Video: 'The Wiz Original Cast Album' (17 video playlist)

(Sunday, January 5, 1975, 6:30 p.m. EST) — The Wiz, a musical with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls (and others) and book by William F. Brown featuring an all-black cast, opened tonight on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre at 245 West 44th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, with Geoffrey Holder as director and starring Stephanie Mills as Dorothy.

It is a retelling of L. Frank Baum’s children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) in the context of contemporary African-American culture.

It had opened on October 21, 1974, at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore, and moved to Broadway’s Majestic Theatre tonight.