The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film directed primarily by Victor Fleming from a script mostly by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, with uncredited contributions by others. Made and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it was based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, who died twenty years before the film was released.