They're three sad souls
Oh me, oh my,
No brains, no heart,
He's much too shy.
But never mind you three,
Here's the Wizard as you can see.
He'll fix that one, two, three
In that funny place called the world of Oz.
Oh the world of Oz is a funny, funny place
Where everyone has a funny, funny face.
All the streets are paved with gold,
And no one ever grows old.
In that funny land lives the Wizard of Oz.
That song
popped into my head while I was driving home the other day. Weird.
The Tales of the Wizard of Oz was a series of
cartoons produced by
Rankin/Bass in 1961. Each 5-minute cartoon was written by
Arthur Rankin, Jr. Because the episodes were so short, they were most often used as filler between other cartoons or as part of a montage of other short cartoons like
The New Adventures of Pinocchio.
The Tales was loosely based on the characters from the
L. Frank Baum classic
The Wizard of Oz, featuring:
Dorothy
Toto
The Wizard of Oz
The Wicked Witch (voice by
Peggi Loder)
Desmond, the dragon
Dandy, the Lion
Socrates, the Scarecrow (voice by
Alfie Scopp)
Rusty, the Tin Man (voice by
Larry D. Mann)
The
Munchkins (voice by
Susan Morse)
The story lines were simple and relied on the viewer knowing the personalities of the characters from the original story (ie. the lion is a coward, the scarecrow is brainless).
I remember watching this show in the 80s and I seem to recall that
Dorothy usually played a supporting role in most episodes rather than the lead. She was always helping the other characters accomplish something, but really didn’t do anything herself.
Another nostalgic memory: The voice of the wizard sounded like
W. C. Fields. I didn’t know who W.C. Fields was at the time, but now that I think about it the wizard also had a big nose and bald head.
Some sources say there are 130 episodes while others say 150. Below are the titles of the 17 episodes that I was able to find:
The Magic World of Oz
The Mail Man
The Pony Express
The Witch Switch
Leapin Lion
The Magic Hat
Machine-Gun Morris
Movie Maid
The Big Cake Bake
Desmond's Dillema
The Raffle
Be a Card
The Great Oz Auto Race
Well Done
The Do-it-Yourself Heart
The Hillies and the Billies
Love Sick
Sources
www.eskimo.com/~tiktok/faq09.html
www.toonarific.com/t/talesofwizardofoz.html
www.bcdb.com
us.imdb.com/title/tt0054568/
Being a kid in the '80s