The Wizard of Oz (1. Writers: L. Frank Baum (novel), Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (screenplay)Music: Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg. Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, Terry the Dog, Clara Blandick, Charley Grapewin. There may be no. It’s hard to think that the movie started as just that — a movie. It’s almost impossible to. The film has become so mythical that many fans can no longer separate fact from fiction. Didn’t a Munchkin hang himself on screen? Aren’t there hidden metaphors for government policies? Movies/videos starring Poodles!* Silent films, 1895-1930. We are indebted to Karin Taylhardat, who contributed (2/'09) the attached list of 59 silent films (1895-1930. Home Handleiding Films Regisseurs Leden Groepen Statistieken Forum Login. American Graffiti (1973) Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith, Harrison Ford, Candy Clark. Wasn’t there some on- screen accident? Some off- screen illness? Some of these myths have been busted; others embraced. But one thing is for certain — a film that spawns so many legends must indeed be a legend itself. The story originated with. Frank Baum, who came up with the title by looking at the two letters printed on the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet (O – Z). For entertainment, she looks to dog Toto (Terry the Wire Terrier) and three farm hands, Hunk (Ray Bolger), Hickory (Jack Haley) and Zeke (Bert Lahr). Still, she feels underappreciated! It’s a twister!” Dorothy is knocked unconscious by a broken window, sparking her crazy dream that the house has been lifted inside the cyclone (with she and Toto inside) and dropped inside the magical Land of Oz. Destination: Munchkinland. Address: The head of the.
She confronts Dorothy — and her little dog, too —. Seeing as the shoes won’t come off as long as their owner is alive, the Wicked Witch of the West vows murderous revenge on Dorothy. Meanwhile, Dorothy asks how she can possibly get back to Kansas. Glinda — with the help of singing Munchkins —. To get there, she must follow the Yellow Brick Road, where she encounters three instant companions, who agree to. The Scarecrow (Bolger) desires nothing more than a brain, the Tin Man (Haley) wants to know what it feels like to have a heart, and the Cowardly Lion (Lahr) desperately seeks some courage. When they arrive at Emerald City, they find the Wizard of Oz (Morgan) to. The powerful Oz agrees to grant their requests, but says they must first bring him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. After the Witch is undone by a bucket of water and the Wizard is revealed to be a fraud, Dorothy wakes up from her dream to decide, “There’s no place like home.”Okay, so you could have recited that entire plot summary by heart. It’s hard to imagine anyone imagining Oz any other way, but there was a time they did. In fact, the 1. 93. Three more followed by Baum’s own short- lived Oz Film Manufacturing Company — The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1. The Magic Cloak of Oz (1. His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1. After all, this was both the very. Is there a better Break into Act Two than a tornado dropping the heroine? What better “Fun and Games” than meeting Munchkins and a trio of friends down a Yellow Brick Road? And what better All is Lost moment than being trapped in a witch’s castle with the hourglass running out? The script cleverly features the dual worlds of Oz and Kansas, allowing for dual characters and. I’ll fight on you one foot! I’ll fight you with my eyes closed!” He’s the ultimate scaredy cat. Burke was a giant in showbuisness, named after her internationally- known clown father Billy Burke and husband of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Her Broadway career was portrayed by Myrna Loy in the film. At age 5. 4, her ageless beauty. I don’t know who’s scarier. Tragically, Hamilton was sidelined with severe burns for a month after the fire came too early in. My grandfather teased me forever about how I used to say, “Fast forward it!” every time she came on screen. The great irony is that Hamilton started out as a kindergarten teacher. Perhaps to kids, she represents the most terrifying of authority figures, which is exactly what she played to Garland in Babes in Arms (1. For years, Hamilton had a hard time convincing kids she wasn’t mean in real life. Rogers’ Neighborhood to explain that she was only acting. Matuschek in The Shop Around the Corner (1. Morgan reportedly showed up on the MGM lot every day carrying a black briefcase. Surely behind the curtain, Oz was a drinker. Fields was considered for the part, but watching. Unlike the others, she was at once synonymous with The Wizard of. So when 2. 0th Century Fox refused to loan out Shirley Temple to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Garland’s opportunity had arrived. As Dorothy, she is timeless — innocent eyes, brown hair pulled into curly pigtails and breasts taped down under. At the 1. 94. 0 Oscars, she received a special award “for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year,” an honor previously awarded to Temple. It was the only “win” Garland ever had on Oscar night.“Judy Garland touched audiences with her vulnerability, with her humanity, unlike any other star in Hollywood,” film historian Tony Maietta said. Louis (1. 94. 