The Wizard of Oz (1933)
A tornado sweeps Dorothy and Toto into the Land of Oz, where they free a rusted Tin Woodman, meet a Scarecrow, and travel to the Emerald City, where the Wizard's magic-trick performance goes awry when an oversized egg hatches into a chick.
Made six years before MGM’s famous feature and unrelated to it, this Wizard of Oz was shot in early three-strip Technicolor but never got a color theatrical release for lack of a studio licensing deal, and existed for decades mostly in black-and-white prints until Thunderbean Animation restored the original color negative in 2014.
Background
This eight-minute Wizard of Oz cartoon, directed by Ted Eshbaugh, has no connection to the famous 1939 MGM feature made six years later; it adapts the same L. Frank Baum story independently and on a far smaller scale. It was shot using an early three-strip Technicolor process, but the production never secured a distribution deal that would allow it a color theatrical release, so for decades it survived mainly in black-and-white prints.
What to watch for
The original color negative was rediscovered and restored by the animation preservation group Thunderbean Animation, allowing modern audiences to see the film in color for the first time in decades. Watch for the simple, rounded character designs typical of early-1930s cartoons, and note how differently this brief, low-budget adaptation handles the same basic story of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Wizard that MGM would later turn into one of the best-known films ever made.
