125 years ago, the novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was published, which has been exerting a huge influence on pop culture for over a century. Since 1900, when it was first published, until today, 125 years later, the novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is one of the fiction of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. culture.

The Britannica encyclopedia describes the “magician of Oz” as a “modern tale with a strong American background”, while considering that Dorothy could be considered one of the first feminist heroes of children’s literature.

With hundreds of covers and references to cinema, theater and pop music, the only sure thing is that the magic country of Oz and its inhabitants have been a decades of pop culture symbols. But the “Wizard of Oz” may never have had this impact, without the film cover of the novel in 1939 with then 16 -year -old Judy Garland in the lead role. In a joint representative study by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001, her melancholy interpretation of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was voted the “most important song of the 20th century”.

An innovative film

The producers of the 1939 film were able to make the most of technological developments and artistic freedom in order to further distract the attention and interest of the public.

In Liman Frank Baum’s book, for example, Dorothy’s magic shoes were silver. In the 1939 cinematic version, however, Dorothy wore red ruby ​​shoes to write as best as possible on the technician. In fact, a couple of the shoes wearing Garland was stolen in 2005 by a museum in Minnesota – and found after many years in 2018 by the FBI. In 2024 it was sold at auction for $ 28 million.

Also, in an era without CGI (computer -produced images) and artificial intelligence, film producers had to divert various tricks for special effects. To portray the horse that changed colors for example there were four horses on the plate, which were colored with gelatin powder and food pigments.

To date, however, there are some open questions about the film – such as what color was Dorothy’s dress. According to some online fan-paages, the protagonist’s dress was not really blue-white, as it looked in the film, but blue and light pink. The pink is said to have been chosen because it is obviously better emphasized in the bright lighting of the film.

Many different covers

Since the day it was released, “The Wizard of Oz” has been a source of inspiration for dozens of artistic works.

In his song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (1973), for example, Elton John describes scenes from Oz country to symbolize through them the thirst for a simpler life, while the musical “The Wiz” (1978) was a musical cover with black musicians, such as Diana Ra. in the role of scarecrow. And let’s not forget, of course, the 2003 Wicked “Wicked”, which returned to cinemas this year in a new cover starring Sinthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

Curated by: George Passas