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 1989, The Wizard of Oz was recognized as one of the twenty-five most important American films by the Library of Congress. In 1998, it ranked sixth out of the one hundred best American films in an American Film Institute poll. Most recently, in a 2011 ABC-News and People magazine survey that tabulated five hundred thousand Internet votes, The Wizard of Oz was rated No. 2 for the category Best Film of All Time. It was also ranked No. 3 in another category, for Best Movie Musical of All Time.
New for the 1939 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was a balloon of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, who towered seventy feet in the air.
The Wizard of Oz motor van toured select cities, accompanied by animal trainer Volney Phifer (wearing the cap).
So-called “Color Glos” photographs were standard black-and-white production stills hand tinted (with varying degrees of accuracy) and distributed as poor-man’s lobby cards by the newly established National Screen Service. Note the inaccuracy of the Scarecrow’s red ensemble, the nondescript hue of Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, and the Tin Man’s golden sheen. The scene of the parade through the Emerald City after the Wicked Witch of the West has been defeated (which was trimmed from the final film) shows Judy Garland appropriately attired for the celebration, in lime green (above, middle).
With The Wizard of Oz debuting at the start of a new school year, the juvenile set was targeted through various primary- and secondary-education journals. M-G-M’s publicity department could have put it no more succinctly than My Weekly Reader, which instructed, “See the movie!” For motion picture appreciation classes, there was Photoplay Studies and a series of twenty-seven hand-tinted glass slides (shown here) for projecting key scenes and players, produced by the Visual Division of the Buffalo, New York, Board of Education.
THE TWELFTH ACADEMY AWARDS®
“I OWE YOU EVERYTHING, MR. LEROY.”
–MESSAGE PASSED FROM JUDY GARLAND TO MERVYN LEROY UPON RECEIVING THE 1939 ACADEMY AWARD® FOR OUTSTANDING JUVENILE PERFORMANCE
ON FEBRUARY 29, 1940, The Wizard of Oz was one of ten films competing for Best Picture of 1939 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among them David O. Selznick’s Gone with the Wind, which garnered nearly every major award at that evening’s ceremony. It is often said that The Wizard of Oz lost the Best Picture Oscar® to Gone with the Wind. While this is technically true (eight other nominees also conceded to the Civil War saga), for its era The Wizard of Oz was not a serious contender for Best Picture. If Gone with the Wind had not won, the honor would most likely have gone to either Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in Film Daily’s annual poll of 542 film critics (Gone with the Wind was released after the poll’s October 31, 1939, cutoff). Instead, The Wizard of Oz was a showcase for M-G-M’s resources, opulence, and capability—the studio’s way of asserting its position in the film industry. It was assumed that the film was to be a “prestige” picture.
Perhaps one oversight was the failure to award The Wizard of Oz for its technical achievements, an aspect already singled out by critics and review editors. Journalist Wood Soanes wrote that “the technical side of it alone” would ensure recognition by the Academy. Nineteen thirty-nine was the first year the Academy instituted a special-effects category, and The Wizard of Oz was edged out by the r
ealistically simulated earthquake and flood of The Rains Came. A Best Makeup award was only created in 1981, but in 1940 Louella O. Parsons was one of the first to plead for just such a prize. On the eve of the 1939 awards ceremony, she included Jack Dawn’s work on The Wizard of Oz when she attested, “Why not give our Hollywood makeup men an Academy Award® ? Every other branch in the industry is honored at the annual dinner save these men, who do so much to make it possible for actors to look their part.”
“Over the Rainbow” was honored as Best Song from a motion picture at the 1939 Academy Awards® ceremony, following its stint as a chart-topping hit parade single. Judy Garland herself was partial to it, as quoted in January 1940: “My favorite popular song, the prettiest and most beautiful in the world, is ‘Over the Rainbow.’ I think it’s a relief from some of the other numbers you hear.” By 1941, orchestra leader David Rose (newly wed to Judy the same year) included “Over the Rainbow” in his film-favorites compilation of Best Song winners for Victor Records.
