The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910 film) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910 film) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1910 American silent fantasy film and the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", made by the Selig Polyscope Company without Baum's direct input. It was created to fulfill a contractual obligation associated with Baum's personal bankruptcy caused by "The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays", from which it was once thought to have been derived. It was partly based on the 1902 stage musical "The Wizard of Oz", though much of the film deals with the Wicked Witch of the
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz continued to include these faces on gates. Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory. Historian Ranjit S. Dighe wrote that for 60 years after the book's publication, "virtually nobody" had such an interpretation until Henry Littlefield, a high-school teacher. In his 1964 "American Quarterly" article, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism", Littlefield posited that the book contained an allegory of the late 19th-century bimetallism debate regarding monetary policy. Littlefield's thesis achieved some support, but has been strenuously attacked by others. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" has become an established