Column — Wicked, The Wizard of Oz, and the Blacklisted Lyricist Yip Harburg
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan People around the globe have been watching the blockbuster musical film “Wicked” this holiday season. Based on the Broadway musical, it serves as a backstory to the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, casting that film’s villain, the Wicked Witch of the West, in a positive light, as a misunderstood and bullied child who goes on to challenge authority and expose wrong-doing. From the mid-1950s until the early 1990s, long before streaming platforms and video on demand, television audiences dependent on just a few major broadcast networks had to wait for the annual…
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