Artist The Wizard Of Oz

You can ignore the man behind the curtain, but you can’t really ignore The Wizard Of Oz’s iconic status in American culture. When the film was made in 1939, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books were already popular with a generation of children. But the Hollywood musical has taken on a life of its own—plenty of its dialogue, not to mention songs like “If I Only Had A Brain,” are firmly part of the English language—and it propelled Judy Garland into stardom and near-sainthood in the eyes of her many gay fans.

Updated 12/16/2009