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.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Why does the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz so strongly resemble Biden?
Is the inbreeding really that obvious? yeah. I guess it it.
And now the flying monkeys are among us. It’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonite!
And “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” entered the lexicon.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!”
“Follow the Yellow Brick Road!”
“I’ll get YOU, my little pretty!”
“Ding dong! The witch is dead!”
And a great song — music and lyrics by Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong …
BTW, YT states that this video has been seen more than 1.3 Billion times …
This must have been the first and only movie Nancy Pelosi starred in.
The movie also spawned the ever popular term of derisive disbelief and contempt…”Yeah! And monkeys will fly out of muh butt!”
Hat tip to Mike Myers!!!
What a marvelous movie. I was too young to understand in the fifties but now with a FEW brains I can recognize greatness!
I first saw this great movie when it was revived in the early ’50s…I was 5 years old…
Funny how they always play it during the Easter season, ain’t it?
E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen
The “Wizard’s” Khazars wanted the yellow brick road. All the other characters got were lousy metals from a fake loud-mouth who didn’t even get Dorothy back to Kansas.
The witch may have been green, but beyond the flying monkeys, there were no nigs in the show.