Contrary to what a certain US cable network would have you believe, not every old movie is a “classic.” At the dawn of the 1960’s, The Wizard of Oz was twenty-five years old; that is practically the very definition of “classic.” And yet, this movie beloved by billions around the around was not considered a “classic.” It would take television to do that.
The yearly tradition of airing the film on CBS—usually sometime in March—is what transformed the musical adventures of Dorothy and her rather bizarre companions into a classic. Sometime that which occurred around that time likely contributed to that transformation as well: the construction of the Eisenhower interstate highway system. Or, as it might be better termed for these purpose, the yellow brick of American society.
What does a series of interconnected boring gray paved roads have to do with making The Wizard of Oz a cultural cross-generational touchstone? The ease of going to Oz and the coming back to that place there’s else like: home. While it was possible to pursue a dream on the other side of the country long before the creation of the superhighway, it was no easy trick to go back home when the urge was calling. The Wizard of Oz is about the lure of a dreams calling you to faraway places where nothing at all is like home, but it is also about those pangs of heartsickness that make you want to get back home. Maybe not permanently—it is highly unlikely that Dorothy will live out the rest of her life in Kansas after seeing the miracle of the Emerald City—but at least for a visit. The ability to pursue a dream and get home is part of the American Dream. Classic and aristocratic snobbery does not keep you from seeking out that dream. Those things also do not obstruct any happy memories that urge you to go home again.
The coincidence of this story of the lure of going away and the desire to return home again becoming literally a yearly tradition which children and their parents looked forward to all year and which resulted in special nights of viewing for millions of families across a country where millions of other families were separated in March, but perhaps making planes to see each other again in the summer or come the holiday season cannot be underestimated as a mechanism for making The Wizard of Oz the classic that it had never been between its released in 1939 and its absence from television viewing across the country in the 1950’s.
Few who marvel at the wonder of Dorothy’s adventures in Oz have not felt at some point in their lives a strong primal desire to replicate her experience. That experience in the real world would, by definition, be substantially different. Perhaps for some it would be heading across the country to become a movie star. For others it would be trekking form the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Northwest to become a lumberjack. Oz is different for everybody, but home is always the same.
It is the place you want to return to when you leave. And the highway system became for millions upon millions of American the equivalent of red shoes with heels that could be clicked to bring about what for those who lived a century before truly would have seemed like magic.
