January 26, 1934—After months of negotiation, Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, for $40,000. Yet four years later, still not having developed the property, the independent producer turned around and sold the rights to the studio that had forced him out the decade before: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
The more you read about Baum, the more you recognize what a brilliant children’s book writer he was, what an imaginative man—and what a terrible businessman. He had a kind of reverse Midas touch: aside from writing the Oz fantasies, everything else he tried—even movies based on his characters—flopped.
As early as 1914, Baum had formed the Oz Film Manufacturing Co. and had even produced three five-reel silent movies based on his 14 Oz novels. Like the musical later created from his work, he didn’t stint on costs; the entire studio lot covered seven acres. Predictably, given Baum’s prior business history, it failed.
MGM had had its sights set on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz back in 1924. But after negotiations dragged on, the rights to the children’s book classic were sold instead to Chadwick Pictures. Nine years later, when the studio wanted to make a series of animated cartoons from the series, they still couldn’t get the rights—though a year later, Goldwyn managed to buy the progenitor of the whole series.
His purchase of the property owed a great deal to playwright Sidney Howard, who not only strongly urged the producer to do so but had even bothered to buy him a copy of the work so he’d not what he was getting.
What happened next deserves to be among the classic “Goldwynisms” that made the producers famous within the industry. Several weeks after the deal was consummated, Howard checked back with the producer and asked his opinion of his new property.
“Wonderful,” Goldwyn answered, as recounted by Aljean Harmetz in her history of the film, The Making of The Wizard of Oz.
Had he finished it yet? Howard pressed.
“No,” Goldwyn answered. “I’m still on page 6.”
What was keeping him, anyway? Lots of films requiring his attention, for one. In the four-year period from 1934 through 1938, nineteen films came out bearing his logo.
There was also his attention to detail, and his picking the brain of everyone and his brother about what they thought about all kinds of details related to the production.
In an oral history reminiscence about Goldwyn for Columbia University, for instance, actor Dana Andrews recounted an early meeting he had with the producer, who showed him a picture of Gary Cooper made up as Abraham Lincoln and asked him what he thought of it.
“I later learned from many years of experience with Mr. Goldwyn that this is one of his practices.,” Andrews recalled. “He asks everybody, from the hairdresser on the set to the head of the business department, what they think about little things like hairdos, or whether a man's clothes fit properly, or questions about his personality. A lot of people say, ‘Goldwyn asks everybody what they think and then does what he thinks.’ But I think what he thinks is made up to some extent (or influenced, certainly) by what he hears from various people.”
What might a Goldwyn-produced musical of Oz have looked like? Well, there was a very good chance that he would have found a place for it for comedian Eddie Cantor, with whom he made six musicals in the Thirties.
For whatever reason, the prospect of an Oz film did not spark Goldwyn’s interest sufficiently that he made it a priority. Standing in the wings, however, was someone who would: Arthur Freed of MGM, a songwriter who was yearning to make it as a producer at the studio.
A huge fan of the Oz series, Freed thought a musical based on Baum’s creation would be just the thing to do, and he even had someone in mind for its main character Dorothy. Not Shirley Temple, who so many wanted, but a new, somewhat older actress, a teenager with an unbelievable voice—Judy Garland. He convinced the powers that be at MGM to buy the rights from Goldwyn—and wangled a producing assignment in the upcoming production from producer Mervyn LeRoy.
Though a big critical hit upon its release in 1939, The Wizard of Oz didn’t start to make serious money until its rerelease in 1948, and it did not enter the pantheon of immortal movies until it began to be shown on TV, on a regular basis, in 1956.
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