The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland and featuring words and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen, receives its world premiere in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on August 12, 1939.
The beloved characters and familiar plot points were mostly all there in the original children’s book, from the Kansas farm girl in shiny slippers transported to Munchkin land by a terrible tornado, to the wicked witch, the brainless scarecrow, the heartless tin woodsman and the cowardly lion she encounters once she gets there. But what’s missing, of course, from Frank Baum’s bestselling novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is the music that helped make those characters so beloved and those plot points so familiar.
First published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was adapted numerous times for the stage and screen and even set to music prior to 1939. It was that year’s film adaptation, however, that earned Baum’s work a permanent place not only in cinema history, but also in music history.
Lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Harold Arlen were both seasoned songwriting professionals before teaming up in 1938 to write the original songs for The Wizard of Oz, though they had worked together very little. Harburg’s best-known credits to date were “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” (1931) and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” (1933), and Arlen’s were “Get Happy” (1929) and “Stormy Weather” (1933). Their first collaboration was on the Broadway musical Hooray For What! (1937), which yielded the now-standard “Down With Love.” The success of The Wizard of Oz, however, would quickly overshadow those earlier accomplishments.
Not only did Judy Garland’s signature song, “Over The Rainbow,” earn Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg the Oscar for Best Song at the 1940 Academy Awards, but it quickly became an indispensable standard in the American Songbook, later being acknowledged as the #1 song on the “Songs of the Century” list compiled in 2001 by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
First and foremost, however, Arlen and Harburg’s songs accomplished their primary goal with flying colors, carrying and deepening the emotional impact of the story in the film for which they were written. As innovative and impressive as the production values of The Wizard of Oz were in 1939, it is impossible to imagine the film earning the place it has in the popular imagination without songs like “The Lollipop Guild,” “If I Only Had A Brain” and “We’re Off To See The Wizard.”
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My frat brother Jim was Frank Baum’s grandson. His family was a hoot as was his mom a Socialite wanna’ be .
I went to super with them one night when his mom ragged on about his brothers girlfriend .
She said, ” I don’t know what he see’s in her, she’s not pretty, smart or comes from a good family. I just don’t get it” . There was a pause and she said, ” OMG she must be good in bed ! ” . I about fell on the floor from laughing .
The Secret of Oz MOVIE with Bill Still
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U71-KsDArFM&ab_channel=TheStillReport
Muh free market is real. We’re all capitalists now….. reeeeeee
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Monetary Reformer’s Brief Symbol Glossary by Patrick S.J. Carmack, J.D.
Cyclone (toronado) – the free silver movement, compared at the time to a political “cyclone” that swept Kansas, Nebraska and the heartland and aimed at Washington; also the depression of the 1890’s which was compared to a “cyclone” in a famous monetary primer of the time and which robbed people of their homes and farms.
Oz – corresponds to standard measure of gold ounce – “oz”; America, where the gold oz standard held sway, but where the use of the silver oz (slippers) could free the slaves.
Emerald City – political center of Oz /Washinton D.C. To get there a politician had to take the gold way (gold standard); everyone there was forced to wear “green spectacles” – to see the world through another color (green) of money. This illusion upheld the Wizard’s power.
Glinda, the Good Witch of the South – the US South, which solidly supported Bryan and reform, as did much of the North (home of the other good witch in the book). The East and West (homes of the bad witches) supported McKinley.
Good Witch of the North – Bryan’s Populist supporters in the North and Northwest. The South and North largely supporter Bryan in his Presidential campaign; the wicked East and West supported McKinley who was for the gold standard
Wicked Witch of the East – Wall Street bankers in NY, led by J.P. Morgan. President Grover Cleveland (of NY) was their pro-gold standard candidate.
Wicked Witch of the West – draught and/or J.D. Rockefeller, by then a Cleveland banker (still viewed as “out West” from a NY perspective). President Wm. McKinley (a gold standard supporter from Ohio) was his candidate. She was a one-eyed witch , i.e., opposed to the two metal bi-metallic system; in the book she enslaves Winkies in the West much as the Wicked Witch in the East enslaves the Munchkins; dissolved by water symbolizing real water curing draught and/or liquidity ending the depression.
Wizard – a charlatan who politician-like can change forms in the book and who tricked the citizens of Oz into believing he is all powerful. Sometimes compared to a behind-the-scenes manipulator “pulling-the-strings” of politicians just as Wall Street’s bankers do today. Mark Hanna, such a man at the time, has been suggested as the real life model for the Wizard. He said “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember the second”. Such an all-powerful view of money is a deceit noted under the word “Emerald City,” above. Baum was well informed – he knew banks manipulated politicians and the people and commonly used deceit to fool them into submission. $700 billion or we face a “global financial meltdown” ring a bell? Bankers create money – a trickery certainly known to Baum.
Yellow Brick Road – the gold way or standard, composed of gold bricks.
Munchkins – the common people of the East, [wage] slaves to the Wicked Witch of the East.
http://www.themoneymasters.com/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz-a-monetary-reformers-brief-symbol-glossary/
In the movie, the shoes were changed from silver to ruby red because the silver color blended in too much.
Two thoughts re The Topic:
1) As far as I can tell, looking back 120 years, W.J. Bryan was the last honest man-of-the-people who came close to the US presidency; after Bryan’s final run in 1908, both parties became wholly-owned subsidiaries of American (and, thus, international) finance. From that point, the old-line “Jefferson-Jackson Democrats” were dead meat, lingering on only in the ‘Solid South’ for another sixty years. When Bryan passed from the scene, The Uniparty was born.
2) One song and dance was cut from the “Wizard of Oz”… the Jitterbug, performed by Dorothy and all three fellow travelers. There is some (really poor) footage of the routine, and I am glad this one didn’t make the cut. The film, of course, is a mega ultra heirloom Classic.
One of my top ten movies. Try to watch it whenever it’s on.
Watch the Wizard Of Oz with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of the Moon…turn off the sound of the movie…when the MGM lion roars for the 3rd time start the album.