The Wizard of Oz is a 1925 American silent fantasy-adventure comedy film directed by Larry Semon, who has the lead role of a Kansas farmhand disguised as the Scarecrow.

In the story the Land of Oz is ruled by Prime Minister Kruel (Josef Swickard), aided by Ambassador Wikked (Otto Lederer), Lady Vishuss (Virginia Pearson), and the Wizard (Charles Murray), a "medicine-show hokum hustler".

When the discontented people, led by Prince Kynd (Bryant Washburn), demand the return of the princess, who disappeared while a baby many years before, so she can be crowned their rightful ruler, Kruel has the Wizard distract them with a parlor trick: making a female impersonator (Frederick Ko Vert) appear out of a seemingly empty basket.

While Aunt Em (Mary Carr) is a kind and caring woman, Uncle Henry (Frank Alexander) is an obese man with a short temper who shows little love for his niece.

Dorothy, the two rivals for her affection, and Uncle Henry take shelter inside a small wooden shed, which is—along with Snowball—carried aloft by the violent wind and soon deposited in the Land of Oz.

Chased by Kruel's soldiers, Semon's character disguises himself as a scarecrow, while Hardy's improvises a costume from the pile of tin in which he is hiding.

Another major departure from the book is that the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion are not actually characters, but are only disguises donned by the three farm hands after they are swept into Oz by a tornado.

[citation needed] According to Ben Mankiewicz, who hosted a televised presentation of the film by Turner Classic Movies in 2018, the production was poorly received by critics and audiences in 1925.

[3] However, Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times gave the film a favorable review that year, writing "'The Wizard of Oz' can boast of being the type of rough and tumble farce that sends bright faces from the theatre.

"[4] The Chicago-based publication Photoplay, one of the first American fan magazines devoted to the film industry, highly recommended the adventure comedy to its large readership in 1925, warning "If you don’t take your children to see this, they will never forgive you.

That goes for a lot of kids, some of them four and some of them forty, but the younger were in the majority by far at the Colony [Theatre] Monday afternoon...[6]Variety summed up The Wizard of Oz in its review by noting that "the laughs are there" and predicted the film would be a box office success for Chadwick Pictures and theater owners, especially outside large metropolitan areas.

[7] In fact, he too filed for bankruptcy in March 1928, and when he died at the age of 39 later that year—just three years after the release of The Wizard of Oz—Variety attributed "ceaseless worry" about his dire financial circumstances as a contributing factor to his early death.

[7] The film was first broadcast in 1931 by television station W2XCD of Passaic, New Jersey, owned by the DeForest Radio Company, serialized over the nights of June 8, 9 and 10.

[8] Since this version of The Wizard of Oz is in the public domain, many home-media releases of the film are available in assorted formats, including Betamax, VHS, Laserdisc, CED, and DVD.