Journey Back to Oz

Journey Back To Oz is a 1974 Filmation Studios animated film and an unofficial sequel to the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. It is loosely based on L. Frank Baums second Oz novel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, although Baum received no screen credit. However, the Wizard was nowhere to be found, at least in the theatrical version of the film. A television version shown in 1976 on ABC featured liveaction segments starring Bill Cosby as the Wizard.

The movie began production in 1962, but ran out of money and was halted for nearly eight years. It was only after the Filmation studio had made profits on their numerous television series that it was able to finish the project, copyrighted 1971, released in 1972 in the UK and in 1974 in the U.S. It features Liza Minnelli voicing Dorothy played in the previous 1939 film by her late mother Judy Garland, and in what would have been her first major role had the film been released as originally intended. Other voices were by Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Paul Lynde, Herschel Bernardi, Paul Ford, Danny Thomas, Margaret Hamilton also from the 1939 film, but now playing Aunt Em rather than the Wicked Witch of the West, who died in the earlier film, and opera singer Ris Stevens as Glinda.For the films U.S. release, Filmation partnered with a company called Seymour Borde and distributed it through a process called four wall distribution, whereupon the studio rented venues to show it and kept all of the box office revenue. ........

Source: Wikipedia