The Wizard of Oz - 1939

Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, 1939 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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The Wizard of Oz (1939) is everybody's cherished favorite, perennial fantasy film musical from MGM during its golden years. For many seasons, it was featured regularly on network TV as a prime time event (its first two showings were on CBS television on November 3, 1956 and in December, 1959) and then annually for Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or Easter time. It soon became a classic institution, and a rite of passage for everyone, and probably has been seen by more people than any other motion picture over multiple decades. Initially, however, the film was not commercially successful (at $3 million), but it was critically acclaimed.

All of its images (the Yellow Brick Road, the Kansas twister), characters (e.g., Auntie Em, Toto, Dorothy, the Wicked Witch), dialogue (e.g., "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!", "We're not in Kansas anymore," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," or the film's final line: "There's no place like home"), and music ("Over the Rainbow") have become indelibly remembered, and the classic film has been honored with dozens of books, TV shows (such as HBO's dramatic prison series Oz), references in other films, and even by pop groups (singer Elton John with his Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road album, or Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon).

The film's plot is easily condensed: lonely and sad Kansas farmgirl Dorothy dreams of a better place, without torment against her dog Toto from a hateful neighbor spinster, so she plans to run away. During a fierce tornado, she is struck on the head and transported to a land 'beyond the rainbow' where she meets magical characters from her Kansas life transformed within her unconscious dream state. After travels down a Yellow Brick Road to the Land of Oz, and the defeat of the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy and her friends are rewarded by the Wizard of Oz with their hearts' desires - and Dorothy is enabled to return home to Kansas.

A Star Is Born - 1954

Actress Judy Garland, in Scene from Film "A Star Is Born" with Actor James Mason Premium Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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A Star is Born is the superb 1954 musical, acclaimed by many as the greatest Hollywood musical ever made. Judy Garland's intense performance as the main character, probably the finest of her entire career, illuminates the film based upon Moss Hart's screenplay. It is a remake of William Wellman's original 1937 film by the same name that starred Janet Gaynor. The third version was a poorly made A Star is Born (1976) with Barbra Streisand as a pop singer named Esther Hoffman and Kris Kristofferson as John Norman Howard - a rock star.

The film's director, George Cukor, had also directed the film What Price Hollywood? (1932) that is considered the source of all three film versions. Cukor ironically commented upon Hollywood and how it only cared for its own by strategically positioning three official Hollywood ceremonies at the beginning, middle, and end of the film. Each one chronicled the downfall of a talented, but alcoholic Hollywood movie star (James Mason). [Actors who rejected the role included Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant (who accepted but then declined), Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, and Montgomery Clift.]

The emotionally-intense film also hinted at the real-life troubles and problems (five marriages) in the career of its female star - a victim of the Hollywood studio system - during the film's making. Garland's realistic performance reflected the upheavals in her own personal life that led to her death from a drug overdose - and ironically, this film's co-star James Mason delivered her funeral's eulogy in New York in 1969. Predicted to win the Best Actress Oscar, Garland was devastated by the loss to Grace Kelly in an lesser role in The Country Girl.

Meet Me in St. Louis - 1944

Meet Me in St. Louis Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) is a delightful, classic, nostalgic, poignant, and romanticized musical film - and one of the greatest musicals ever made. It tells the story of a turn-of-the-century family in suburban, midwestern St. Louis of 1903, who live in a stylish Edwardian home at 5135 Kensington Avenue. The city, and the well-to-do Smith family (with four beautiful daughters), is on the verge of hosting (and celebrating) the arrival of the spectacular 1904 World's Fair. However, the family's head of the house is beckoned to New York due to a job promotion - an uprooting move that threatens to indelibly change the lives of the family members forever. Filmed during WWII, the decision to remain in St. Louis in the film's conclusion affirmed that nothing will be altered for the American family.

This gem of cinematic, picture-postcard Americana and youthful romance, is richly filmed in Technicolor. It marked the beginning of the golden age of MGM musicals (and producer Arthur Freed's unit), and ultimately became the second most successful film for MGM (behind Gone With the Wind (1939)).

The story is based on the book of the same name from Sally Benson's memoirs of her life in St. Louis, Missouri from 1903-4 - they were recalled and written in multiple issues of The New Yorker Magazine from 1941-1942 (originally published under the title "5135 Kensington" and eventually gathered together as The Kensington Stories). The charming stories, a dozen in all to represent each of the twelve months of the year, are expressed in the film in its musical numbers. The film abandoned the 'put-on-a-show' mentality of so many other backstage song/dance films. Its songs and wonderful performances are carefully and naturally integrated into the story of the close-knit family's day-to-day life, and serve to advance the action and plot from one season to the next.