"Poor little kid, I hope she gets home alright"

Rating: 10/10 (12 August 2007)

Professor Marvel needn't have worried about Dorothy. She had what another screen icon displayed in an equally memorable role 30 years later: True grit.The 'true grit' that Mattie Ross admires in Rooster Cogburn was something she also possesses and I find a lot of similar character traits in Mattie and Dorothy. In 1939, audiences then loved Garland's performance as the girl who survives falling into a pigpen,losing her dog,riding out a tornado,then has to battle a witch and an obstreperous wizard on her journey back home. I mention the Duke because her Dorothy and his Rooster role both netted them Oscars in their somewhat similar careers. Her Oscar was a smaller honorary statuette (which she called a "Munchkin" award) given for her work as Dorothy. The Duke's Oscar was close to an honorary one also. It was far from his best work and his other nominations for THE ALAMO and SANDS OF IWO JIMA were much beneath his better efforts in RED RIVER, THE QUIET MAN and THE SEARCHERS, just to name a few. I think the older members of the Academy voting the awards wanted to give Wayne the prize for his body of work to that point, partly because they were a bit shocked at the popularity of THE MIDNIGHT COWBOY, an X-rated film that garnered best actor nominations for Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. I think the Academy knew they both had long careers facing them and would be up again for awards, and they do have 3 Oscars and 11 nominations between them. The other two actors up for the award then were equally deserving. Richard Burton had received his sixth Oscar nomination and went on to a record seven nominations without wins and Peter O'Toole had picked up his fourth nomination and just this year broke Burton's record with his 8th non-winning nomination. I'm sure a lot of the voting members felt O'Toole and Burton more deserving of the Oscar, but sentiment for the aging Duke won out and it was probably a very narrow margin of votes that carried the day. While the Duke's Oscar came near the end of his career, Judy's came when she was just getting started. But like Wayne's Rooster role, her most honored and beloved screen character represents just the tip of an iceberg. She earned two other Oscar nominations and sold a lot of records and was a popular TV performer. As John Wayne could never overcome his western/war hero screen persona (and probably never really would have given that up), Garland was never able to find a plum part like Dorothy again either. That's not to say she went totally downhill from there. By all accounts, she had an outstanding career, plagued though it was by personal troubles. But Dorothy put her star up in the cosmos and she could never reach that high again. Her plucky character and her memorable friends and foes in the enchanting world of Oz set this film apart as one of the greatest of all time and deservedly so.I just saw this on the big screen at my neighborhood Garland Theatre. Although like millions of others who had seen this on television more than once, it was still a great story brought to life by the magic of cinema. I don't know if I suddenly became allergic to popcorn, but the climax brought tears to my eyes. Few films do that for me and I was surprised at my reaction to what I thought was an old chestnut I'd seen more times than I can remember. Maybe I'm just getting old and decrepit and overly sentimental for the good old days or maybe it's because this film can still carry a powerful message to new generations seeing it anew. I'd like to believe it's more of the latter than the former. Dale Roloff