FAQ for
The Wizard of Oz (1939) Plus avec IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Wizard of Oz can be found here.

Yes. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) was written by American author L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]. Baum also wrote 16 sequels: The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1905), The Woggle-Bug Book (1905), Ozma of Oz (1907), Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), The Road to Oz (1909), The Emerald City of Oz (1910), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913), Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913), Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), Rinkitink in Oz (1916), The Lost Princess of Oz (1917), The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), The Magic of Oz (1919, posthumously published), and Glinda of Oz (1920, posthumously published).

This is the book's introduction:

Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as 'historical' in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer 'wonder tales' in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incidents.

Having this thought in mind, the story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

L. Frank Baum

Chicago, April, 1900

First, the Kansas sequences are not black and white (except in early TV showings); they're sepia-toned. The dramatic change to color as Dorothy (Judy Garland} goes through the doorway was accomplished by having a stand-in, dressed in a sepia-toned costume, open the sepia-toned door. As the camera comes closer to the doorway we lose sight of the stand-in; then Garland appears in a full-color costume.

Watch closely and you'll notice that the carriage Dorothy rides in follows the red brick road. The road leads right up to the front steps of Munchkin City Hall.

No to all three. As Dorothy, Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) and the Tin Man (Jack Haley) set off down the Yellow Brick Road, we see a large bird stretching its wings. There is no stagehand on the set, no one hanging himself, and no one falling out of a tree. The website devoted to urban legands, Snopes.com, has a more detailed explanation.

Audiences have claimed to hear various lyrics to the "Winkie Chant" performed by the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton)'s guards. They include "All we own, we owe her"; "Oh we love the old one"; and "Oh we loathe the old one." The screenplay shows that the correct lyrics are "O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!." The chant acts as a sort of audio inkblot.

In Baum's books, Oz is no dream. By contrast, the movie makes it clear that Dorothy dreamt the whole thing up. Of course, children of all ages refuse to accept that the vivid, colorful Oz is a dream, while the dull sepia-toned Kansas is reality. Audiences of the day were leery of fantasy and demanded this cop-out. See Mama's Little Pirate (1934), The Blue Bird (1940), Cabin in the Sky (1943) and many others.

There's no evidence that Pink Floyd intended their album "The Dark Side of the Moon" to be a soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz. Whether the album makes a good soundtrack for the movie is a different question. Aficionados claim more than 100 instances of the album matching the actions on screen--assuming one begins playing the album at a certain point early in the movie. "The Great Gig in the Sky," in particular, matches up well with the tornado sequence. Proper synchronization is tricky. You may want to rely on a copy of Dark Side of the Rainbow, which is a DVD of The Wizard of Oz with "The Dark Side of the Moon" as its soundtrack. See also: Dark Side of the Rainbow.