Dorothy Gale - Recent Works

Recent Works

In the Turkish film Ayşecik ve Sihirli Cüceler Rüyalar Ülkesinde, in which Dorothy is the recurring character Ayşecik portrayed by seventeen-year-old child star Zeynep Değirmencioğlu.

Darlene Gillespie played her in a 1957 pilot segment for the proposed Walt Disney production, Rainbow Road to Oz.

In Journey Back to Oz, the official sequel to the 1939 film, Dorothy is voiced by Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Judy Garland, who played the role in the MGM film. Her physical appearance is similar to that of Disney's Snow White. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have only one farmhand named Amos, but does not have an alter ego in Oz. This time, a tornado causes a loose gate to knock Dorothy unconscious. Nest, she and Toto are in Oz once again.

For the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, Dorothy (originated in The Wiz by Stephanie Mills) is reimagined as a young African-American girl, though most of her other characteristics, as well as the general plot of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, remain intact. The story was altered for the 1978 Motown/Universal film adaptation of The Wiz, in which Dorothy (portrayed by Diana Ross) is a shy 24-year-old schoolteacher who has never traveled far beyond the neighborhood she grew up in. This Dorothy's adventures in Oz force her to mature, as is the case for most versions of the Wizard of Oz story, although in this case, Dorothy is made to overcome a case of arrested development.

Philip José Farmer's 1982 science-fiction novel A Barnstormer in Oz tells the story of hotshot aviator Henry "Hank" Stover — who is not at all surprised one beautiful spring day in 1923 when he flies his Curtiss Jenny biplane through a strange green cloud and finds himself in a land populated by small people where animals talk and magic works. Hank knows right away that he is in Oz because his mother, Dorothy Gale-Stover, had been there back in 1890 and later told him (and L. Frank Baum) of her experiences. Farmer's premise is that Dorothy only visited Oz once and told her story to a journalist called Frank Baum. This journalist would later create a series of books from Dorothy's only adventure in Oz. Like many Oz novels for adults, Farmer's Oz is a darker, more threatening place and in this case it is on the brink of both a civil war and an invasion by the United States Army.

In 1982, a Japanese animated version depicted a blonde Dorothy in red shoes voiced by Aileen Quinn.The film was made by Toho with a script co-written by Yoshimitsu Banno, with music co-written by Joe Hisaishi and lyrics co-written by Sammy Cahn.

In 1985, Walter Murch directed the movie Return to Oz distributed by Walt Disney Pictures starring Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. The plot was a combination of Ozma of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz. The film was not a wide success on its original release, although it has attained cult classic status.

In the 1986 Japanese animated-version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz no Mahōtsukai), Dorothy is depicted with reddish-brown hair, much like the movie, but does not have pig-tails. Her blue and white farm dress slightly differs from how it was described in the books (in fact, it looks quite Alice in Wonderland-esque), but her anime design makes her appear young. She wears white "magic shoes".

Geoff Ryman's evocation of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas is the central thread of his 1992 novel Was. His Dorothy (her surname spelled Gael) is given into the care of her aunt and uncle, Henry and Emma Gulch in Zeandale, Manhattan 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 infamous life of Judy Garland before, during and after her portrayal of the character in the 1939 movie, and the story of a homosexual man's investigation of the life of the "real" Dorothy as he combats AIDS.

In the video for Blues Traveler's 1994 hit song "Run-Around", Dorothy is featured as an attractive young adult woman, trying to get into a club where the band is performing. She is portrayed by actress Diana Marquis.

While not exactly a villain, Dorothy is 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. Although she is well-meaning, her innocence and unyielding desire to return back home to Kansas result in much trouble for the main character of the book, the Wicked Witch named Elphaba, who didn't seem to know what to make of her, and whom she melts by accident while trying to put out a fire.

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 Broadway musical Wicked (based on Maguire's book), she is never actually seen; when the main characters interact with her, they speak in the direction of the wings or into a trapdoor, as if she is sitting offstage and out of the view of the audience. Her crying is briefly heard in one scene. Her name is never mentioned; she is only referred to as "that farm girl". Dorothy does appear on the stage during a pivotal scene, but the audience sees only her silhouette.

