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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz "individually developed rather than God given". One parent said, "I do not want my children seduced into godless supernaturalism". Other reasons included the novel's teaching that females are equal to males and that animals are personified and can speak. The judge ruled that when the novel was being discussed in class, the parents were allowed to have their children leave the classroom. Leonard Everett Fisher of "The Horn Book Magazine" wrote in 2000 that "Oz" has "a timeless message from a less complex era, and it continues to resonate". The challenge of valuing oneself during impending adversity has not, Fisher