On August 10, 1939, moviegoers in Green Bay, Wisconsin, were among the first audiences to journey down the Yellow Brick Road when The Wizard of Oz made its world premiere. Starring a 17-year-old Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, the lavish MGM production would soon become one of the most beloved and recognizable films in American cinema. The movie opened more widely later that month, introducing audiences across the country to Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and, of course, the mysterious Wizard of Oz.
The film was adapted from L. Frank Baum’s enormously successful children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first published in 1900. Baum’s story already contained many of the characters and adventures that audiences would come to know so well, but the 1939 movie added something transformative: music. Composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg created songs that became inseparable from the story, including “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” “If I Only Had a Brain,” and Garland’s unforgettable signature number, “Over the Rainbow.”
“Over the Rainbow” proved especially important to the film’s legacy. The song earned Arlen and Harburg the Academy Award for Best Original Song and eventually became an American standard. Decades later, the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts placed it at the top of their “Songs of the Century” list. The music helped give emotional depth to a production already remarkable for its elaborate sets, costumes, special effects and memorable transition from the sepia-toned world of Kansas to the brilliant Technicolor landscape of Oz.
Wisconsin played an unusually prominent role in the film’s early exhibition. In addition to Green Bay, early screenings took place in Kenosha and Oconomowoc before the movie’s nationwide release on August 25. Oconomowoc continues to celebrate its connection to the film: the city created an Oz Plaza near the former location of the Strand Theatre, complete with life-size characters and its own Yellow Brick Road.
Remarkably, The Wizard of Oz was not initially the enormous financial triumph its later reputation might suggest. Its enduring stature grew over time, particularly as theatrical rereleases and television broadcasts introduced the movie to generation after generation.
More than eight decades after audiences first encountered Dorothy and Toto on the big screen, The Wizard of Oz remains deeply embedded in American popular culture. Its characters, songs and phrases have become cultural shorthand, while its central message—that the things we seek may already exist within ourselves—continues to resonate. What began with those early Wisconsin screenings in August 1939 ultimately became something much larger: an American cinematic institution reminding generations of viewers that, wherever the Yellow Brick Road may lead, there really is no place like home.
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