Oliver Hardy Wizard Of Oz Oliver Hardy 2008 New DVD Top-quality

Wizard Of Oz – 1925 Black & White. Oliver Hardy has a prominent role as the Tin Man in this loosely-adapted version of the Frank Baum story. Larry Semon is the lead character who works on a farm. He is the rival for Dorothy with Oliver Hardy. The great Sennett comedian Charlie Murray plays the old medicine show faker who masquerades as The Wizard of Oz. As the movie unfolds Larry and his sidekick must deal with Royal court intrigue and a mangy lion who seems less than cowardly! This film was tailored more as a vehicle for Larry Semon’s sight-gags and chases but the flavor of Oz is still present. This film was released at the height of Semon’s popularity in the mid-twenties but was distributed by a company which soon went out of business. Semon did not get the exposure and circulation necessary to keep him on top of the heap with other comedians of the day and he soon faded from the scene within a few years and died in 1928 from tuberculosis. Oliver Hardy, of course, went on to perpetual fame with Stan Laurel who also worked briefly with Semon in 1918 when Semon was just beginning his ten year film career. A Toymaker tells a bizarre story about how the Land of Oz was ruled by Prince Kynd, but he was overthrown by Prime Minister Kruel. Dorothy learns from Aunt Em that fat, cruel Uncle Henry is not her uncle, and gives her a note due on her eighteenth birthday, which reveals she is actually Princess Dorothea of Oz, and is supposed to marry Prince Kynd. She, Uncle Henry, and two farmhands are swept to Oz by a tornado. Snowball, a black farmhand soon joins them after a lightning bolt chases him into the sky. They land in Oz, where the farmhands try to avoid capture. Semon becomes a scarecrow, Hardy briefly disguises himself as a Tin Woodman, and Snowball is given a Lion suit by the Wizard, which he uses to scare the Pumperdink guards. Lots of chortle and mirth!