The Wizard of Oz on television The Kaye segment did not include a television set as part of its design. Some humor as sometimes incorporated into these segments. Red Skelton was seen as two characters: Before the film began, he was seen in a studio set of an early 20th-century bookstore, in costume as a Victorian-era storyteller who introduced L. Frank Baum's original 1900 novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" to a young girl played by Skelton's real daughter, and at film's end, he appeared in a studio recreation of a modern living room as himself. Danny Kaye reassured viewers not to panic when the film
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) best films of 1939. Roger Ebert chose it as one of his Great Films, writing that ""The Wizard of Oz" has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them." Writer Salman Rushdie acknowledged ""The Wizard of Oz" was my very first literary influence" in his 2002 musings about the film. He has written: "When I first saw "The Wizard of Oz", it made a writer of me." His first short story,