Music by Harold Arlen
Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg
Published 1939
Language English
Original artist Judy Garland (1939)
Since it was first released in 1939, through subsequent re-releases and annual television showings, THE WIZARD OF OZ has become an American classic. It was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture in 1939, possibly the most amazingly productive year in Hollywood history. In 1989, THE WIZARD OF OZ was one of the first movies ever named to the National Film Registry. To find out more about this effort to preserve our nation's film heritage see the Best Classic Movie Links page.
THE WIZARD OF OZ has not been colorized. The film was originally shot in both sepia-toned (which means brownish-tinted) black-and-white and Technicolor. The sequences in Kansas were in black-and-white and the Oz sequences were in Technicolor. Most of the people who remember THE WIZARD OF OZ being a black-and-white movie grew up watching it on black-and-white TVs, which of course, didn't differentiate between the Kansas and Oz sequences.
Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale with the ever-present Toto. Garland was awarded a special Oscar in 1940 for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile in this film. Though she would go on to make more than thirty more films in her career including many lavish MGM musicals, it is for this role that she is best remembered. Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg's Oscar-winning song from the film, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", became her personal theme song.
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?
