The Wizard of Oz (1939 Film) - Awards and Honors

Awards and Honors

The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Visual Effects. In the Best Picture category, it lost to another MGM film, Gone with the Wind, another film directed by Victor Fleming. E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen won the award for Best Song (Over The Rainbow) and Best Original Music Score; composer Herbert Stothart received the Best Original Score Award. Garland received a special Academy Juvenile Award that year, for "Best Performances by a Juvenile" (the award was also for her role in the film version of Babes in Arms). The Wizard of Oz did not receive an Oscar for its special effects — that award went to the 1939 film version of The Rains Came. Additional nominations went to Cedric Gibbons and William A. Horning for Art Direction, and Hal Rosson for Cinematography (color), but both of those awards were won by Gone With the Wind. There was no award for makeup then, so Jack Dawn could not receive an award for his detailed makeup for the Oz fantasy characters.

In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten American films in ten genres—after polling over 1,500 film artists, critics and historians. The Wizard of Oz was acknowledged as the best film in the fantasy genre.

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies - #6
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills - #43
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains:
  • The Wicked Witch of the West - #4 Villain
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Songs:
  • "Over the Rainbow" - #1
  • "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" - #82
  • "If I Only Had A Brain/Heart/The Nerve" - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." - #4
  • "There's no place like home." - #23
  • "I'll get you, my pretty and your little dog, too!" - #99
  • "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" - Nominated
  • "I'm melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!" - Nominated
  • "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years of Musicals - #3
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Cheers - #26
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #10
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - #1 Fantasy film

The film is among the top ten of the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.