A Whiz Of A Wiz If Ever A Wiz There Was

Rating: 10/10 (16 March 2009)

When you've got a classic film that several generations of fans eagerly look forward to seeing televised every year, what critics say doesn't really matter. Several generations of the movie going public have made their voices heard loud and clear. It doesn't even matter that not one member of the cast is still with us to occasionally promote the film. It's reputation precedes it.
What lucky accidents for two performers in the celebrated cast. First Judy Garland got her break because Darryl Zanuck would not loan Shirley Temple out at any price. She was just making more money for hi studio than anyone else in Hollywood and he wasn't going to cut Louis. B. Mayer in for a dime.
However when MGM contract player Buddy Ebsen had a toxic allergic reaction to that Tin Man makeup paint, there was Zanuck happy to loan Jack Haley to MGM for what turned out to be his career role. In fact all seven of the stars, Judy Garland and her adult co-stars all got the roles they are most identified with. Tell me another film that can claim that?
Back at the turn of the last century L. Frank Baum adapted his Oz stories to the Broadway stage in 1903. Baum wrote the play and also most of the song lyrics, none of which had any staying power. The great vaudeville team of David Montgomery and Fred Stone starred on Broadway for 293 performances. Stone played the Scarecrow and I could see him doing it, though not quite the same as Ray Bolger, Stone played all kinds of rustics when he later went to Hollywood. Montgomery played a character name I had not heard of, in fact if you look down a cast list on the Internet Broadway Database, you'll see a ton of characters you wouldn't be familiar with unless you read all the Baum Oz stories.
MGM simplified and cut away a lot to bring what nearly all moviegoers on the planet are familiar with today. Included is new music which brought for The Wizard Of Oz it's two Oscars, for MGM house composer Herbert Stothart one for best musical scoring and for Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg for Over The Rainbow, Best Song of 1939.
That song almost didn't make the picture. In his infinite wisdom Louis B. Mayer pronounced the number as too much for a juvenile like Judy Garland, it belonged to someone like Nelson Eddy. Director Victor Fleming insisted it be kept in and the result was an Oscar and a song that Judy Garland could never do a live performance without. Though her voice and persona changed from winsome juvenile to the greatest female singing star ever, Over The Rainbow adapted itself over the years to her aging.
Judy's now over that rainbow for many years as are Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, Billie Burke as Glinda the Good Witch. Margaret Hamilton who scares the waste product out anybody as the Wicked Witch of the West. Kids even now when first seeing her have nightmares, I can speak from first hand experience there. We can't leave out traveling medicine showman and the title character Frank Morgan. To think all these people in one film got their career roles.
For their time the special effects were breathtaking, from the tornado that took Dorothy Gale and her house over the rainbow to the mystical land of Oz. The camera work of Hal Rosson and the imagination of Buddy Gillespie in the MGM special effects department hold our rapt attention to this day.
Back when she was starting the terrible twos, my niece Tara got to see The Wizard Of Oz for the first time. At that point for the next three years it became her ultimate babysitting tool. You sat her in front of the television, plopped in The Wizard Of Oz and just left her alone. She wouldn't move, but it got so bad that her parents and both grandmothers just got totally Wizarded out and couldn't look at the film for years.
Knowing there's a Tara out there as I write this who is getting her first exposure to the Wizard Of Oz, this review is dedicated to her and all the youngsters like her and untold millions that will follow.