Movies - Dorothy Gale

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Dorothy Gale

	Movies - Dorothy Gale

Dorothy Gale is a fictional character, the protagonist of most of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum. Dorothy first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in many of its sequels. She also is the main character in the classic 1939 movie adaptation of the book. Most recognize Dorothy's iconic appearance, wearing a blue and white checked gingham dress and her hair in pigtails.

The classic books

In The Oz Books, Dorothy is an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. She has a little dog named Toto. Dorothy and Toto are swept away by a cyclone to the Land of Oz and, much like Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, they enter a lively alternative world filled with talking creatures. In most of the Oz books, Dorothy is the main hero of the stories. She is often seen with her best friend and the ruler of Oz, Princess Ozma. Dorothy's surname, Gale, is first mentioned in Ozma of Oz.

People who know the Land of Oz only from the 1939 film or from Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz often claim that the main message in Dorothy's experiences can be summed up in the popular sentiment "There's no place like home." However, in the sixth Oz book by Baum, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Dorothy moves to Oz and takes her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em with her. She then becomes a princess of Oz and lives there with no apparent inclination to return to Kansas.

Dorothy is a standard character in the fourteen Oz books written by L. Frank Baum and is at least a frequent figure in the nineteen that followed by author Ruth Plumly Thompson. A cottage industry of Oz books has continued since Thompson's last book, Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz (1939), written in the same year as the 1939 movie. Scores of books by mostly amateur authors and small publishing houses have been made in which Princess Dorothy of Oz lives on even to our present day.

The 1939 movie

In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was played by Judy Garland. Given her popularity at the time and her physical resemblance to the character as depicted in illustrator W. W. Denslow's artwork, Shirley Temple had been an early choice of the filmmakers, but it now seems hard for most people to imagine anyone other than the young Garland playing the role of the innocent and inquisitive farm girl. Garland received a Special Juvenile Academy Award for her performance.

Modern works

Geoff Ryman's haunting evocation of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas is the central thread of his dark novel Was. His Dorothy (her surname spelled Gael) is given into the care of her aunt and uncle, Henry and Emma Gulch in Zeandale, Manhatten in 1875. Years of deprivation and abuse at their hands turn her into a disturbed young adult, retreating into a fantasy of her own past: the land of "Was". She encounters - and subsequently inspires - L. Frank Baum in a Kansas schoolroom. Alongside this theme are scenes from the life of Judy Garland before, during and after her portrayal of the character in the 1939 movie, and the story of a contemporary man's investigation of the life of the "real" Dorothy.

While not exactly a villain, Dorothy is clearly not the hero in Gregory Maguire's revisionist 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. She is only involved in the drama towards the end of the novel and her innocence and unyielding desire to return back home to Kansas result in much trouble for the main character of the book, Elphaba.

In both Baum's original book and Maguire's revision, Dorothy spends her first night in Oz at the house of a munchkin farmer named Boq. In the latter, it is revealed that the two discussed the etymology of Dorothy's name. Boq finds it interesting that Dorothy's name is the reverse of her land's "King" Theodore—which means "gift of the gods"—and that Dorothy means "goddess of gifts."

While Dorothy is present in the popular Broadway musical Wicked
(based on Maguire's book), she is never actually seen; when the main characters interact with her, they speak into direction of the wings, as if she is sitting offstage and out of the view of the audience. Dorothy does appear on the stage during a pivotal scene, but the audience only sees her silhouette. In the original Broadway cast, voice actress Melissa Fahn provided the silhouette.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Dorothy Gale ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Dorothy Gale; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay