Harold Arlen: The Wizard of Oz

Released: 1939
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley

Film: When her dog Toto gets her into trouble with a nasty neighbour, Dorothy Gale runs away into an oncoming storm, but it’s only the start of her troubles. A cyclone whisks her away from the monochrome farmlands of Kansas to magical lands of Oz. In her bid to return home, Dorothy has to head for the Emerald City to ask the great Wizard of Oz for help, meeting a Scarecrow who needs a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who needs courage, along the way. But can they get there before the Wicked Witch of the West catches up with them?

Composer: American composer Harold Arlen is the man behind many of the hit songs of the crooners of the 1940s and 1950s. He won an Academy Award for writing the music for ‘Over The Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz in 1940, but also penned the hits ‘Get Happy’, ‘I've Got the World on a String’ and ‘One For My Baby (and One More for the Road)’, among dozens of others.