18-year-old Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan) lives on a Kansas farm, little knowing that she's actually the rightful Queen of the magical land of Oz, which is currently ruled by Prime Minister Kruel (Josef Swickard). After Kruel sends his minion Ambassador Wikked (Otto Lederer) to Kansas to try and steal the document that proves Dorothy is the queen, Dorothy and her friends are transported to Oz, where they meet the Wizard (Charles Murray) and the benevolent Prince Kynd (Bryant Washburn). Dorothy's friends are transformed into the Scarecrow (Larry Semon), the Tin Woodsman (Oliver Hardy), and the Cowardly Lion (Spencer Bell).

This was adapted, produced and directed by silent screen comedy star Larry Semon, a household name at the time, but almost entirely forgotten today. It's nearly half of the running time before Dorothy and her gang get to Oz, with much of the first half of the movie taken up by substandard comedy bits on the Kansas farm. It was strange seeing Hardy as the Tin Woodsman, and sad to see the Cowardly Lion, who spends most of the film as a stereotypical caricature named Snowball.

Semon was too extravagant with his budgets, and soon after declared bankruptcy. 2 years later he was playing supporting roles, like in von Sternberg's 1927 Underworld, before dying in 1928 at age 39 of lung disease.

After its 1902 tryout in Chicago, the stage play with songs by Paul Tietjens and Baum opened on Broadway in January 1903, running 293 performances before hitting the road, and returning to Broadway for four or five months in 1904. It then toured until 1911, when Baum permitted a host of amateur companies all over America to stage the play. In many areas, it became an annual event.

As Mordaunt Hall noted in his rave review in The New York Times, this version is not based on Baum's 1900 novel but on his 1902 stage musical. Many of the strange changes and eliminations in both the story and the characters were made by Baum himself. In fact, aside from the obvious enlargement of Larry Semon's role with the addition of a goodly number of comic routines, this movie is a pretty faithful transcription of the play.

True, some of the best jokes (the business with packing cases, for example), are worked to exhaustion. The main problem I find, however, is not that the stage play and movie have been converted into slapstick, but that the movie without the songs is often rather dull, despite the best efforts of Oliver Hardy and Charlie Murray.