Film

Most people consider the famous 1939 Judy Garland musical the first big-screen version of "The Wizard of Oz." Most people, then, would be dead wrong. 29 years before the future Hollywood starlet slipped her fake ruby slippers on, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" covered Dorothy's journey in a whopping 13 minutes. Based partly on a 1902 Broadway musical version of the novel, it's the earliest surviving "Oz" on celluloid, if not the most recognizable.

Some 15 years later, young comedian Oliver Hardy took on the role of the Tin Man in 1925's "Wizard of Oz." The film took some serious liberties with the plot: Dorothy learns from her fat, evil Uncle Henry that she's actually a runaway princess from Oz and must marry a deposed Ozian prince. It gets weirder as Hardy's Tin Man turns traitor by teaming up with the diabolical ruler of Oz, Prime Minister Krewl.

The haze cleared up significantly in 1971's animated "Journey Back to Oz," the first official sequel to the 1939 musical. It's loosely based on the second Oz novel, "The Marvelous Land of Oz," though again spins a few new strands into the web by featuring Garland's own progeny, Liza Minnelli, as the voice of Dorothy (other notables include Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney and Margaret Hamilton, the original Wicked Witch of the West). Oz is now ruled by a benevolent Scarecrow, though the cousin of the Wicked Witch, Mombi, is plotting against him. With her new pals Pumpkinhead and Woodenhead Stallion (a great band name, by the way), Dorothy eventually defeats the witch and makes it back to Kansas in one piece.

She would stay that way for only five years, because 1976 sees the first thorough departure from the fantasy altogether via the Australian rock musical "20th Century Oz." Featuring Dorothy as a teenage groupie, "Oz" bombards its viewer with a torrent of '70s rock clichés: the Good Fairy is an effeminate tailor; Dorothy's comrades are a dumb surfer, a heartless mechanic and a cowardly biker; the Wizard is an androgynous rock star. We can only assume his name is Ziggy.

Not all '70s "Oz" musicals were so ill-conceived. In fact, the 1978 film adaptation of the Broadway hit "The Wiz" might be the most famous take (or mis-take) on the fantasy wonderland. Starring soul heavyweight Diana Ross as Dorothy and a pre-bananas Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, the Motown-produced movie recast the tale in an alternate version of New York. As our heroes eased on down the road, they encountered homeless monsters, a motorcycle gang and Poppy Girls pushing sleep-inducing powder. Subtle it ain't. Yet despite solid performances by Jacko, Nipsey Russell (Tin Man) and Richard Pryor (The Wiz), urbanizing a classic proved too risky an endeavor: "The Wiz" tanked commercially and critically, signaling an end to Ross' budding film career.