His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz
King Krewl (Raymond Russell) is a cruel dictator in the Emerald City in the Land of Oz. He wishes to marry his daughter, Princess Gloria (Vivian Reed), to an old courtier named Googly-Goo (Arthur Smollett), but she is in love with Pon, the Gardener's boy (Todd Wright). Krewl employs the Wicked Witch named Mombi (Mai Wells), to freeze the heart of Gloria so she will not love Pon any longer. This she does by pulling out her heart (which looks somewhere between a valentine and a bland representation of a heart without any vessels) and coating it with ice. Meanwhile, a lost little girl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale (Violet MacMillan), is captured by Mombi and imprisoned in her castle. However, Dorothy runs away with the now heartless Gloria, accompanied by Pon and eventually meet the Scarecrow (Frank Moore). Mombi catches up with the travelers and removes the Scarecrow's stuffing, but Dorothy and Pon are able to re-stuff him; Gloria abandons them and wanders off.
In an effective use of deep focus photography, they meet the lost little boy, Button-Bright (Mildred Harris). The party travels to the Winkie Country next and arrives at the Tin Castle of the Tin Woodman (Pierre Couderc), who has rusted solid. (The Tin Woodman resides in a Tin Castle in later Oz novels, beginning in The Emerald City of Oz'' (1910). Mombi reaches the Tin Castle, and the Tin Woodman chops off her head; however, this merely slows her down as she hunts for it and places it back on. (The Wicked Witch of the East in The Tin Woodman of Oz is later described as having done a similar thing to him when he was still human.) Having replaced her head, Mombi encounters Pon and turns him into a kangaroo.
Dorothy, Button-Bright, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman escape from Mombi by crossing a river on a raft. As in the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), the Scarecrow's barge-pole gets stuck in the river bed and leaves him stranded, until he is rescued by a bird. At one point in this sequence, the Scarecrow slides down the pole into the river, resulting a brief "underwater" sequence featuring puppet fish and a mermaid; throughout, the Scarecrow makes asides to the camera, mostly without intertitles. (At another point, the frozen Gloria even makes a malevolent stare directly into the camera.)
The party encounters the Wizard (J. Charles Haydon), who tricks Mombi by letting the group hide in the Red Wagon, pulled by the sawhorse; when Mombi attempts to follow them, the group escape out the back of the wagon. The four companions meet the Cowardly Lion, who joins them. The Wizard traps Mombi in a container of "Preserved Sandwitches" and paints out the "sand" and the plural, carrying her away in his pocket. The Scarecrow, taking a barrage of arrows, tosses Krewl's soldiers over the battlements to deal with the Cowardly Lion, who cannot climb the rope ladder over the city wall. With the support of the people, the Scarecrow is easily able to depose King Krewl. The Wizard releases Mombi, and compels her to restore Pon to his normal form and unfreeze Gloria's heart.
romantic