11/03/2026
Seventy years ago tonight, on November 3, 1956, CBS put The Wizard of Oz on television for the very first time. Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion himself, hosted the broadcast, and sitting next to him was a 10-year-old Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland's daughter.
The movie was already seventeen years old, and an estimated 45 million people watched it that night, nearly a third of the country back then. A two-hour film that had lived in movie theaters was suddenly playing in the living room, for free.
It didn't come back right away, but once it did, it kept coming back for decades. Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow became something you waited all year to see on TV.