Artist:
Wizard of Oz
Genre: Theater
Background: The Wizard
of Oz (1939) is everybody's cherished favorite,
perennial fantasy film musical from MGM
during its golden years. For many seasons,
it was featured regularly on network TV
as a prime time event (its first two showings
were on CBS television on November 3, 1956
and in December, 1959) and then annually
for Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or Easter
time. It soon became a classic institution
and a rite of passage for everyone, and
probably has been seen by more people than
any other motion picture over multiple decades.
Initially, however, the film was not commercially
successful (at $3 million), but it was critically
acclaimed.
All of its images (the Yellow Brick Road,
the Kansas twister), characters (e.g., Auntie
Em, Toto, Dorothy, the Wicked Witch), dialogue
(e.g., "Lions and tigers and bears,
oh my!", "We're not in Kansas
anymore," "Follow the Yellow Brick
Road," or the film's final line: "There's
no place like home"), and music ("Over
the Rainbow") have become indelibly
remembered, and the classic film has been
honored with dozens of books, TV shows (such
as HBO's dramatic prison series Oz), references
in other films, and even by pop groups (singer
Elton John with his Goodbye, Yellow Brick
Road album, or Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark
Side of the Moon).
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