{"id":29971,"date":"2022-06-13T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=29971"},"modified":"2022-06-12T06:17:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-12T10:17:12","slug":"the-wizard-of-oz-1925-z-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=29971","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Wizard of Oz&#8221; (1925) \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2022\/z061322zview_wizardofoz25.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"387\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The Wizard of Oz <\/strong><\/em>(1925)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Director: <strong>Larry Semon<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Screenplay:\u00a0 <strong>Larry Semon<\/strong>, <strong> L. Frank Baum Jr. <\/strong>based on <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em> by <strong>L. Frank Baum<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Starring:\u00a0 <strong>Larry Semon, Dorothy Dwan,<\/strong> <strong>Frank Alexander<\/strong>, <strong>Charles Murray, Josef Swickerd, Oliver Hardy, Mary Carr\u00a0<\/strong>and <strong>Spencer Bell.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tagline: <em>The Thrilling Comedy Cyclone! The Wonderful Land of Oz! The Den of Man Eating Lions! The Famous Scarecrow and Tin Man! The Startling Airplane Rescue! The 100 Foot Leap for Life! All combined in the greatest screen novelty ever made. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Overview:\u00a0 Beware of Spoilers\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The movie begins with a toymaker reading <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em> to his granddaughter&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dorothy (Dwan) is a just-turned 18 year old who was left on Auntie Em&#8217;s (Carr) doorstep as a baby.\u00a0 In reality, Dorothy is the rightful heir to the throne in the land of Oz.\u00a0 When a tornado deposits Dorothy, and three farmhands in Oz, the evil Prime Minister Kruel (Swickerd) realizes that the true ruler has returned.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Kruel sends his soldiers to do away with Dorothy and crew.\u00a0 To escape, one of the farmhands disguises himself as a scarecrow, another a tin woodsman and later the third ends up in a lion suit.\u00a0 Will Dorothy survive and be crowned queen?\u00a0 Will Prime Minister Kruel and Lady Vishuss be deposed?\u00a0 (Psst!\u00a0 It&#8217;s a kid&#8217;s book, so what do you think?)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Larry Semon was a popular comedian of the day.\u00a0 Semon wrote, produced and starred in this version of <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em>.\u00a0 The Scarecrow gets most film time and he&#8217;s played by, you guessed it, Larry Semon.\u00a0 Semon had a love for big budgets and tons sight gags. <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em> has both.\u00a0 We get a lot of visual gags, and the ending even features Semon climbing and swinging between towers while being shot at with a canon, a leap to a rope ladder from a passing plane and more.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A young pre-Laurel &amp; Hardy, Oliver Hardy appears in the film playing the farmhand who becomes the Tin Man.\u00a0 Spencer Bell (an African-American actor) is billed a G. Howe Black and appears in a few scenes that even at that time were thought as demeaning as his billing.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em> (1925) earns a 3 of 5 star rating.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_c.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2022\/z061322zview_wizardofoz25b.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"446\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wizard of Oz (1925) Director: Larry Semon Screenplay:\u00a0 Larry Semon, L. Frank Baum Jr. based on The Wizard of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,17,63,54,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-celebs","category-humor","category-movies","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29971"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30010,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29971\/revisions\/30010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}