Pictured on one of four 25ยข US commemorative postage stamps issued 23 March 1990 honoring classic films released in 1939. The stamps featured Stagecoach, Beau Geste, The Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind.
Producer Mervyn LeRoy had originally intended to use MGM's Leo the Lion in the role of the Cowardly Lion and dub an actor's voice in for the dialogue. However, that idea was dropped when Bert Lahr came up for consideration for the part.
Professor Marvel never returns Dorothy's picture of Aunt Em.
Ranked #1 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Fantasy" in June 2008.
Rick Polito of the Marin Independent Journal printed in Northern California is locally famous for his droll, single-sentence summations of television programs and movies which the newspaper reports will be broadcast. For the Wizard of Oz, he wrote, "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
Some see L. Frank Baum's story containing political and social satire. The little girl from the Midwest (typical American) meets up with a brainless scarecrow (farmers), a tin man with no heart (industry), a cowardly lion (politicians, in particular William Jennings Bryan) and a flashy but ultimately powerless wizard (technology). Although the little people keep telling her to follow the yellow brick road (gold standard), in the end it's her silver (in the original story) slippers (silver standard) that help her get back to the good old days.
The "tornado" was a 35-foot-long muslin stocking, spun around among miniatures of a Kansas farm and fields in a dusty atmosphere.
The chant of the Wicked Witch of the West's Palace Guards was later incorporated into the song "Jungle Love" by Morris Day and The Time.
The color of the yellow brick road first showed up as green in early Technicolor tests. It was adjusted so that it would read properly as yellow in the early 3-strip color process, which in 1938-39, was still in its experimental stage.
The Cowardly Lion's facial makeup included a brown paper bag. Actor Bert Lahr couldn't eat without ruining his makeup. Tired of eating soup and milkshakes, he decided to eat lunch and have his makeup redone.
The Cowardly Lion's speech about courage contains the line "What makes the dawn come up like thunder?" This is a reference to a line in the poem "Mandalay" by Rudyard Kipling: "An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!"
The famed Jitterbug number was in actuality a leftover of an abandoned subplot that was discarded in early rewrites of the script. In the original Oz movie there was to be a large subplot involving characters named Princess Betty and the Grand Duke of Oz, to be played by MGM contract players Betty Jaynes and Kenny Baker. Jaynes, known for her refined operatic style of singing, was supposed to offset Judy Garland's jazz type of singing and a number was devised highlighting the differences. The Jitterbug number was devised by Harold Arlen and 'E.Y Harburg' to showcase Garland's talents. Both Jaynes' and Baker's characters were deemed unnecessary in early script rewrites and were removed from the picture, as well as their subplot. However, the Jitterbug number survived in the script and was filmed for the movie, although it too was cut from the picture in early previews. A reference to the Jitterbug number survives in the Wicked Witch's orders to Nikko, when she tells him to "send the insects on ahead to take the fight out of them" before the Flying Monkeys take off.
The film began its legendary run on network television on 3 November 1956, as an the series finale of the CBS anthology series Ford Star Jubilee. The broadcast was a smash, but the film was not shown on TV again until 1959. In a programming stroke of genius, it was decided to air it at an earlier hour (6:00 P.M., E.S.T.) as a Christmas season special - independent of any anthology packaging. This broadcast attracted an even wider audience, because children were able to watch, and from this moment on the film began airing annually on television. It was aired first on CBS (primarily in late winter), then on NBC (usually in mid-Spring, often on Easter Sunday), and then again on CBS, where it finished its network run of nearly 40 years in 1998, after which it was officially integrated into the Turner vault of motion pictures. (It now airs only on Turner-owned networks: WB, TNT, and most prominently Turner Classic Movies.)
The film came out on VHS for the first time in 1980.
The film had five different directors. Richard Thorpe shot several weeks of material, none of which appears in the final film. The studio found his work unsatisfactory and appointed George Cukor temporarily. Cukor did not actually film any scenes; he merely modified Judy Garland's and Ray Bolger's makeup. Victor Fleming took over from him and filmed the bulk of the movie, until he was assigned to Gone with the Wind. King Vidor filmed the remaining sequences, mainly the black and white parts of the film set in Kansas. Producer Mervyn LeRoy also directed some transitional scenes.
The film received a mention in the Guiness Book of World Records as the film to which a live-action sequel was produced after the longest period of time (Return to Oz was released 46 years after The Wizard of Oz).
The film rights of L. Frank Baum's book were initially sold to Samuel Goldwyn in 1933. Goldwyn hoped to have Eddie Cantor star as the Scarecrow with Ed Wynn supporting as the Wizard. Cantor was busy filming Roman Scandals and Wynn wouldn't accept a mere "cameo role", so the property was sold to MGM the following year, where producer Irving Thalberg hoped to get W.C. Fields to play the Wizard (he was about to begin filming The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger) and Charlotte Henry for Dorothy. But neither were available and the project was shelved until 1937, when Edens and Arthur Freed began crafting 'Oz' as a project for Judy Garland.
The film started shooting on 13 October 1938 and was completed on 16 March 1939 at a then-unheard-of cost of $2,777,000. It earned only $3,000,000 on its initial release.
The film, while run on network television, used to be packaged as a special event and as such, was initially introduced by on-camera hosts (including Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, and Danny Kaye). This practice ended after CBS's first contract with the film ended in 1967. From 1968 on the film was aired host-less, save the 1970 broadcast which was the first to air following the death of star Judy Garland. Gregory Peck gave a short tribute to her before the film aired that year on NBC. (Ironically, when the film went into the Turner vault and began airing on cable it returned to hosted introductions, usually by TCM's Robert Osborne.)
The film's running time was originally 120 minutes. Producer Mervyn LeRoy realized that at least 20 minutes of the film needed to be deleted to get it down to a manageable running time. Three sneak previews aided LeRoy in his decision in what to cut. The original film in its entirety was only seen once by an audience in either San Bernadino or Santa Barbara and it was the only time the famed Jitterbug number was seen by the public. After this preview LeRoy cut the aforementioned Jitterbug number and the Scarecrow's extended dance sequence to "If I Only Had a Brain". A second preview was held in Pomona, California, where the film ran 112 minutes. After the preview, LeRoy cut Dorothy's "Over The Rainbow" reprise and a scene in which the Tin Man turned into a human beehive, and the Emerald City reprise of "Ding Dong The Witch is Dead", as well as a few smaller scenes and dialog, notably two Kansas scenes in which the Hickory character was building a machine to ward off tornadoes, as well as dozens of threatening lines by the Wicked Witch of the West. By the third preview, held in San Luis Obispo, the film finally was down to its 101-minute running time, where it has remained ever since.