The Original ‘Wizard of Oz’ Featured a Comedy Legend But Was Completely Unhinged

This weekend sees the release of Wicked, the highly-anticipated adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, which, despite what certain tie-in toy packages indicate, is no way affiliated with the porn studio of the same name.

But Wicked is hardly the first Wizard of Oz movie, in addition to the 1939 MGM classic, there was the recent Oz the Great and Powerful with James Franco, the ‘70s Motown-produced The Wiz and even a TV version starring the Muppets. And the less said about the animated sequel featuring live-action scenes of Bill Cosby as the Wizard, the better.

But while we all think of the ‘39 version as the definitive cinematic take on the story, it wasn’t actually the first Oz feature film. More than a decade before Judy Garland played Dorothy Gale, there was a feature-length silent version of The Wizard of Oz made in 1925. And it’s completely bonkers. 

In the ‘25 film, Dorothy is a 17-year-old living with an abusive uncle. She’s lusted after by two farmhands, and eventually turns out to be the rightful Princess of the fantastical Land of Oz. The Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion are just the farmhands who throw on cheap costumes while in Oz for some reason. 

There’s a whole lot of old-timey slapstick comedy (a swarm of bees stinging people’s butts, for example) and monarchical politics, but there’s no Toto, no Yellow Brick Road and even the Wicked Witch was somehow left on the cutting room floor. Instead, the villains were the not-so-subtly-named Ambassador Wikked and Prime Minister Kruel.

If all that wasn’t weird enough, toward the end of the story, the Tin Man rats on his friends and joins up with the baddies, and throws the Lion and the Scarecrow in a dungeon. They escape and attempt to flee Oz in a biplane, only for the Scarecrow to fall thousands of feet to his death a minute before the movie concludes. 

This Wizard of Oz is of interest to comedy fans specifically, however, owing to the fact that the unnecessarily horny Tin Man was played by Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame. That’s because the liberal adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s book was written and directed by a guy named Larry Semon. Semon was a major silent film comedy star, and at one point, his popularity rivaled that of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. 

So Hardy ended up in The Wizard of Oz because he regularly worked with Semon, “often taking the part of Semon’s adversary,” which would explain their Oz dynamic. 

Unfortunately for Semon, Hardy and everyone else involved in The Wizard of Oz, the expensive production caused the independent studio behind it, Chadwick Pictures, to go bankrupt, which upended plans for the film's distribution. Semon himself had invested heavily in the bomb, and died just three years later at the age of 39 after himself declaring bankruptcy. At the time, Variety partly blamed his premature death on recent financial stress. 

Say what you will about that crappy James Franco movie, at least it didn’t kill anyone.