GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – With “Wicked: For Good” already drawing big crowds in theaters nationwide, local historians say it’s the perfect moment to revisit Wisconsin’s surprising place in Oz history — and clear up a long-standing misconception.
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While Oconomowoc has long claimed it hosted the first Wisconsin screening of the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz”, archived advertising and historical records show the film actually premiered in Green Bay two days earlier.
According to the Brown County Historical Society’s Dennis Jacobs, the movie made its Wisconsin debut at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Green Bay on August 10, 1939. It opened in Appleton and Kenosha the following day, and didn’t reach Oconomowoc until August 12.
“Green Bay is the first screening of the official film,” Jacobs said. “Oconomowoc calls themselves the first because they had an overzealous editor who claimed it, even though they were the third in the state to see it.”
The Orpheum Theatre — now a vacant building on Walnut Street — was one of the city’s largest movie houses at the time. Jacobs says Green Bay’s early connection to Oz stretches back decades, with traveling theater productions and silent-film versions of the story making stops in the city as early as the 1900s.
“The play came here in 1904,” Jacobs said. “In 1910, one of the first silent films came to Green Bay, and in 1926, the second silent film came to Green Bay.”…