The Wizard of Oz

Opening and scarcely resembling the 1939 approach or the novel, director and star Larry Semon comments, then appears un-credited as the toymaker, introducing the story device with grand-daughter Jean Johnston, and in Oz, Josef Swickard, Virginia Pearson and Otto Lederer, all unfamiliar characters, in The Wizard Of Oz, 1925.

Now in Oz and in trouble with unsympathetic authorities, the Wizard (Charles Murray), who freely admits he’s only a mortal huckster, hopes to demonstrate his value by his fake transformation of two Kansas farmhands, director Larry Semon as the Scarecrow, and Oliver Hardy the Tin Woodsman, in The Wizard Of Oz, 1925.

Again in Kansas, fuller exposition regarding the two nameless farmhands (director Larry Semon, and Oliver Hardy) who are both suitors to Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan), and who will later appear as the Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman, though they’re only disguises, not characters, in Semon’s off-beat 1925 silent, The Wizard Of Oz.

Director and star Larry Semon as the toymaker is reading the famed novel to his unhappy granddaughter, who prefers he jump to Kansas, thus we meet Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy, Aunty Em and Uncle Henry (Mary Carr, Frank Alexander) then Oliver Hardy as a farmhand and suitor (and later the Tin Woodsman), in The Wizard Of Oz, 1925.