“The Wizard of Oz” opened around the United States 85 years ago today: Aug. 25, 1939. The movie has become beloved — you heard it here first — and probably would have been a classic no matter what.
Yet Pomona and San Bernardino played small roles in making the movie what it is today.
In the weeks before the premiere, a rough cut of the movie screened at Fox West Coast theaters in the two cities, and elsewhere, to gauge audience reaction. That version was longer by 11 minutes or more. Afterward, scenes were trimmed or cut entirely.
Why test movies out in the boonies? The idea was to see how films came across to regular folks in small towns that were Southern California versions of Peoria, Illinois. Pomona had up to three such previews per week during the 1930s and ’40s.
In fact, the city was such a regular on the circuit, there’s a joke about it in 1950’s “Sunset Boulevard.” When Gloria Swanson outlines an over-the-top version of the story of Salome that she views as her comeback picture, William Holden sneers: “They’ll love it in Pomona.”
You’ll be pleased to know that our two Fox theaters are still standing. San Bernardino’s, opened in 1928, is at 398 W. Court St. Pomona’s, opened in 1931, is at 301 S. Garey Ave.
Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, left, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Judy Garland as Dorothy and Jack Haley as the Tin Woodman sing in this scene from “The Wizard of Oz.” (File photo from AP Photo/Warner Bros.)
The first-ever public screening of “The Wizard of Oz” was June 4, 1939 in San Bernardino.
“‘Wizard of Oz’ Is Previewed at Fox,” reads a headline the next day in the San Bernardino County Sun. Sue Payne of the Feldheym Library’s California Room found it for me.
“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s ‘Wizard of Oz,’ based on Frank Baum’s childhood fantasy, was brought to the Fox theater last night for its first preview,” the story begins.
“Featured in the movie, done in Technicolor, are Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan and Billie Burke,” it continues. “Producer Mervyn LeRoy, Director Victor Fleming, Cameraman Hal Rosson and Herbert Stothart, music director, headed a large group from the studio.”
That’s it. Three sentences. History in a hurry, folks.
More is known about the screening at the Fox in Pomona, which took place on June 16 after at least one other preview elsewhere. That’s due to a review published the next day in the Pomona Progress-Bulletin.
It wasn’t entirely positive. Headline: “Child’s Book Is Made Into Adult’s Film.”
The contributor, credited simply as O.H.K., opines that “the movie is not for children, at least not in the form previewed here last night to a near-capacity audience at the Fox. But it’s so exceedingly well done every type of normal grownup should like it.”
Huh. Why shouldn’t every type of normal child like the movie? Because unlike the L. Frank Baum novel, O.H.K. explains, a movie can leave nothing to the imagination.
“As a result children are subjected to a strain far beyond any they might get by reading words on a printed page,” the critic says, adding later that “even the Kansas twister which almost gets the little girl is too realistic.”
If the tornado is too scary, what must O.H.K. have thought of the flying monkeys? Or for that matter the angry wizard head with the booming voice? Those were terrifying! It’s true, the movie is a lot to handle. But generations of kids have handled it.
The Fox Pomona, opened in 1931, is seen on Thursday. The theater was the site of many preview screenings in the 1930s and 1940s, including for 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz.” The restored Fox is now a concert hall and community venue. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Two factual tidbits from the Prog story are worthy of note.
“Judy Garland was among others in the studio party last night,” the story relates, “and the little songstress obligingly autographed everything handed her as she made her way from the theater.”
What a thrill it must have been for moviegoers to see Garland, or even interact with her, inside the Fox or out on the sidewalk. They got a brush with stardom in their hometown and a story they could proudly tell the rest of their lives.
The other fact is that the Prog gave the movie’s length as 112 minutes.
When the movie arrived in theaters weeks later, it was 101 minutes.
Why cut it? Studio execs thought that at nearly two hours, the film was too long.
“So a number of scenes were shortened, and several dropped entirely,” according to the encyclopedic site TheWizardofOz.info.
Chopped were a “return to the Emerald City after melting the Wicked Witch of the West,” an extended version of a Scarecrow dance sequence, a scene in which the Wicked Witch turns the Tin Woodman into a beehive with animated bees and “an elaborate song-and-dance number” called “The Jitterbug,” the website explains.
Another site, The Wizard of Oz Timeline, says “The Jitterbug” was squashed after the San Bernardino preview. If true, that means the only people who ever got to see it were in that lone audience in the Gate City on June 4, 1939. Envy them.
The rough cut also had a reprise of “Over the Rainbow,” sung morosely by Dorothy while imprisoned in the Wicked Witch’s castle. The audience in Pomona thought it was too emotionally intense, according to John Clifford, formerly president of the Friends of Pomona Fox.
So the scene was axed (but not by the Tin Woodman).
The Fox Theater in San Bernardino is seen in 1929, one year after its opening and a decade before its preview screening of “The Wizard of Oz.” The building still stands but without its sign, marquee or theater seating. (Courtesy California State Library)
The final, official, finished version of “The Wizard of Oz” arrived at the Fox San Bernardino on Aug. 19, a Saturday. This was a few days before the official national release on Aug. 25.
The Sun wrote about it.
“With Judy Garland as Dorothy, the little heroine, ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ spectacular musical production in Technicolor, opened yesterday at the Fox theater,” the Sun reported Aug. 20. “Fairylike scenes have been made convincing and the beloved childhood story has been followed faithfully in the screen version.”
Later in the story comes this acknowledgement of the recent past: “This picture, previewed in San Bernardino, opened this week at Loew’s State and Grauman’s Chinese theaters in Los Angeles…”
Incidentally, if you went to the Fox to see the 101-minute “The Wizard of Oz,” you could also have stayed for the second feature: “Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation,” a 65-minute mystery.
If there are any lost scenes from the “Mr. Moto” movie, I’m not sure anyone cares.
Mr. Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
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