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- In 1934, Samuel Goldwyn bought the film rights to the children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum which was originally published in 1900. Goldwyn paid $75,000 for the rights and was hoping to turn it into a major motion picture and considered casting Shirley Temple as Dorothy and Eddie Cantor as the Scarecrow.
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Aug 25, 2019 · In 1934, Samuel Goldwyn bought the film rights to the children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum which was originally published in 1900. Goldwyn paid $75,000 for the rights and was hoping to turn it into a major motion picture and considered casting Shirley Temple as Dorothy and Eddie Cantor as the Scarecrow.
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Samuel Goldwyn (August 17, 1879 - January 31, 1974) was one of the most important figures in the Hollywood movie business during the 20th century.
He also controlled the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz during the middle 1930s. In 1933 Goldwyn arranged to buy the film rights to L. Frank Baum's first and most famous Oz book from the author's eldest son Frank Joslyn Baum. The younger Baum had to prove he controlled the rights legitimately though, so their deal was not formalized until January 26th 1934 at the price of $40,000. Despite this, The Film Daily reported he was making a special musical production of the story on October 3rd, 1933. It was also in a list that same month entitled "picture for every taste planned" by the Motion Picture Herald with no release date.
Goldwyn considered making a movie of the book, and through the mid-30s there were reports and rumors of an impending production, with various actors cited as possible cast members. Eddie Cantor was mentioned for the role of the Scarecrow, W.C. Fields or Ed Wynn for the Wizard, and child star Marcia Mae Jones for Dorothy Gale as were adults such as Mary Pickford and Helen Hayes. No film materialized in those years, however nor are any pre-production notes known to exist. An addition of The Film Daily dated April 10, 1934 suggested that The Wizard of Oz was on his filming schedule. Motion Picture Herald suggested between then and 1935 before noting on July 28th that it had been "withdrawn from the shelf with another attempt to develop a treatment that will appeal to the adult and juvenile". Earlier that month on the 19th, Motion Picture Daily noted that he planned on making it later that year and that "tests of key players" were underway.
After the triumph of Walt Disney Pictures' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Hollywood studios began looking for comparable properties, and Baum's Oz was an obvious possibility. 20th Century Fox tried to buy Goldwyn's film rights for their star Shirley Temple, Universal also tried to buy Goldwyn's film rights for their star Deanna Durbin, but they were outbid by MGM, which bought Goldwyn's rights to The Wizard of Oz on February 18th 1938, paying $75,000 which enabled that studio to produce its classic 1939 version of the story.
•John Fricke, Jay Scarfone, William Stillman. The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History, Warner Books, 1989.
Aug 5, 2024 · Samuel Goldwyn almost immediately purchased rights to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to try to compete with Disney’s growing popularity. He enlisted Mervyn LeRoy to produce, Herman J. Mankiewicz to write, and Richard Thorpe to direct the picture.
- L. Frank Baum framed the pencil he used to write the novel. L. Frank Baum—former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager—had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898.
- Baum struggled to find the right name for his book. The author had a hard time deciding on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for his title. Initially, he called the book The City of Oz, then The Emerald City, but his publisher wasn’t a fan (some say because of a superstition among publishers that no book with a jewel in the title would sell well).
- He said he got the name Oz from his filing cabinet. Three years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came out, Baum recalled how he came up with the name Oz: He was looking at the filing cabinet in his study.
- Dorothy Gale may have been named after a niece who died. Dorothy Gale may have gotten her name from Dorothy Gage, the infant niece of Baum’s wife, Maud.
The script was based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which sold over a million copies and launched a long series of Oz books. It had been dramatized on the stage and was filmed by the Selig Polyscope Company in 1910.
In a letter to Baum dated December 31, 1914, F.K. Reilly lamented that the average buyer employed by a retail store would not understand why he should be expected to spend 75 cents for a copy of Tik-Tok of Oz when he could buy a copy of Wizard for between 33 and 36 cents.
Aug 29, 2019 · A fan of the Oz books, Freed found out that independent producer Samuel Goldwyn owned the film rights to The Wizard of Oz and convinced MGM to buy those rights, beating out four other studios. Mervyn LeRoy was a producer that MGM had just hired away from Warner Bros., and he, too, was interested in making The Wizard of Oz .
