While 3-strip Technicolor was still a new and expensive thing typically reaerved for musical or fantasy, it was not brand new with the Wizard of Oz. Its use in that movie is clever, and it might have been the first exposure to color for some in the audience, but that film itself wasn't unique.

First, what do we mean by color in film? Many early silent films were color tinted or painted by hand. In the 1920s, there was experimentation with two-strip color (I'll skip over the nuances of color film, but think of it is a precursor to the better system used in the 1930s). The Buster Keaton movie Seven Days opens with a color sequence.

Walt Disney got an exclusive contract with Technicolor in 1933, and made all of his cartoons in color by 1935 (there were a few Mickey cartoons still black and white until then, even after Mickey moved to color). So audiences would have been familiar with color cartoons. Some live action short subjects would also be made in color by other studios in the 1930s.

There are earlier live-action films of the 1930s that were made in Trchnicolor, for example 1937's A Star is Born. But we can look to 1939 as a big year for Technicolor not only because of Wizard of Oz, but two other notable films. The Women was black and white, but featured a fasion show sequence in the middle that was in color, similar to having a 3D sequence today. And secondly, some months after Wizard of Oz, would be Gone With the Wind, which would win awards for its use of color.

I personally know of no first-hand audience testimony of color in the Wizard of Oz. However, it wouldn't necessarily be the first exposure to color on film, though for some it very well may have been. I too would be curious if anyone knows of interviews about it from that period.

While others have already pointed out that color in film wasn’t particularly new when The Wizard of Oz came out, I wanted to add a few things to the context and also to shed a certain kind of light on audience reactions.

So by 1939, it had been 22 years since the first Technicolor short, 17 years since the first Technicolor feature (The Toll of the Sea, in 1922), 13 years since the first Technicolor feature with an A-list star (Douglas Fairbanks in The Black Pirate, 1926) and 9-10 years since the first color movie craze in 1929-1930. The mid-late 1920s saw many popular blockbusters with Technicolor sequences, including The Phantom of the Opera and the smash hit Ben Hur (both 1925). In 1928 an advance in the Technicolor process led to a huge boom in color films, right at the same time talkies were taking over. In 1929-1930 there were dozens of films sold as” all-talking, all colour!” In fact it was not an uncommon opinion in the industry that within a few years all films would be sound and colour.

They didn’t count for the Great Depression. Box office receipts indicated that color did not actually increase ticket sales, despite costing a lot, so as money became tight studios stopped or severely limited the production of color films from 1930. Disney was the exception, making color cartoons all through the 1930s, which of course culminated in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However live action Technicolor, despite many improvements to the technical process, didn’t really take off again until the late 1930s, with economic recovery and renewed audience interest.

Once again it was a boom of color – well, relatively, as Technicolor was expensive and so mostly reserved for prestige epics and musicals. Still, from 1938 you start seeing regular color films again, probably at least one new release a month. In 1939, three of the five top grossing films (according to industry reports) were color: Jesse James (1st), Dodge (2nd), and Kentucky (4th). Note Wizard of Oz isn’t even one of them- it was 8th! (Gone with the Wind was released too late in the year to be counted, the article notes).

The Wizard of Oz is likely to be the oldest color film the majority of people today have seen, for various reasons (films lost, censored, not aged well, etc.), but it’s not particularly likely to have been the first color film most of its audience had seen – no more or less likely than Jesse James would have been. Older audience members especially had a good chance of having at least seen Technicolor sequences 10-15 years ago at that point. And that’s even if we exclude animation.

With that context, part 2 of your question- audience response. Now, I definitely can’t answer this fully, and don’t know of any audience interviews or anything cool like that. But I thought maybe taking a look at responses and reviews to The Wizard of Oz in film fan magazines from the time--particularly in regards to the color-- might give us at least a touch of insight in that direction.

This period saw numerous film fan magazines, which reviewed movies, discussed developments in the industry, gossiped, talked a lot about the stars, gossiped about the stars, gave film-inspired fashion advice, and so on. The Media History Project Digital Library offers access to digitized copies of thousands of them – an amazing resource. I will link all articles referenced to their relevant digital versions if anyone wants to read the whole thing and/or see them in context.

