"The Wizard of Oz" on TNT tonight

December 20, 12:26 PMClassic TV ExaminerDoug Krentzlin

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Classic TV Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

                        "The Wizard of Oz" 

“The Wizard of Oz,” TNT, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008, 8 & 10 p.m. (EST)

The film that is just about everybody’s first classic movie experience is on TNT tonight. It would be hard to think of a film more beloved than MGM’s 1939 version of L. Frank Baum’s immortal fairy tale “The Wizard of Oz.”

Everyone knows the story, but here is some interesting trivia:

1. Although the cast is well nigh perfect, just about all of the actors were the second choice for their roles. Here is the cast with the original choices also listed: Dorothy (Judy Garland, Shirley Temple), the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger, Buddy Ebsen), the Tin Man (Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Buddy Ebsen [after he and Bolger switched roles]), the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton, Gale Sondergaard) and the Wizard (Frank Morgan, W.C. Fields). It seems only Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion was the first choice among the leads.

2. “The Wizard of Oz,” with songs by Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) was the first integrated musical; which is to say that this was the first musical in which the songs move the story forward rather than being self-contained. (The stage version of “Oklahoma!” which came along half a decade later was often wrongly credited with this achievement.)

3. The opening and closing sequences in Kansas (the only scenes not filmed in Technicolor) were not in black-and-white as widely believed. They were actually filmed in sepia, which has a brownish tint. (It wasn’t until the movie was remastered in the 1980s that the sepia tones were restored.)