Wearing a lavender gown and matching orchid, Judy Garland was presented with a gold-plated miniature Oscar® for best juvenile performer at the 1939 Academy Awards® ceremony (Mickey Rooney did the honors). Louella Parsons paid Judy a backhanded compliment when she said, “[I]n a long sweeping skirt, [Judy] looked like she borrowed her mama’s dress.” In his “Behind the Scenes in Hollywood” feature, Harrison Carroll reported, “After Judy Garland received the special award for her performance in The Wizard of Oz, she scribbled a note on a napkin and sent it to Mervyn [LeRoy]. ‘I owe you everything, Mr. LeRoy,’ she wrote.”
Also at the Awards program, Garland was bestowed with an honorary Oscar® in recognition of her outstanding work as a screen juvenile. Neither a film nor a film role was specified (Garland also had a hit in Babes in Arms that year), but it was generally conceded that the achievement was for The Wizard of Oz. For the film’s 1949 rerelease, Garland’s Oscar® was promoted as exclusive to The Wizard of Oz in the theatrical trailer, which noted, “Starring Judy Garland . . . in her special Academy Award® role.”
While The Wizard of Oz may not have won for Best Picture, it has since made virtually every “Top Ten” or “Best Film” list in recent times—proof positive of its everlasting appeal.
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
THE WIZARD GOES GLOBAL
A set of eight full-color lobby cards (one of which is shown here) introduced Judy Garland and Frank Morgan in El Mago de Oz in Mexico, autumn 1939.
In autumn 1939, Montreal’s Loew’s Theatre enticed moviegoers to take in the “picture to make the world forget its troubles,” alluding to the onset of World War II. The Wizard of Oz also played to Canadians at the Capitol in Winnipeg, where it was held over a second week.
MEXICO AND CANADA
SHORTLY AFTER ITS August 1939 release in the United States, The Wizard of Oz began playing in Mexico and Canada. On September 16, a special screening was held in Manitoba at the Winnipeg Capitol Theatre to benefit orphans. The event was a cooperative between the Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg Electric Company, endorsed by a telegram direct from Judy Garland: “Would deeply appreciate it if the Free Press and the Winnipeg Electric Company would act as hosts on my behalf to the children of Winnipeg orphanages at the special advance showing of The Wizard of Oz . . . Please extend my sincere best wishes to all.” A pictorial feature two days later showed the packed house filled with spellbound youngsters.
As The Wizard of Oz continued its Canadian bookings into winter, a $10,000 skating revue, “Cracked Ice Follies of 1940,” was mounted at Alberta’s Lethbridge Arena on February 28, drawing 2,500 spectators. The spectacle’s pièce de résistance was a reenactment of The Wizard of Oz with elements from the film version, including the cyclone, during which the Wicked Witch appeared on a bike and a brood of Winged Monkeys scurried across the sky in half light. The forty-member troupe performed on pastel-colored ice against a raised platform of the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald Castle.
SOUTH AMERICA
THE WIZARD OF OZ debuted in South America at the regal movie palace Gran Cine Ideal in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 15, 1939. Two days later, it premiered at the Cine Metro in Montevideo, Uruguay. Movie critic W.J. compared the film to the 1935 film version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, except that “The Wizard of Oz is more of a childhood dream with satire in between.” W.J.’s sole criticism missed the purpose of the picture’s dramatic conflict; the reviewer was mildly dismayed that all the merriment was marred by the Witch’s death, which introduced dissonance to the harmonious whole.
In São Paulo, Brazil, a radio serialization of the screenplay for O Magico de Oz was broadcast in December 1939, complemented by a hardcover novelization illustrated with stills—the earliest such publication based on the movie story and not the Baum novel. The book’s interpreter presumed to suggest that it should be retitled in the opening chapter: “I’ll tell you the story of The Wizard of Oz, which, more reasonably, should be called The Story of Dorothy and Her Little Dog Toto, because they are the principal characters of this book.”