The most prominent at this time was Photoplay. In August 1939 they ran an article on the production of The Wizard of Oz, talking about the Art Department, the casting of Toto, talking to the actors in make-up, and that kind of thing. The upcoming film is summed up as:

a production which is, indeed, a horse of a different colour, the new musical score, the half a hundred Technicolor scenes, laced together with elements that seem to promise something singularly delightful for us all; beauty, satire, and philosophy for the grown-ups, with adventure and suspense for the children.” So already the color is certainly mentioned, as it usually was for Technicolor features at this time, but as one of many attractions rather than the primary one.

In October Photoplay published their review of the film. As their reviews are only a paragraph long, I’ll transcribe the whole thing:

Two years to make—and worth every moment of it. This cast alone—Frank Morgan in the title role, Judy Garland as Dorothy, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley as The Woodsman, and Billie Burke as the good fairy, Glinda – might have been dreamed into being just for this superb fantasy of a little girl transported by cyclone to a magic wonderland where anything can (and does) happen. How she travels with her newfound friends through tiny Munchkinland, braves the gigantic Flying Monkeys, and outwits the Wicked Witch (Margaret Hamilton) to gain aid from the droll Wizard and beautiful Glina, makes the plot, interspersed with catchy songs and spectacular production numbers. Put it all in the finest Technicolor and what more could any fantasy-lover ask? A “must” for both children and adults.

You’ll see that emphasis is first on the cast and then the plot, together making up the majority of the review. Then they praise the songs and production numbers, and then, finally, they mention the colour, as kind of a “cherry on top.”

In November the other fan magazines got their reviews out – due to its prominence, Photoplay often got first dibs. Hollywood’s review focuses on the acting, with specifics of praise for all the principal characters. Again the color is portrayed as a nice bonus: “And the use of Technicolor brings to vivid nearness the sturdy fairy land imagined by L. Frank Baum” [note the original sentence begins with “And”]. Screenland is similar in emphasizing the acting, though they are a bit more effusive in praising the “dazzling scenes in color of the poppy field, of the forest, of the Emerald City.” However the review in Modern Screen, while approving of the “remarkable technical effects” and “beautiful photography,” doesn’t even mention the word color anywhere.

Now, of course these are professional reviewers who have almost certainly seen hundreds more films than the average movie-goer. As we can see today with Rotten Tomatoes, opinions can certainly vary between critics and audiences. Still it is significant that not one of these reviews in popular magazines consider the colour itself to be what makes the movie stand out.

Even MGM didn’t overemphasize the colour in the film at its release. The standard magazine ad (which can be seen here in Hollywood, but appears in several of these magazines) calls The Wizard of Oz a “Technicolor triumph,” but this is a pretty standard phrase applied to color films at the time. The ad copy instead emphasizes the scale of the production, describing “65 sets,” city of “22,000 separate glass objects” “35 make-up experts” “40,000 poppies” “9,200 actors,” and so on.

As far as reactions from the early moviegoing audience itself, we do have the testimony of published fan letters. Photoplay and most of the other fan magazines printed a dozen or more letters from fans per issue, about films, actors, complaints about trailers, and so on. However I was only able to find one that related to The Wizard of Oz… and it’s about the performance of the actor who played the Tin Man. Since this is the closest thing I can offer to a true audience response, I’ll transcribe:

Dear Jack Haley: I never thought I’d be writing a fan letter to you, of all people. You’ve always been just another comedian. Oh, your bright eyes were rather cute, but who’d ever remember you? Or go to a picture because your name was on the marquee? And then I saw you in “The Wizard of Oz.” I sat there as popeyed as you where when you first beheld the mighty Wizard. Could this appealing Tin Woodsman, searching so wistfully for a heart, really be Jack Haley? Heart or no heart, his countenance clearly registered real emotion: the openmouthed fear that made his knees clank together, the overpowering desire for a heart, his affection for Dorothy. Then, when he had found his heart, only to feel it break when Dorothy was leaving, our hearts broke with his for a moment. When an actor’s breaking heart causes a temporary fracture in our own, then we call that actor great. So, Jack Haley, I salute you – a new dramatic star. If MGM doesn’t star you in some serious roles worthy of all the pathos you brought to the Tin Woodsman, then you’d better find a boss who will. Because you certainly have what it takes! A new Haley fan, Alice Oman, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Needless to say, performance stood out to this moviegoer much more than colour.

A handful of reviews, an ad, and one letter most certainly do not encompass the whole of the experience of seeing The Wizard of Oz in late 1939, but they offer at least a little glimpse, which I hope you have found interesting!