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Rated sixth on the American Film Institute's list of the country's 100 greatest movies,
The Wizard of Oz opened in August 1939, a phenomenal year in movie history–
Like the book before it, the film tells a uniquely American fairy tale, and in the new medium Americans related to it in greater numbers. At the same time, its audience broadened throughout the world, largely because, as author Salman Rushdie notes, the film actually improved on a good book, creating a work of art. An important aspect of this film transformation is the much larger role assigned to Kansas and its people. In Baum's book, only six pages in chapter 1 and under twenty lines in the final chapter are devoted to the sun-seared Great Plains. Only Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, Dorothy, and Toto appear. In contrast, the movie introduces three farmhands (played by Lahr, Bolger, and Haley), an itinerant salesman (Frank Morgan), and Miss Gulch (Margaret Hamilton). These characters mirror the most important characters in the Land of Oz. Introducing evil in the person of Miss Gulch and her counterpart, the Wicked Witch of the West, the film takes on an immediacy and drama not possible in the book. The Kansas sequence, shot in black and white and placed in a brown bath to mute the tones, emphasizes the stark difference between the reality of Kansas and the colorful fairyland of Oz.
Whether in Baum's book or the mgm movie,
the sharp contrast between Kansas and Oz has
always been a defining feature, suggesting that
Oz is something more than it seems–a metaphor
for America. In 1900, when the book was
first published, America's economy was depressed,
and Baum's Oz can be interpreted as a
parody of America under the influence of the
Populist party, which had arisen at the turn of
the century to champion farmers and laborers
against corporate America. In 1939 the country
was in the depths of the Great Depression, and
some viewers suggest that MGM's Oz might be a
commentary on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
administration. In a 1981 interview in the
No matter what the political interpretation, the 1939 film evokes a joyful, still innocent, can-do world in which each person already holds the solution to his or her own problems. In setting this up, however,
See also LITERARY TRADITIONS: Baum, Frank L. / POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT: Populists (People's Party).