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The Rainbow Road to Oz

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Rainbow Road to Oz was a proposed, but never finished, Walt Disney Studios 1950s live-action film about characters in the Land of Oz. Inspired by L. Frank Baum's early 20th century Oz novels, it was to have starred some of the Mouseketeers, including Darlene Gillespie as Dorothy Gale and Annette Funicello as Princess Ozma, as well as Bobby Burgess as the Scarecrow, Doreen Tracey as the Patchwork Girl, Jimmie Dodd as the Cowardly Lion, Tommy Kirk as the villainous son of the Wicked Witch of the West, and Kevin Corcoran.[1]

In 1954, when the film rights to Baum's remaining thirteen Oz books were made available, Walt Disney Productions acquired them[2] for use in Walt Disney's television series Disneyland which led to the live-action film Rainbow Road to Oz, which was abandoned and never completed.[3]

Preview segments from the film aired on September 11, 1957 on Disneyland's fourth-anniversary show.[4]

Recordings of several of the unused songs from the proposed film were later incorporated into Disneyland LPs in the 1960s. The Canadian release live concert CD, "Songs in the Key of Oz" presents several songs from Rainbow Road to Oz, among many other Oz-related numbers, performed by Canadian musical theater performers Joe Cascone and David Haines.

Theories on why the film was abandoned include Disney's failure to develop a satisfactory script and the popularity of the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz on television which represented potential insurmountable comparisons. Disney ultimately replaced this film project with a new adaptation of Babes in Toyland.

References

  1. ^ "Movie Producers Crashing Broadway", The Washington Post and Times-Herald (September 3, 1957), page B-8
  2. ^ Chambers, Bill. "A Conversation: FFC Interviews Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch". Film Freak Central. Archived from the original on February 18, 2013. Retrieved January 13, 2010.
  3. ^ Hill, Jim. "Disney's long, long journey to Oz". Jim Hill Media. Archived from the original on March 7, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
  4. ^ Disneyland segment at YouTube
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