Semon’s Folly: On the First, Original, and Silent “Wizard of Oz” Feature (1925)

A few words on the notorious 1925 Larry Semon silent version of The Wizard of Oz, the first feature length adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s perennial children’s classic. This was actually the second movie version of the book. A 1910 adaptation had been made by the Selig studio, with L. Frank Baum’s direct involvement and Bebe Daniels in the role of Dorothy, but that one was only 13 minutes long. Semon’s was the first feature length version.

Who was WAS Larry Semon, you may be forgiven for asking, though you plainly don’t read my books or blogs enough? I ranked Semon sixth in my list of the all time greatest silent comedians, although there were certain times when he ranked first at the box office if only fleetingly. My biographical post on the forgotten star is here; and my essay on why he should be better remembered is here. At any rate, as in any good porn movie, Semon was the star, producer, director of the 1925 Wizard of Oz, which is why the guy who plays the Scarecrow is over the title and not the gal who plays Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan) or the gent who plays the Wizard (Charles Murray). A lot of stuff that happens in the film that’s otherwise inexplicable is owing to the fact that it’s a Semon comedy. Certain gags recur throughout all of Semon’s movies, that’s the only reason they’re in this one. The movie was manifestly NOT a hit, which explains its present obscurity and the fact that it was easily and eternally eclipsed by the 1939 MGM version. 

Any resemblance between this film and the Baum book is also purely coincidental. Although technically it was a Baum work — it was co-written by Son of Baum, L. Frank Baum Jr. Still and all, despite the fact that the film opens with an old man reading from a book of The Wizard of Oz, scarcely any story detail remains intact. In this version, the Wizard  is a mere toady of a mean despot named “Emperor Kruel” (Josef Swickard). The great Oliver Hardy is in the film, although, amazingly, he is not the heavy. That role can be said to be played by the twice as heavy Fatty Alexander, here cast as Uncle Henry, a mean bully! Will the heresies never cease? Farm hands Hardy and Semon are rivals for the affection of Dorothy (who is about to turn 18, so it’s not as weird as it first sounds).

While we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a plot, Semon runs afoul of a duck who spits animated white liquid in his face; and then a bunch of animated bees sting his butt, but not before his fundament has been kicked by a mule, sending Semon flying into an enormous patch of cactuses that have mysteriously been transplanted to Kansas. (Semon anticipates Jerry Lewis by wearing inappropriate jewelry—in this case a large ring—that his character would never wear).

There is a third farm hand played by an African-American whose SCREEN billing is “G. Howe Black” (his real name was Curtis McHenry). You can imagine the kind of comedy this character generates. He is first discovered rolling his eyes and slurping a stolen watermelon. Later he will run through the skies as lightning keeps zapping his butt. This stereotypical shtick was a regular feature of Semon comedies.

But we are ahead of ourselves. We learn in a flashback that Dorothy is not really related to Henry and Em (Mary Carr), she was left on the doorstep as an infant (played by the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen on celluloid). A note in the basket says to open the attached envelope when she turns 18—she is clearly the lost Queen of Oz. Bad guys from Oz come to steal the note before she reads it. (They leave Oz in a tri-plane; arrive in Kansas in a biplane. Must be like heaven, when you leave, you lose a pair of wings.)

The tornado arrives by divine intervention bringing Hardy, Semon, Dorothy, Uncle Henry and  to Oz.  Dorothy learns she is to be queen, but the bad guys show up. Semon hides by dressing as a Scarecrow. Hardy, as the Tin Man. They are arrested, but only Semon and McHenry are thrown in the dungeon. Everyone else is perfectly happy about the situation. While Emperor Kruel schemes to marry Dorothy, our friends in the dungeon try to escape.

McHenry then dresses in a lion costume, thus completing the trilogy and fulfilling aesthetic mandate. The film’s best (or most original) sequence emerges…one I believe resuscitated by Abbott and Costello for Africa Screams. Semon and the costumed McHenry get amongst some real lions. Of course at a certain point Semon will think he is with his human friend and get very saucy and confident with an actual lion. Well…you had to be there.

Anyway, in the end, one Prince Kynd (Bryant Washburn) has a sword fight and defeats Emperor Kruel, thus making all the other male characters in the plot superfluous.

EPILOGUE: The requisite Semon set piece on towers with the acrobatic swinging of stunt men. Semon’s character jumps onto an airplane just as the tower he is on is smashed by a cannon—this would go in ANY action film today. Back to the little girl’s dream. There’s no place like home!

Larry Semon’s Wizard of Oz is available to watch on Youtube, for those who are stout of heart. Better to watch it in a silent comedy frame of mind than in the spirit of seeking an Oz fix. You’ve been warned!

For more on classic comedy films like Larry Semon’s Wizard of Oz, please check out: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.