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRALIA ADVERTISED THE Wizard of Oz in November 1939 as a seasonal treat for the upcoming holidays. A suite of song sheets for the film’s tunes was published, and a series of cloth dolls depicting Dorothy and Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion was introduced for Christmas. The picture was still making the rounds in 1941, by which time “We’re Off to See the Wizard” was advertised as the morale-boosting World War II battle march of the Australian Imperial Force. The battlefield tale, which made US national news courtesy of DeWitt MacKenzie, an Associated Press foreign affairs writer, was that the Aussie troops chanted The Wizard of Oz marching song during the Battle of Bardia, Libya, that January—the first such WWII military pursuit for which the Imperial Force participated as an ally. One columnist, lauding the Australians, cracked that they sang the tune without consulting ASCAP, the performance-rights organization.
Winston Churchill was so taken by the Australians’ spirit of resolve that he mentioned the troops’ singing of “We’re Off to See the Wizard” in his 1949 WWII history Their Finest Hour, noting, “This tune always reminds me of these buoyant days.” In all likelihood, the incident inspired a scene in the British WWII film saga The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), in which a soldier warbles a quick chorus of the song.
A theatre leaflet for O Magico de Oz from Rio de Janeiro.
A magazine ad from Argentina captures the spectacle of El Mago de Oz.
A multicolor program heralds “M-G-M’s Technicolor Show of Shows” and was distributed from 1939 through 1941 to pique the interest of Australian audiences.
In April 1940, The Wizard of Oz was advertised in Sweden with an elongated poster (called a stolpe).
The Danish photoplay softcover edition of the L. Frank Baum book.
SWEDEN
THE WIZARD OF OZ had its European premiere at the Rigoletto Cinema in Stockholm, Sweden, in time for Christmas 1939, and broke in outlying towns, including Malmö, Ängelholm, Kristianstad, Karlstad, Söderhamn, and Nybro shortly thereafter. “Vad ar Oz?” was the ambiguous tagline translated from the US campaign (“What Is Oz?”), intended to pique moviegoers’ curiosity for Trollkarlen från Oz. The Rigoletto theatre artists created elaborate lobby attractions, and local merchants and shopkeepers aided the campaign with storefront displays and promotions—all of which was carefully documented in Metro Nytt (“Metro News”), the Swedish in-house journal for M-G-M’s pictures.
Swedes had been primed for the unusual new film since July 1939, and it received continuing coverage in Swedish periodicals, replete with pictorial layouts. To coincide with the premiere, Swedish publisher Reuter & Reuter issued an edition of The Wizard of Oz illustrated with Denslow’s original line drawings but with a photograph of Judy Garland surrounded by drawings of the M-G-M cast on the book cover. By arrangement with US publisher Leo Feist, Reuter & Reuter also printed the film’s songs in Swedish (“The
Merry Old Land of Oz” became “Det Lyckliga Landet Oz”).
DENMARK
THE WIZARD OF OZ wasn’t as well received in neighboring Denmark, despite the fact that the cast of characters was renamed in an effort to make them more personable to the Danish market: Miss Gulch became sour old Miss Bile; the Scarecrow became Peter Scarecrow; the Tin Man became Herr Bliktud or Mr. Tin-Spout; and the Cowardly Lion was transformed into “Lion Afraid Trousers,” or the Scaredy-Pants Lion. In fact, when Troldmanden fra Oz had its first run in Copenhagen at the Palladium theatre—known for its lengthy engagements—on March 26, 1940, the reviews were rather unkind, and it was reported that some cinemagoers left the theatre before the picture was over.
GREAT BRITAIN
THE WIZARD OF OZ had its London premiere in January 1940 at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square. Its release had been heralded throughout the previous December but was deferred until George Cukor’s The Women finished its run at the Empire. On March 14, 1940, BBC Radio broadcast a one-hour radio version of the film story, sanctioned by M-G-M and derived from the screenplay, augmented by the BBC Revue Orchestra. An encore of The Wizard of Oz songs, performed by the same cast of players, aired the following evening. The film’s lyricist, E. Y. Harburg, had come to Great Britain specifically to stage this event for BBC Radio before traveling to Sweden to do the same there.
The Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion Page 9