4), The Clock (1. Ziegfeld Follies (1. The Pirate (1. 94. In 1. 94. 6, Garland and Minnelli gave birth to Liza, who said she couldn’t watch Oz as a kid: “It frightened me. It was like my mother was a little girl and these monkeys flew away with her. I didn’t like it, it was spooky. Then I saw it years later and I was amazed by it.” (J)Unfortunately for the idolizing Liza, Garland also became one of. She divorced Minnelli in 1. It just about ruined her career, until a worthy comeback in A Star is Born (1. Garland should have won the Oscar that year, but lost to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1. Vincente Minnelli, Director: Gigi. Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago on February 28 1903, his father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers. Her only other nomination was for Judgment at Nuremberg (1. In her twilight, Garland would make several memorable talk show appearances, telling Jack Parr hillarious lies about the production of Oz. Then, in 1. 96. 9, exactly three decades after Dorothy, she would be dead at the young age of 4. Harburg (lyrics), the Oscar- winning song is the ultimate dreamer’s ballad, assuring each of us that “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”“. I’ve sung it thousands of times and it’s still the song that’s closest to my heart.”The song was one of many standards featured on Garland’s 1. Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall,” which garnered five Grammy Awards and remained at the top of Billboard charts for two months. Insanely, it was almost cut from the film for being “too sophisticated” for the young Garland. Oz: The Musical. While “Over the Rainbow” won the Oscar for Best Original Song, composer Herbert Stothart won for Best Original Score. Stothart nails the instrumental segments of the film, from the commanding title suite (below), to the chilling looping tune of Miss Gulch’s bicycle; from the angelic wonder as Dorothy first steps into Oz, to the alarming sound as she watches the fleeting sands of the Witch’s hour glass. How fitting that the film’s only Oscars came in musical categories, for Oz has to be the most famous musical ever done. It seems we know the songs so well that we often forget its genre. In fact, it was the first musical ever produced by Arthur Freed, who would do more than 3. MGM’s Golden Age, including classics like Meet Me in St. Louis (1. 94. 4), An American in Paris (1. Singin’ in the Rain (1. The numbers in Oz rival all of those, and “Over the Rainbow” is only the beginning. The opening Munchkinland sequence includes a medley of “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are,” “The House Began to Pitch,” “As Mayor of the Munchkin City, “As Coroner, I Must Aver,” “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” (#8. AFI Movie Songs), “The Lullabye League,” “The Lollipop Guild” and “We Welcome You to Munchkinland.”From there, it’s “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” “You’re Off to See the Wizard,” “If I Only Had a Brain” (below), “If I Only Had a Heart,” “If I Only Had the Nerve,” “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” “If I Were the King of the Forest,” and the oft- immitated “Winkie March” (“Oh- ee- oh, oh- um”). Harburg and Arlen wrote them all, earning The Wizard of Oz a #3 spot on the AFI’s 2. Greatest Musicals of All Time, behind only Singin’ in the Rain (1. West Side Story (1. A Film of a Different Color. Like all the great musicals of MGM’s Golden Age, The Wizard of Oz was a triumph of glorious Technicolor. For many in the public, The Wizard of Oz is believed (inaccurately) to be the moment movies first transitioned from black- and- white to color. In reality, color had existed from the very beginning of cinema, initially hand- painted one frame at a time. Even in the years right before. Imagine how magical it must have been for Depression- era audiences to start off watching a dreary, sepia Kansas, and then suddenly have Dorothy open the door to a world of color? Imagine all those folks decades later who watched annual broadcasts on black- and- white televisions, only to get their first color set and be knocked out by the change from sepia to color? The transition back to sepia at the film’s conclusion only reminds us how much we’ve enjoyed the colors all along. This film was made for color — ruby red slippers, Yellow Brick Roads, an Emerald City, and a “horse of a different color” (animal rights activists wouldn’t allow painting the horse, so the filmmakers applied a paste of water mixed with fruit- flavored jello powders). The hottest was no doubt Lahr, whose layered lion suit, perm mane and visible mask forced him to take frequent. An Academy Award surely was surely deserved, but the category did not exist until 1. Costumes like this were for the stage, not the movies. Adrian changed all that with a pointy- hatted witch, extravagant munchkins, a straw- stuffed scarecrow, funnel- capped tin man, talking trees and flying monkeys. Oscar nominations did go to Cedric Gibbons and William A. Horning for Art Direction, and deservedly so. The Wizard of Oz features a number of magnificent sets, from Munchkinland to Emerald City, from the witch’s forest to her intimidating castle fortress. Some may knock the sets for their clear “stagecraft,” but I believe this “phoniness” is completely intentional.
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