The Wizard of Oz on television: Difference between revisions

The enormous popularity of the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz is primarily due today to the large number of times it has been shown on television, although it was a well-loved film even before then. It has been an annual television tradition since 1959, and through these showings, it has become one of the most famous films ever made (possibly the most famous, although Gone with the Wind and Casablanca are strong competitors for that honor). In the United States (prior to the invention of VCRs), telecasts of it became a much anticipated family event, announced as far in advance as two weeks. During the 1940's and early '50's, the movie was simply a well-remembered film that people loved, but not one of the icons of cinema; nor did it really occur to anyone that it would ever become that.

The vast majority of people who have seen the film have seen it on television rather than watching it on the big screen. The film It's a Wonderful Life has a similar history of relative neglect and then becoming popular because of frequent showings on television.

Because commercial television breaks were shorter in the 1950's and the early to mid-1960's, something was needed in those years to "pad out" the running time to two hours (120 minutes) when the film was shown on TV, so the first telecast, on the CBS television network in 1956, featured Bert Lahr, a very young Liza Minnelli, and young Oz expert Justin Schiller as hosts, to introduce the film and make a few entertaining remarks about it. For subsequent telecasts, CBS would choose its hosts from its then-current prime time lineup. In 1959, when the film's second telecast took place, the host was Red Skelton (The Red Skelton Show); in 1960 it was Richard Boone (Have Gun, Will Travel), in 1961 and 1962 it was Dick Van Dyke (The Dick Van Dyke Show), and from 1964 through 1967, it was Danny Kaye (The Danny Kaye Show). Between 1959 and 1967, telecasts of the film, which at that time always took place on Sunday evenings, invariably pre-empted that week's showing of Lassie. Lassie may well be the only television series in history which annually gave way to a telecast of The Wizard of Oz.

The film as then telecast would also have "wraparound" opening credits and closing credits segments devised by CBS, accompanied by their own opening and closing music. For the opening ones, the title "The Wizard of Oz" and the names of its five leading actors, Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, and Jack Haley, would be shown in CBS's own format. This would be followed by the host speaking about the film. Following this, the movie would begin, complete with the actual film's opening credits and title music exactly as MGM created them, including the Leo the Lion logo. However, at film's end, the closing credits as seen on the film would not be shown. Instead, immediately after Dorothy spoke her last line ("Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"), and the camera faded out on her, television viewers again saw CBS's specially made title card "The Wizard of Oz", accompanied by some of the film's end title music, exactly as heard on the soundtrack. After a final commercial, the host would then be seen once again, bid farewell to the TV audience, and CBS would show their own version of the closing credits.

This method of presentation was permanently dropped when the film temporarily went to NBC in 1968, where no opening "wraparound" sequence was shown—the presentation simply began with the film's title sequence and ended with MGM's closing credits. The host idea was also dropped because more commercial time was required, and after its 1976 return to CBS, the film was hosted on that network only once more, by Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) in 1990. The "wraparound" sequence was not revived. That same year, Lansbury also narrated a documentary about the making of the film, which was shown immediately after the movie's telecast, and is included as a supplement on the DVD. In recent years, when shown on Turner Classic Movies, the film is always hosted by Robert Osborne, though, in this case, since TCM is commercial-free, it is obviously not done in order to pad out its running time.

From 1968 to 1984, the film was actually slightly cut to make room for added commercial time and still "clock in" at two hours. The showing in 1983 was the 25th network prime-time showing, a record for any film or program. In the first nine showings, it gained at least 49% of the television audience.^[1] On a few occasions beginning in 1985, it was time-compressed to fit the film into a two-hour running time without cutting the film. ^[2] (In time compression, the film is run at a slightly faster speed which is supposedly undetectable, but observant viewers can apparently notice a distinct "chipmunk"-like alteration of the voices when this is done.) However, it is now always shown complete and at its regular speed on television, both with and without commercials. When shown with ads, the film now runs about two hours and fifteen minutes, simply because of the increase in commercial time.

From 1959 to 1991, the film was shown on television only once a year. In 1991, it was shown twice during the year for the first time. 1991 also marked the first time since 1956 that the film was shown in November. The March, 1991 showing was the first after the film gained protected status from the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation Board. As a result, the network could no longer shorten the film by "microcutting" thousands of individual moments throughout the movie as had been done previously to make room for commercials and keep it in a two hour broadcast. As a result, the film ran until from 8 P.M to 10:07 P.M. EST. It was one of the first 50 films selected for this protection.^[3]

The year 2000 marked the first time that the film was shown on U.S. television during the summer. 2002 marked an unusual frequency of showings when, for the first time, it was shown on TNT three times within one month.

Another difference between the network showings on CBS and NBC and those on cable channels is that when the film was shown on regular network television, it was always presented as a "special", no matter what time of year - meaning that it would preempt two hours of regular television programming on the specific network which showed it just for that one night. On Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies, and the WB network, it is always presented as just another film in a time slot always reserved for the showing of a movie, not a special. Some might argue that the method of presenting Oz as a TV special gave it a certain aura which today's showings of the film do not retain, especially since it has been easily available on video in one form or another since the 1980's.

TNT showed the film in High-Definition in November 2006. It was not cropped to a 16x9 aspect ratio, but its correct Academy Ratio dimensions were preserved, windowboxed within a 16x9 frame.