The Wizard of Oz is very well known as a story repeatedly told in various forms and reproductions for over 100 years. It first appeared as a children’s novel by American L Frank Baum titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, which was enthusiastically received and saw emphatic success. This caused it to be dramatised by Baum and it found equal fame as a Broadway musical with the shortened title The Wizard of Oz opening in 1902. It occupied such a prominent place in the public domain, capturing the imagination of children and adults that the inevitable followed – it was made into a successful film by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1939 starring Judy Garland and winning Oscar awards.
The novel was a best-seller, the musical play has been inexhaustibly repeated, it was produced for television in 1956 and there have been countless reproductions, the film made back the millions spent to produce it after many re-releases (Wikipedia says it was MGM’s most expensive film at the time, that it is included on the “Best Movie” list, and became the most viewed motion picture on TV). It took one of the great classics of all times – Gone With The Wind to beat it for Best Picture in 1939. The Wizard of Oz is also known for two of its outstanding songs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
It is a fantasy, a noted work of the imagination with allegorical dimensions, obliquely commenting on the developing American society at the turn of the century. Baum was highly influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), commonly called Alice in Wonderland, with quite glaring influences including the
