Movie Review: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

• Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited), Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited), Norman Taurog (uncredited), Richard Thorpe (uncredited), King Vidor (Kansas scenes, uncredited)
• Writers: Noel Langley (screenplay), Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allen Woolf (screenplay); L. Frank Baum (book)
• Stars: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with all of the Oz books. Glinda of Oz (the 14th book in the series and the last written by L. Frank Baum himself) was the first fiction book I randomly picked off a shelf in our school library and read on my own. I was in second grade. And for the first time, I realized why people read. It wasn’t just about learning words — behind those words are stories. For two years, I obsessively read and re-read and re-read all 14 of Baum’s Oz stories. (For some reason, I never read any of the dozens of Oz books written by others after his death.)

But even before then, I already knew and loved the movie. It was because of the movie that I knew who Glinda was and what Oz was, and that’s why I picked the book off the shelf in the first place. We didn’t have electricity growing up, and consequently no television, so every year when the film came on, we would drive to my aunt and uncle & cousins’ place in Ukiah to watch it. It was literally the only movie growing up that I saw once a year every year. Other kids watched Willie Wonka every year — I read Roald Dahl’s books but didn’t see the movie until I was out of college. It was always only about The Wizard of Oz.

Years later when I started the Cosmique Movie Awards in 2001, this movie was nominated for four awards, winning all four — the biggest sweep of the year.

Cosmo Awards

Awards Won

• Best Movie of All Time
• Most Quotable Movie of All Time
• Best Movie Musical of All Time (tied with Singin’ in the Rain)
• Best Movie Villain of All Time – The Wicked Witch of the West (tied with Glenn Close for Dangerous Liaisons and Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs)

Related Cosmos

The star of the film, Judy Garland, was inducted into the Best Actresses of All Time Hall of Fame at the 2017 Awards.