The Wizard of Oz (1925)

Director: Larry Semon
Writers: L. Frank Baum, Jr. Leon Lee and Larry Semon, based on the story by L. Frank Baum
Stars: Dorothy Dwan, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry and Larry Semon

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the production values of this take on L. Frank Baum’s classic story don’t come close to the famous 1939 version, there’s a lot here that might surprise. And hey, they’re a heck of a step up from The Patchwork Girl of Oz in 1914, a film written and released by Baum himself!

He died in 1919 so didn’t have a hand in this but his son, credited as L. Frank Baum Jr. even though his name was Frank Joslyn Baum, did. However, it’s hardly faithful in its adaptation, even by the low standards of other versions, including 1939, which changed a lot more than the colour of Dorothy’s slippers. After all, the Wicked Witch of the West only got 26 pages in the original book!

She isn’t in this version at all and I wish that Dorothy wasn’t either. It’s not that namesake Dorothy Dwan isn’t a capable actress; it’s that the character has no substance. When we first set foot in Kansas, a clearly aged Aunt Em and a stunningly rotund Uncle Henry are working their fingers to the bone, while Dorothy has no interest in helping. She isn’t even dressed to help! She flits around gathering flowers and looking precious, as if that’s all the world ever wants. I wanted her to break a nail and pout in the corner, so I could get on with the movie.

The best thing she does is to act as a human prop for two lovestruck farmhands, played by Oliver N. Hardy (yes, that one, pre-Laurel) and the film’s director and star, Larry Semon. Now, Semon isn’t a major name today, forgotten by everyone except diehard silent movie fans, but he was an incredibly good slapstick comedian, who specialised in the epic scale. If you’re into slapstick comedy, check out The Sawmill, which he made in 1922, as it’s an underseen gem.

Or watch this, because all the best bits about The Wizard of Oz are epic scale slapstick scenes. Well, them and an insanely large headdress on the head of Frederick Ko Vert, who also served as costume designer. How he danced in that, I have no idea, even discounting that he was in drag at the time as the Phantom of the Basket, the payoff in a magic trick performed by the charlatan Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard is usually described in the book as “a humbug” and he starts this film out as a bad guy, a “yes man” for Prime Minister Kruel, who runs the Emerald City, with help from his aide Lady Vishuss and Ambassador Wikked. I’d frankly like to know how, given that there’s an honest to goodness princess who’s somehow been missing for eighteen years before Prince Kynd petitions for her return with the massed people of Oz behind him. Were they asleep all that time? Did they not notice until now?

Of course, we know who the princess is and where she is, even before a pointless flashback scene to explain to us (and her) that she isn’t related to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry at all but was deposited on their doorstep as a baby with papers to be given to her when she celebrates her eighteenth birthday. The only surprise on that day is that a host of villains from Oz show up just like the Spanish Inquisition to steal the papers first. Well, they’re more like five Zorros posing like the Spanish Inquisition. Which, of course, nobody expects.

What matters is that we don’t care about Oz because the scenery is much more interesting than the actors and story and Josef Swickard is too busy chewing that as Prime Minister Kruel for us to believe it’ll be there much longer. We don’t really care about farmhands seeking the attentions of an annoying seventeen year old either. So what’s left? Well, I’m glad you asked.

On the positive side, there are a whole lot of slapstick scenes and, while they start out poor and predictable, they get seriously dangerous seriously quickly. Hardy pushes Dorothy on a swing so high that she takes down everyone in a chase scene and then flies over a fence. How tall is that swing anyway? When Uncle Henry sits on spiky cactus, it’s surely not real, but the swing is and it’s ridiculously high.

There’s also a lot of animation, which I had forgotten was in the film. It starts with one fly that pesters Semon, but then it tries to fly into a beehive and suddenly there’s a whole swarm of bees pestering him and Uncle Henry. There are lightning bolts too for the flashback scene when baby Dorothy arrives.

And then, when she turns eighteen, all that slapstick escalates. The Zorros haul her stunt double up to the top of a water tower. Semon and Hardy climb up even higher towers, then jump off them, and, while we know they didn’t really land on their back in the dirt after a leap of a few hundred feet, it looks damn good. This is a hundred year old movie and I’m getting a powerful dose of vertigo just watching it.

On the side of not just negative but outright awful, there’s also a third farmhand, played by Curtis McHenry. He’s Snowball, he’s scared of everything and he lazes around the fields with copious amounts of watermelon for company. Guess what colour he is? At least he’s played by a talented black actor rather than a white dude in blackface, but still. Anyway, when the cyclone arrives and everyone takes shelter in a hut, he’s so scared by a bolt of lightning that he runs along the clouds and dives inside.

And, of course, we know the next bit. After the hut rolls off a cliff, causing zero damage to its apparently invunerable occupants, they’re in Oz and characters are quickly established by the Wizard, who seizes his opportunity to join the side of good.

So Semon becomes the Scarecrow, because he’s forced to hide in a cornfield; Hardy is the Tin Man after hiding in a scrap metal pile; and Snowball gets a lion costume to scare people, rather ironically. It’s odd to find that none of them are these characters for long, just long enough for PR photos, I guess.

There’s story here, of course, but it’s hardly worth talking about. What matters is that we get shenanigans with packing crates that are littered around the dungeon for some reason. We get shenanigans with real live lions. And we get shenanigans at ridiculous heights that include aeroplane stunts.

To be fair, Semon does wrap up plot points, but, if we ever cared about that, we don’t by the time we get far enough for it to matter. It’s a slapstick comedy feature and all its value is found in its slapstick comedy and stuntwork. As always, Semon delivers the goods and folk like Hardy, McHenry and Frank Alexander are excellent. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough, even in 1925, and Semon lost a fortune. His health suffered and sadly he died three years later, bankrupt in a sanitorium.