Question: I've been wondering this since I was very little. When The Wizard of Oz was first released in theaters in 1939, was Oz in color or is that only for the televised version? This has been bugging me for years.
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Answer: The Emerald City was, indeed, presented in color in the original 1939 film. In fact, even Kansas was not originally purely black-and-white. The Kansas scenes were initially sepia tinted. Later prints showed Kansas in black-and-white. The original sepia tones were returned in the 1989 restoration for the film's 50th anniversary.
Michael Albert