Dorothy features somewhat more prominently in Son of a Witch, Maguire's 2005 sequel to Wicked. In that novel, Elphaba's son Liir is briefly infatuated with Dorothy, and joins her party on their return to the Emerald City. Maguire portrays Dorothy as good-natured, practical, single-minded, and slightly boring.

The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True (1995) starred Jewel as Dorothy and Nathan Lane as the Cowardly Lion. This was a benefit performance for the Children's Defense Fund.

A little known re-telling of The Wizard of Oz from 1995 made for British channel Five set in the present day starred Denise van Outen as Dorothy and featured a cameo appearance by Zöe Salmon of Blue Peter fame. Among other variations of the story was van Outens portrayal of Dorothy as a spoiled, wealthy socialite who wasn't above using profanity and the origin of the Ruby Slippers, which are shown as being obtained by the Witch of the East after falling off the feet of a previous visitor from over the rainbow, played by Salmon, when she wished to return home.

Todd McFarlane re imagined the story in the "Twisted Land of Oz" in which none of the characters are innocent. Dorothy is a straight A student, but naive socially, and is sexually tortured by two little sadomasochistic monsters.

In the 2005 made-for-television movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz Dorothy was portrayed as a gifted teenage singer (played by Ashanti) who wanted nothing more than to get out of Kansas and sing with the Muppets Star Hunt tour.

In the VeggieTales 2007 episode The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's, Dorothy was replaced by Darby (Junior Asparagus) with a pet pig (usually referred to as a dog) named "Tutu".

An adult Dorothy, along with Alice from Lewis Carroll's (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and J. M. Barrie's Wendy Darling (from Peter Pan), is a featured character in the 2006 sexually explicit graphic novel Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, set in 1913.

Dorothy, Alice, Wendy, Susan Pevensie (from The Chronicles of Narnia), and Pollyanna also feature in the comic The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles, set in 2005. Unlike the other characters, Dorothy is based on her movie counterpart, who stopped believing in Oz, as Susan, Alice, and Wendy stopped believing in their fairylands in both book and film versions.

In a large contrast to how she's usually portrayed, the DC Comics Vertigo series Fables shows her as a ruthless assassin who found that she enjoyed killing after being hired by the Wizard to kill the Witch of the West, who gave her the job to do so after he'd heard that she'd killed the Witch of the East. She has several run-ins with Fabletown spy Cinderella over the years, which culminate with them facing off in the mini-series "Cinderella: Fables Are Forever", where Dorothy reveals that she'd been using the Silver Shoes to help disguise herself on her mission to kill Cindy. The series ends with Cinderella taking the Silver Shoes and pushing her out of a balloon over the Deadly Desert to her apparent death, though her body isn't seen.

In the 2007 Sci Fi Channel miniseries Tin Man, a Dorothy Gale-type character (called "D.G.") was played by Zooey Deschanel, while Dorothy Gale herself (a separate character) makes a brief appearance, played by Grace Wheeler. D.G. travels to the land of "The Outer Zone" (or "O.Z." for short), where she finds out that she and her sister Azkadellia are descendants of Dorothy Gale through their mother Queen Lavender Eyes. Ahamo, DG's father, tells DG that Dorothy Gale is her "greatest great grandmother." Dorothy Gale is legendary, and known as the first 'Slipper' (a title rather than an object) to slip to the Outer Zone. In the third episode of the miniseries, DG meets the original Dorothy Gale in a netherworld located within Gale's crypt which is reminiscent of Gale's farm as depicted in the 1939 film.

In 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber's searched for a girl to play the title character for his new production of The Wizard of Oz. His talent-search show Over the Rainbow discovered 19-year-old Danielle Hope who originated the role in the 2011 West End production.

In the 2012 TV miniseries Dorothy and the Witches of Oz, Dorothy (played by Paulie Rojas) is shown as an adult writer and starts regaining suppressed memories of her actual adventures in the Land of Oz when the Wicked Witch of the West plans to conquer the Land of Oz and all of Earth.

The upcoming animated film Dorothy of Oz stars Lea Michele as the voice of Dorothy Gale, who travels back to Oz to face more adventures and adversity with her friends.