The Wizard of Oz (1925 film) The Wizard of Oz (1925 film) The Wizard of Oz is a 1925 American silent fantasy-adventure comedy film directed by Larry Semon, who also performs in the lead role as a Kansas farmhand and later in the story disguised as the Scarecrow. This production, which is the only completed 1920s adaptation of L. Frank Baum's novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", costars Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy, Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodman in a portion of the film, and Spencer Bell briefly disguised as a less "cowardly" Lion than in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer version of Baum's work. The 1925 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,