When The Wizard of Oz opened in theaters—make that movie palaces—on Aug. 25, 1939, audiences weren't immediately blown away by the cinematic marvel. Starring Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, a girl living on a sepia-toned Kansas farm who finds herself in the Technicolor land of Oz after a tornado carries her house over the rainbow (or maybe she had an epic dream thanks to a bump on the head), the MGM production was nominated for five Oscars, but only made about $3 million after costing $2.
7 million to make. Luckily MGM had the brains, heart and courage to re-release the movie in 1949, when it raked in $26 million and finally became a hit. And one or two—or a few dozen—elements of the film have been embedded in our culture ever since, from the ubiquitous "Over the Rainbow" and countless quotable lines ("I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" knows no geographical bounds!) to the popularization of the word "munchkin" to refer to a cute little kid.
"When I was 4 or 5, I watched The Wizard of Oz , and for a year, I asked [my mom] to call me Dorothy," Megan Fox told the New York Times in 2009. "When my mom explained to me that Dorothy was not real, that an actress plays her, I decided I wanted to be an actress." Amy Adams , meanwhile, went off to see the wizard at least once to the tune of Pink Floyd (more on that later), telling Rotten Tomatoes in 2010, "Have you done the watching it with the Dark Side of the Moon ? You should really do that, it’s very strange.
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