Claim Check
Is the Wizard of Oz book like the movie? In some ways, yes. But I read the whole novel, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and several things most people remember from the screen are not in the text at all. This is a book versus movie guide, and it spoils the book’s ending. For the film, I only compare what two sources agree on, and I label everything reported.
The Film
First, which film. As of November twenty twenty-six, here is what I could confirm. The Wizard of Oz is an American musical made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and released in nineteen thirty-nine. Britannica credits Victor Fleming with the Technicolor Oz scenes, and says King Vidor directed the black and white Kansas scenes. Reported by History dot com and others, it opened nationwide in the United States on August twenty-fifth, nineteen thirty-nine. Judy Garland plays Dorothy. And in nineteen eighty-nine it was one of the first twenty-five films chosen for the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
I am comparing the book to that film, and to nothing else.
What I Read
The book I read is the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number fifty-five. It has twenty-four chapters and, by my count, about thirty-nine thousand words. Every book claim below comes from that text. Every film claim is labelled reported.
Claim One: Ruby Slippers
Start with the famous one. In the film, Dorothy wears ruby slippers. In the book they are silver.
I searched for it. The words silver shoes appear about twenty times, starting in chapter two, when a pair of silver shoes sticks out from under the fallen house. The word slippers appears zero times. The word ruby appears five times, and all five are about something else, the Golden Cap, Glinda’s throne, and Gayelette’s palace, a place made of ruby.
Why did the film change them? Reported by two sources I checked, the color was chosen to stand out against the yellow brick road and to show off Technicolor. Nobody tells Dorothy about any power until the last chapter. At the start, a Munchkin says there is some charm connected with them, but what it is they never knew.
Claim Two: It Was a Dream
The next one. Reported by Britannica, in the film Dorothy’s trip to Oz is shown as a dream. The book never does that.
I searched the text for dreams. The word dream shows up three times, in forms such as dreamed, and none of them frames the trip. Dorothy dreams of the Emerald City while she sleeps by the river, and of Aunt Em while she waits for Oz. The Lion dreams of courage in a line from the Tin Woodman. That is all.
And the ending says so. Chapter twenty-four is eighty-two words long. Aunt Em is watering cabbages. Dorothy runs to her and says she has come from the Land of Oz. Nobody tells her it was a dream, because it is not one. She also finds a new farmhouse, because the cyclone took the old house. Her friends are not in Kansas. They are gone, and she is back.
Claim Three: The Witches
Third, the witches. Reported by a source I checked, the film changes the role of Glinda. In the book Glinda is the Witch of the South and she is not the one who first meets Dorothy. That is the Witch of the North, a small old woman who kisses her forehead. She turns her cap into a slate, and she is named only by her title.
Glinda is named in only three chapters, eighteen, twenty-two and twenty-three, nineteen mentions in all, and she appears in person only in the last. In chapter twenty-three, she explains the shoes. If Dorothy had known, she could have gone home the first day. That is the opposite of a quest where the shoes are stolen and chased.
Claim Four: The Chase
Which brings me to the chase. Reported by a source I checked, the film moves the Witch’s pursuit of the shoes to the start of the story. In the book, the Wicked Witch of the West does not know Dorothy exists until chapter twelve, when she spots the travelers from her castle door. She sends forty wolves, forty crows and a swarm of bees first. Only when Dorothy is her prisoner does she see the shoes and want them. She gets one, by tripping Dorothy over an invisible bar of iron.
And she is killed by a bucket. Dorothy is angry about her shoe, and throws water at her, not knowing it would kill her.
Claim Five: No Place Like Home
The line people remember is in the book, but not where you might expect. It is said in chapter four, on the road, to the Scarecrow, who cannot understand why she would leave a beautiful country for dry gray Kansas. Dorothy says that no matter how dreary our homes are, people of flesh and blood would rather live there. It is an argument, not a spell.
The spell comes in chapter twenty-three. Dorothy claps her heels together three times, and says take me home to Aunt Em. I could not check how the film handles that line, so I leave it there.
What the Book Has
Now some things I cannot compare, because I could not check them in two sources. So treat these as what the book has, nothing more.
It has the Kalidahs, the Fighting Trees, and a town made of china where a Princess refuses to be carried to Kansas. It has the Hammer-Heads, who shoot their heads like cannonballs. It has the Monkey King’s story of Gayelette and the Golden Cap, which I leave for the character guide. It has a Tin Woodman who is cut into pieces by an enchanted axe. And it has Oz, who is a humbug from Omaha, and who leaves on a balloon without Dorothy. Its three wishes are paid in bran, pins and needles, a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and a green drink. And each friend ends up with a kingdom, the Scarecrow in the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman among the Winkies, and the Lion in his forest, after a fight with a giant spider. If you only know the screen version, those are the details to look for when you pick up the book.
Which Should You Pick
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The film, as reported, puts a frame around the story, a dream, so that Kansas becomes the answer. The book has no frame. The cure for homesickness is already on Dorothy’s feet, and she loses the shoes in the desert anyway. I would watch the film for the songs and the color, and read the book to see what happens when nobody wakes up. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which Oz you met first.
