Brandy Talbott This is a very moving and telling film. We have watched it about 20 times now!! I must say I missed this TV film when it aired originally. However, in February of this year we purchased the 75th Anniversary collectors kit. If you are an avid Oz buff, it is a must purchase and this movie is included. While it is not an digitally updated as the Wizard of Oz itself, you can really tell the awesome portrayals of two more awesome actors who have left us-John Ritter and Rue McClanahan :( I would recommend on seeing this film for all families. It's almost as magical as the original movie itself! The box set also comes with commentaries, deleted scenes and songs, biographies of the original Wizard of Oz cast and literature as well as a watch.

rye-bread It's been years since I saw the movie. I tried taping it when it was first broadcast--the reception was awful. I thought the tape unwatchable. It was broadcast again. I think we were taping some other show.But I watched the tape again--I had misplaced it--or thought I hadn't gotten the whole movie. I was pleasantly surprised.The beginning of the show is the widowed Mrs. Baum at the Hollywood premier. Scads of reporters are trying to interview the cast. A single sharp young correspondent notices the elder lady. She's been invited as a token guest. No one really notices her--except the reporter. They sit on the front steps of the replica of the Henry and Em Gale house. She gives him the straight dope. The movie is told in flashback.The end is pure shameless schmaltz. The interview ends. She doesn't even bother going in to watch the movie based on her husband's beloved book. She just stays outside reminiscing. The sounds of the opening theme music we're all familiar with are heard from the theater. The circle is complete. It's a lump-in-the-throat moment.

Stebaer4 You'll be taken away most immediately starting with the prologue to the movie as you will the start of the movie as many prologues to TV-Movies are supplementary but it's also very interesting to see the many faces of Oz as L.Frank Baum dreams them up.to see how he gave a boy guts while he was sitting in a widow sill & told the story of a farm boy & later to a girl on her ailing bed "Remember that story,I told you of The Boy on The Farm?;Well it was really a girl." and then he kept it this way in her memory as she passed away.You'll find it intriguing as you see Lyman as all of the characters in his dreams and as he is then suddenly it's just as intriguing when you see his wife then yelling at him "Frank!"as she tries to get him back to reality.It was also most intriguing as he was telling these stories to the kids how one of them even asked "Well what's the name of this place?"and then he looked on the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and said " Oz."As I also know from another source it was his Mother-in-Law of whom said to him "You'd be a fool if you didn't publish them.But as this TV-Movie also shows one publisher after the other rejected them and so out of despair he actually going to rip them up and discard them but his wife had then stopped him insisting that they'd still make it big some day and she was right and as the movie ends with the interview of Baum's widow wrapping up she was then asked "You mean to tell me that if it wasn't for you then The Wizard of Oz would never have been?"She then said to him "Young man their's only one dreamer of Oz and That's L.Frank Baum." of which to some like my Mom said makes totally no sense but to others like me it's more than just a blind metaphor like many of them that are in the movie itself and means "What difference does that make if there's only One Dreamer of Oz?"Truthfully Stephen "Steve" G. Baer a.k.a."Ste" of Framingham,Ma.USA

artzau This film deserves to available on video or DVD. As far as I know, this is one of the few versions of the life of Lionel Frank Baum, the author of the Oz series. The film, a made-for-TV film with John Ritter, treats the subject of L. Frank Baum's creating the Wizard of Oz book. The story is largely a fictionalized version of Baum's odyssey to creating the book and Baum purists (myself included) may be tempted to snort at the inclusion of issues that have been added into the mythology of the creation of the Oz books. However, this little slips are forgivable in the overall presentation of the life of a gentle man who truly loved children and whose works remain classics to this day. Baum was a complex individual whose works-- particularly the earlier ones-- were more complex than meets the eye. His themes touched on female voter issues (a hot issue in the turn of century, pre-feminist days), the ethics of creating life and the responsibility of science. This little movie does not go into these issues, nor should it have, for that matter. But, in any case, it should be available for those of us who would like to see it again.