The Wizard of Oz

When I was little we had a younger children's version of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz  published by Random House. (They also did versions of Grimm's fairy tales and Alice in Wonderland.) Now that I'm older and have read the full version, I appreciate its brilliance.  One interesting thing about it is Baum's Germanic influences:  "munchkin" probably comes from "Menschen" (German for "little people"), and Glinda the good witch must get her name from the Wagnerian heroine Sieglinde.

I first saw the Judy Garland movie when I was not quite nine.  The part that really impressed me was the black and white opening sequence, especially the storm.  The book and movie are both rather brilliant, but in different ways. (C. Collodi's Pinocchio is the same.) I particularly like the Scarecrow's goofy dancing.

For all its brilliance, I have to admit that the movie has a lot of minor flaws.  In the scene where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, she's reached a fork in the Yellow Brick Road and doesn't know whether to go left or right, leading to a conversation with him.  Then they head out to the right (or maybe the left?) with no explanation for why they chose that direction! (The screenwriters created a problem but didn't solve it.) And the scene in the wicked witch's castle is pretty lame:  they even threw in the "drop the chandelier" cliche.

There's also the black musical version The Wiz.  The movie version made the bewildering mistake of casting 40-year-old Diana Ross as Dorothy (they thought they needed a "star") and Richard Pryor's wasted in the title role, but I did like the colorful sets and the supporting cast, including Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow.  I want to see the recent TV version.  And I've also seen the odd stage musical Wicked, which presents the Wicked Witch of the West as an animal-loving antiheroine.