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.
