Library of Congress Buys Rare Items From 1939 Film 'The Wizard of Oz'

The Wizard of Oz was inducted in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989, and the latest acquisition adds to the collection.

Harold Arnold's Academy Award | Library of Congress

The new treasures include 35 musical manuscripts from composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg's creative output, including the first handwritten drafts of music and lyrics from some of the most well-known The Wizard of Oz songs, draft song lists and correspondence from the director of the film, Mervyn LeRoy.

Among the artifacts is the only lyric sketch for Over the Rainbow known to exist. Scrawled in pencil on a scrap of yellow legal paper by Harburg are the words: "Some day I'll wish upon a star + wake + find the darkness far behind me." The line eventually became "Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me."

Credit: Library of Congress

Donated by Arlen's sister-in-law, Rita Arlen, that scrap joins dozens of other items in the library's collection, such as Arlen's Academy Award statue for Over the Rainbow - pictured above - which won Best Original Song in 1939. It was famously sung by Judy Garland in the movie.

Remarkably, Nicholas Brown-Cáceres - the acting chief of the Library's Music Division - told NPR that Over the Rainbow nearly got left on the cutting room floor during the movie production process. That would have left the world unaware of what would go on to become one of the greatest songs of all time. It topped the "Songs of the Century" lists of the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was named the "greatest movie song of all time" by the American Film Institute.

Some of the newly acquired items, including the Academy Award statue and Over the Rainbow lyrics sketch, will be on view at the Library from Oct. 23 through Jan. 7, along with artifacts from the famed Oz spinoff, Wicked.