MGM's musical adaptation of L Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Ozhit the big screen in 1939, but was a commercial flop. It only embarked on a yellow-brick road to success after a television screening in 1956.
An entire raft of directors scrambled on board the original production.Richard Thorpe was in charge for a few weeks, but was sacked. George Cukor took over. Next was Victor Fleming, who directed most of the movie we see today. King Vidor also added a few touches.
The story has inspired a raft of socio-political analysis and interpretation.Dorothy's bid to liberate the Munchkins is seen as an allegory of political, economic and social events in the US in the 1890s. Characters such as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were familiar sights in late 19th-century political cartoons. Baum got the title of the book from a filing cabinet that was labelled A-N and O-Z.
There was a real-life battle over the song Over the Rainbow.Moguls tried to excise the song Over the Rainbowfrom the movie on the grounds that it was too grand for a little girl in Kansas to be singing. It was actually deleted from the score three times, but held on - and went on to be one of the most famous songs of all time. Everyone from Gene Vincent to Kylie Minogue through Eva Cassidy has covered it, but the original (sung by Judy Garland) more than stands the test of time.
The composer of Over the Rainbow, Harold Arlen, was born Hyman Arluk in 1905.He followed his Jewish cantor father into the music business, but soon switched to jazz, worked for Harlem's famous Cotton Club, and produced a fistful of hits, including Stormy Weatherand Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Arlen always referred to the other songs in the movie - We're Off to See the Wizard, The Merry Old Land of Ozand Ding Dong! The Witch Is Deadas "the lemon drop songs".
There have been many reworkings of the musical.These include John Boorman's Zardoz(1974), a sci-fi yarn starring Sean Connery; Journey Back to Oz(1964), an animated sequel featuring the voice of Garland's daughter Liza Minelli; and Wicked, the 2003 musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. The screenwriter Josh Olson, of A History of Violencefame, is apparently working on an adaptation of the next book in Baum's Oz series.