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Were you there for the Wizard?
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
September 25, 2009

Image On the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest and most-beloved movies of all time, moviegoers could reenact a day in 1939 by walking up to the box office to buy a ticket for The Wizard of Oz in one of 440 movie theaters around the country, including our very own Victoria Mall mega-outlet.

The movie was remastered and shown in high-definition. A special welcome by TCM host Robert Osbourne and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of The Wizard of Oz were included. Just seeing the Wizard of Oz on a big screen instead of a dinky TV was enough reason to see it.

The price of admission was well worth it. It was the middle of the week, so I wasn't prepared to see a theater filled with adults of all ages and children. I tried to angle for a seat near some little ones so I could watch their reaction. I cackled to myself thinking how all these kids were going to have nightmares for weeks over that green witch and the flying monkeys. One lady near me actually confessed that she avoided apples after watching it as a child because the talking trees spooked her.

NOTHING beats watching Miss Gulch morph into the Wicked Witch of the West, the greatest villain in cinema history. Nobody could scare the pants off children like her. And the most fascinating aspect of all is that Margaret Hamilton started out life as a kindergarten teacher because she LOVED children! Life abounds in ironies, doesn't it?

I would have given anything to watch the reaction of moviegoers back then as Dorothy, in her black-and-white world, opened the door of her house to a world of color.