Click your heels, fly out of Kansas, and go where nobody mourns the wicked.

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2014)

For my 2000th review, I felt it would be appropriate to visit the film that I saw 20 times by the time I was 20. Between countless network T.V. viewings (on my grandparent's old T.V. where everything was green, even the black and white Kansas sequences), several big screen visits, hundreds of playings of it at the video store I worked at for 10 years and numerous video covers and different DVD releases, this film has never escaped our culture, and thus my life. My favorite VHS cover was the one in red which focused on the witch and her crystal ball, but that was out of print almost immediately after its release, while the one copy I owned was the blue "50th Anniversary" special edition which came with a ton of extras.
While throughout grade school, I was obsessed, not only with the film, but the book too, I made a point of seeing it every time network T.V. aired it. When I first discovered it on video, I was thrilled to be able to see it without commercials and certainly without edits. I was also surprised to find out how much was edited from the film, and like Angela Lansbury quoted about the film in her documentary on its filming, "How long is too long?". Certainly, I would have loved to see the filmed footage of "The Jitterbug" rather than the home movies, but it is obvious from what I have seen that it takes away from the flow of the completed film. What would have been more interesting was the lavish sequence (seen briefly in one of the re-release trailers) of Dorothy and her friend's return from the witches' castle.
Of course, the star-making performance of Judy Garland is the heart and soul of this breathtaking fantasy, often imitated but never surpassed. She's a bit busty for the role of the pre-teen Dorothy, but her sincerity is magnetic. There was a genius behind all her madness and as sorry as you can feel for her because of all her woes, you can't feel sorry for the artist who to this day strikes a cord in non-fans, not to mention those of us who consider her the single greatest female performer of all times.
There's no better supporting cast (although much of the roles were initially mentioned for other actors), with Ray Bolger an absolute rubbery delight as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley tender and gentle to the max as the Tin Man, and Bert Lahr a blubbering gem as the Cowardly Lion. No good witch was more glamorous than Billie Burke's Glinda (even all the blonde starlets in Broadway's "Wicked"), and for pure fright, no wicked witch was scarier than Margaret Hamilton's. I became a huge fan of this wonderful character actress as a child, and to this day, I delight in finding works of hers I hadn't seen yet. Hamilton's Miss Gulch reminds me of the delightfully nosy neighbors of my childhood, and to see her in the same outfit the year later sticking her nose up to W.C. Fields' in "My Little Chickadee" was a comic treat.
While Fields was mentioned as a candidate for the role of the wizard, it was Frank Morgan, a stuttering gem of a comical character actor who ended up with the role. He appears in an assortment of other roles, beginning in the Kansas sequence, and later as the doorman of Oz and the doorman to the wizard, all disguised to make you think that he's actually another character, which is doubtful. Hamilton obviously is not only Miss Gulch and the Western Witch, but in the brief guise of the Eastern Witch as well. Of course, in "Wicked", Nessarose is a lot more beautiful than her sister, only made ugly in spirit by her change in character which didn't ring true.
In smaller roles, Charley Grapewin and Clara Blandick as Uncle Henry and Auntie Em offer wise, if distant, support to Judy Garland's Dorothy, with Grapewin very funny as he reluctantly greets the Gulch Woman and Blandick downright hysterical as she tells her off. Toto is an adorable pooch, and I long for a spoof of him getting his revenge on Gulch by biting her in the tush before jumping out of the basket. So as I reflect in my journal of my journey down the yellow brick road, I must call it a lifetime of great and powerful entertainment where every character has become an important part of my child-like heart in my transition to find my own land of Oz.