Today marks the 75th anniversary of the national release of “The Wizard of Oz,” one of the most first movies to depict tornadoes and still one of the best, in my opinion.  Not bad for a moving tube of fabric!  The tornado looks just as realistic as many created by CGI in more recent tornado movies.  So just for fun, here are some links to two YouTube videos which show some of the test footage put together for the tornado scenes in the movie, including some that were not included in the final cut.

Original test footage–house swallowed by twister (1:16 minutes long)

Original tornado tests 1939 (no audio) (8:41 minutes long)

These links were originally posted on Tim Marshall’s Facebook page.