Today has been one of those weird coincidence days. I was just reading a post this morning about someone’s childhood memories of a Disney film that featured the world of Oz. So I went to IMDB to do some research on it and found it was that movie from 1985 called ‘Return to Oz‘ (wikipedia, amazon)and it featured Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. I always liked the film, but it never did very well at the box office. Of course, not everybody agrees with my assessment. MovieMistakes chronicles 44 errors in the film
I totally forgot that it was a Disney film. Disney didn’t even open Disney-MGM Studios until 1989. Which wasn’t helped by the fact that Disney didn’t seek MGM’s approval to use the Oz story for the movie.
Now tonight I’m just skimming some Disney photo blogs and guess what videblog posted today? The Return To Oz float from the 1985 version of Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade.
As far back as the 1950s, Disney owned the rights to all the Oz books except for the original Wizard of Oz.
Check out the Fourth Anniversary Show featured on the Disney Treasures DVD You Host Walt Disney. It features the Mouseketeers in a series of musical numbers inspired by the Oz books, and Walt even acknowledges that they own the rights.
The finally mad Return to OZ in 1985, and distinctly steered away from any similarities to the MGM classic.
I remember the float fondly when I worked at Disneyland. It was part of the Electric Light Parade, and had great representations of TikTok and the Sawhorse! Two of my favorite things in the same place. Disney and OZ!
The irony is that they kept Dorothy’s shoes Ruby, like the 1939 MGM movie, whereas the book shoes are silver. Surprised Disney got away with that. Still – I really enjoyed the movie, even though it was very dark and without song.
Who posted the pictures of the float? I was wondering if anyone had any other photos of video of the float? If anyone has any interesting Return to Oz info, please e-mail me I would love to hear it!
[email protected] (the “O” in Oz is a zero)
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