The Wizard of Oz has its Hollywood premiere

A Hollywood Audience Sees Oz

On August 15, 1939, MGM's The Wizard of Oz had its Hollywood premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. There had already been screenings elsewhere, so the date is best described as the Hollywood premiere rather than the first occasion on which anyone saw the film. The New York opening and wider release also belong to their own dates. In Hollywood the film was being presented as a major studio production, with Judy Garland playing Dorothy. A novel readers already knew had become a musical whose color, songs and performances would eventually shape what many people imagined when they heard the name Oz.

How the Film Makes a Border Visible

The Kansas scenes have a muted sepia appearance, while much of Oz appears in Technicolor. The transition gives a physical action, Dorothy opening a door, the force of crossing into another visual world. Color is part of the storytelling, not simply proof that the studio could use a particular process. Costumes, lighting and sets had to work with it. Viewers who knew the books also encountered changes, including the ruby slippers in place of the silver shoes of the original novel. These differences show the studio thinking about what an audience could recognize and remember in a moving image.

A Musical With Many Departments Behind It

The completed film credits Victor Fleming as director, while several directors and many writers and production workers contributed during its development. Music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg provided songs that did work within the story, including the expression of Dorothy's dissatisfaction before she reaches Oz. Makeup and costume made companions identifiable through a silhouette or movement. These were different kinds of work coordinated across a large studio. A premiere could present the result as one seamless journey, even though its unity had required many separate choices about how to adapt the book to an audience watching and listening together.

How Later Audiences Changed Its Place

The film did not gain its entire reputation in the summer of 1939. Reissues and television broadcasts introduced it repeatedly to new audiences. People who experienced it on television could know its songs and characters without having seen the film in a theater or in its original exhibition conditions. That later familiarity can make the Hollywood event seem like the beginning of an inevitable success. At the time it was a public test of an elaborate adaptation. August 15 identifies the occasion when one important audience saw the studio's choices assembled on screen, rather than the day those choices acquired all their later meanings.