Tales of the Wizard of Oz
This is one of the cartoons I watched as a kid. Disney began making it in 1961 - over 100 short episodes - but I didn't watch it until reruns in the 1970s.
I was thinking about it because I recently read Frank L. Baum's famous children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) for the first time. I think Baum published a total of eleven Oz books, but I'm only interested in the first, the most famous of them, the one that inspired the 1939 Victor Fleming movie starring Judy Garland - and later the Disney cartoon.
They’re three sad souls, oh me, oh my,
No brains, not heart, he’s much too shy.
But never mind you three,
He's the Wizard as you can see
He'll fix that - 1, 2, 3!
In the funny place called the World of Oz
Oh, the World of Oz is a very funny place
Where everyone wears a funny funny face
All the streets are paved with gold
And no one ever grows old
In that funny land lives the Wizard of Oz!
Plot
The premise of the series surrounds Dorothy’s constant desire for the Wizard to send her home, and while the Wizard works on a solution, we are treated to stories of the everyday lives of each character, while they try to avoid the wrath of the Witch and her dragonette named Desmond, and their attempts to attack them even though she bore no real contempt for them at all.
Characters
The entire series is believed to consist of 150-200 shorts which starred such notable characters from the books and films as Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow (named “Socrates,” portrayed as a buffoon), the Tin Woodman (named “rusty, portrayed as a bully), the Cowardly Lion (named “Dandy,” portrayed as a real fraidy-cat), Toto, the all-green, long-nosed complete0with-wart Wicked Witch of the West (named “Wicked”), and the Wizard (who an really perform no discernable magic beyond simple card and sleight-of-hand tricks, and speaks like W.C. Fields). The Munchkins were portrayed as small tear-shaped beings with arms and legs.