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This chapter focuses on the psychoanalytic interpretation of and popular case writing around the Golden Age classics Alice, Peter Pan, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Case writing on children’s literature undertakes not only the education of the reader but also a broader critique of innocence, ignorance, or immaturity. With both Alice and Peter Pan, critical case writing takes a cue from psychoanalytic case writing and from broader anxiety about man-child sexuality, discernible in popular retellings and adaptations. The Wizard of Oz has also been assumed as having a repressed adult history. These and other Golden Age texts are addressed to adult as well as child subjects.

Fleming was brought into the production of MGM’s bold new undertaking, an adaptation of Frank L. Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Understandably, Fleming was both excited by the potential of the project and wary, as shooting had already started under other directors. To the delight of some of the actors and the irritation of others, Fleming was a powerful force on the set. and the friendship that he struck up with the young Judy Garland during the shooting of the movie proved to be lifelong. This chapter explores the production of The Wizard of Oz and features many anecdotes from the set.

This chapter begins by discussing the advent of the musical comedy in the 1880s, as a spruced-up burlesque imitating Gilbert and Sullivan. Cinderella At School (1881), written by Henry Woolson Morse, and based on T. W. Robertson's play School, was the first work that billed itself as a “musical comedy,” though the term did not catch on till the early 1900s. The chapter also describes the Extravaganza—a blend of pantomime, burlesque, and musical comedy aimed at family audiences. The most notable examples are the The Wizard of Oz and Babes In Toyland.

This chapter chronicles Bolger’s assignments as an employee of MGM. Of primary note is The Great Ziegfeld, the acclaimed Oscar-winning picture that earned Bolger a longer contract. Bolger’s next Broadway collaboration with Rodgers and Hart, On Your Toes, is explored. This was the first Broadway show to incorporate ballet and included “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” choreographed by George Balanchine and introduced by Bolger. Bolger then returns to MGM to film the Nelson Eddy/Eleanor Powell movie Rosalie, and the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald pictures Sweethearts and The Girl of the Golden West. Bolger’s assignment to, and the production of, The Wizard of Oz, figure prominently into the second half of the chapter.

The stories of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (Fleming 1939) and Cinderella focus on magic slippers that can only be worn by the ‘right’ person. In various cinematic versions of Cinderella (most notably the 1911 Méliès version), the Prince tries the glass slipper on the feet of a number of ‘wrong’ women before finding the perfect match in Cinderella. In both The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella, as in more recent films that invoke these narratives such as Sex and the City (1998), shoes are a commodity associated with rites of passage and, ultimately, with power. This essay examines the economy of magic shoes, symbolic exchange, and sexual difference, arguing that these films are as much about shopping and the act of trying on as they are about finding one’s feet in a male-dominated world.

The book concludes with a speculative glance at two unusual spaces: the fantasy world into which Dorothy plummeted at the beginning of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and the to some measure equally contrived landscape of individual “homesteads” that made up the post–World War II American suburb. In different ways, each was indebted to a distinctly Midwestern vision of land and culture. For Dorothy, the flight to Oz offered a means to reinvent the constrained world of the gridded Midwest as a vibrant landscape of swirling hills and opulent color. For postwar Americans, the flight to the suburb, with its idiosyncratic mix of regimented spaces, curvilinear layouts, and homogeneously democratic culture (much of it realized through aerial imagery), represented a new incarnation of a Jeffersonian society of independent, landowning homesteaders. Although the promise of each flight proved illusory, they both indicate the continued relevance of the Midwestern aerial image, which through them became a means to reconfigure not only the modern rural landscape but also the form, ideology, and experience of American social space.

Though Fleming left very few personal notes behind, his life had been extensively recorded through the press and friends’ remembrances. With his incredible successes like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and earlier hits like Red Dust, he influenced future generations of filmmakers. Fleming successfully worked for several major studios ranging from Paramount to MGM. Yet he has remained relatively uncelebrated, with many of his credits going to the producers. However, his abilities to move across genres, to take budding actors and turn them into wildly successful film stars, and to impress almost everyone he met have made him into a true Hollywood legend.

In this chapter, a curator from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London tells of efforts to track down the iconic ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz for the major exhibition Hollywood Costume held at the museum in 2012. Once the shoes were located, they travelled to London from Washington, D.C. in their own seat on a plane, handcuffed to a security guard and accompanied by the curator of the Smithsonian Institution. Their arrival at the V&A prompted a top-secret security operation. The resulting exhibition remains one of the most successful in the V&A’s history.

This chapter looks at how Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire (places of memory) emphasized the need to revive queer identity, queer cultural collectivity, and marked environments during the post-AIDS onslaught. Queer spaces were initially identified as areas that are not built, only implied, and usually invisible. However, this issue somehow gained attention after the commissioning of two prominent lieux de mémoire: the Gay Liberation monument in New York and the Homomonument in Amsterdam. The chapter also examines Charles Jencks’“Gay Eclectic” style of house architecture, gay neighborhoods, and gay culture iconizing the character of Dorothy in the film The Wizard of Oz.

What can make a musical a great film? Some answers may be found by looking at some of the genre’s most sublime specimens. From the opening scene of Love Me Tonight to the elegant balance of Gigi and astute calculation of The Sound of Music, there are numerous ways to captivate an audience and balance the song and dance and script. The best of the lot are timeless, like The Wizard of Oz, while the 1929 smash Gold Diggers of Broadway was so much of its era that it eventually vanished. As for Singin’ in the Rain, much of its triumph revolves around its shrewd awareness of its history, its genre, and its ancestors.

This chapter examines the motif of red shoes in The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948) and The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), in light of the intervening World War. Whereas Dorothy’s ruby slippers are linked to positive transformation, Vicky’s bloody shoes in the later film stand for the rejection of domesticity in the context of post-war gender politics. They take her far from home, to be torn apart by the forces at war in her psyche.

Not as well known as some of the great songwriters, Harold Arlen was a highly original composer with a distinctive style that displayed the strong influence of African American music. Indeed, his best-known songs date from his years he wrote for the Cotton Club in Harlem. Arlen is perhaps most famous for writing “Over the Rainbow” for the film The Wizard of Oz, but this song is not representative of Arlen’s unique style. This chapter explores some of his best work, including some that challenge the listener beyond normal expectations.