ABSTRACT
The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 MGM colour musical starring Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, and Ray Bolger, has been reissued so often that its presence within the American psyche has the quality of a recurrent dream. As nearly everyone knows, it is about a little farm girl, Dorothy, who, in what may or may not be a dream, is blown with her little dog Toto from Kansas by cyclone to the fairyland of Oz. With the help of a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion whom she meets along the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Oz’s capital, she must persuade the country’s ruling Wizard to develop a way for her to return home. In the course of these adventures, Dorothy kills two Wicked Witches and secures the invaluable protection of a Good Witch, who in the end turns out to be the mentor who guides her safely home.
