His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (film)
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His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz is a 1914 film production, directed by J. Farrell MacDonald and written and produced by L. Frank Baum. It stars Violet MacMillan, Frank Moore, Vivian Reed, Todd Wright, Pierre Couderc, and Fred Woodward.
The film had a troubled distribution history. It opened on October 14, 1914, to little success. Early in 1915, it was reissued under the title The New Wizard of Oz and was slightly more successful. The opening reel was lost for many years. While it was eventually recovered, it did not contain the opening titles, and Dick Martin's titles, designed in the 1960s, continued to be used, which falsely claimed that Baum was the director of the film, misspelled Mai Wells's name, and left out Arthur Smollet's credit, entirely.
The film is loosely based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but Baum introduced many new characters and a large new story that became the basis for The Scarecrow of Oz. Similar to the novel, the Scarecrow's origin is revealed, although his life is now attributed to "the Spirit of the Corn", who appears as a conventional Hollywood depiction of a Native American. The Tin Woodman (Pierre Couderc) is found rusted stiff and oiled, but he is already Emperor of the Winkies. Dorothy (Violet Macmillan) is a slave to Mombi (Wells) who looks like W.W. Denslow's depiction of the Wicked Witch of the West. The Cowardly Lion is encountered only briefly, and battles The Lonesome Zoop, a character who appears in all three films. All of the animal roles are attributed to Fred Woodward, though too many appear in the same shot at once for him to have played them all.
The main premise deals with King Krewl (Raymond Russell) as a cruel dictator in the Emerald City. He wishes to marry his daughter, Princess Gloria (Vivian Reed) to a buffoonish pantaloon of an old courtier named Googly-Goo (Smollett), but she is in love with Pon, the Gardener's boy (Todd Wright). Krewl employs Mombi to freeze the heart of Gloria so she will not love Pon any longer. This she does by pulling out her heart (which looks somewhere between a valentine and a bland representation of a heart withough any vessels) and coating it with ice. Dorothy runs away with the now heartless Gloria, accompanied by Pon and eventually the Scarecrow (Frank Moore), and they gain ground by crossing a river as Mombi chases them. As with the novel, the Scarecrow's pole gets stuck in the river bed and leaves him stranded, now sliding down the pole and making asides to the camera, mostly without intertitles. The frozen Gloria even makes a malevolent stare directly into the camera at one point.
In an effective use of deep focus photography, they meet the lost little boy, Button-Bright (Mildred Harris). Mombi reaches the tin castle and transforms Pon into a kangaroo. The Tin Woodman chops off her head, but this merely slows her down as she hunts for it and places it back on. The Wicked Witch of the East in The Tin Woodman of Oz is later described as having done a similar thing to him when he was still human.
The Wizard (J. Charles Haydon) tricks Mombi by letting the group hide in the Red Wagon, pulled by the Sawhorse, and they come out of the top. He traps Mombi in a container of "Preserved Sandwitches" and paints out the "sand" and the plural, carrying her away in his pocket. The Scarecrow, taking a barrage of arrows that would make Taketori Washizu envious, tosses Krewl's soldiers over the battlements to deal with the Cowardly Lion, who cannot climb the rope ladder over the city wall. With the support of the people, the Scarecrow is easily able to depose King Krewl. The Wizard releases Mombi, and compels her to restore Pon to his normal form and unfreeze Gloria's heart.
The film was unsuccessful, though it was perceived as well above average fare by critics of the timesee reviews collected from various trade papers in The Baum Bugle Winter 2006. The film is currently in need of restoration, including framing and color correction (video prints are notoriously bright, particularly for Mombi's decapitation sequence). The framing may no longer be correctable, as the cropping is the result of the area used for the soundtrack in contemporary films was part of the picture area at the time, though it is a noticeable defect in contemporary presentations of the film.
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