We sat down with John Fricke, "The Wizard of Oz" historian and author of "The Wizard of Oz: An Illustrated Companion to the Timeless Movie Classic" for a Q&A session. John talks about how "The Wizard of Oz" impacted him, personally, and his thoughts on the movie's place in American culture as the film reaches its milestone 70th anniversary this month.
Wizard of Oz historian John Fricke
Q How did you become involved in Oz?
A The Wizard of Oz was first telecast, coast-to-coast, over CBS on November 3, 1956. I was five years old and prone to enthusiasm for anything musical or centered in story-telling. (My heroes up to that point had been Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs....) But that single viewing of Oz changed my life. Completely.
For my next birthday, I received an abridged Oz storybook, the M-G-M soundtrack vinyl long-play album (which had been released to coincide with the TV premiere of the film), and Judy Garland's Capitol recording for that year, "Judy."
(Most first-graders knew "Over the Rainbow"; for my age group, I thereafter more-or-less had a monopoly on "Come Rain or Come Shine.") The coalescence of those three gifts pointed the way to a lifelong fascination, a penchant for research about the topics, and an insatiable desire for more Oz and more Garland. Over the next two years, I discovered the full-length Wizard of Oz book, the series of 38 other full-length Oz books, the additional Garland record albums, and all her other films on the early and late show TV movies.
Q How did Oz affect you professionally and personally?
A Personally, it quickly became the best hobby anyone could imagine. By 11, I'd joined The International Wizard of Oz Club (ozclub.org), a group of -- mostly -- adults who were into the Baum and other Oz books and authors, illustrators, and collectibles. The next year, I joined The Judy Garland Club. Both organizations led to correspondence with fellow fans all over the world -- many associations that continue to this day, nearly fifty years later.
These are some of the primary people who encouraged me to write and to perform. One even suggested, when I was 12, that Northwestern would be a potentially good college at which to aim; I graduated there in 1974 and thereafter moved to New York City, where I've lived ever since.
The Garland background stood me in good stead as a performer; from vaudeville through films, radio, recordings, stage, concerts, and television, she had worked with everyone, and always sang the best of every composer and lyricist, covering many decades of the classic popular songbook. So such exposure and "training" was enormously beneficial during the decades I worked as an entertainer.
Twenty-two years ago, I put my college journalism degree into play; since then, I've written five books: three about Oz, two about Judy -- with a third Garland book coming in 2011. Additionally, there have been assignments involving scores of CD and home video projects, and I've coproduced, cowritten, or been associated with many documentaries. Almost 100% of this work has been Oz and/or Garland-oriented.
In partnership with Warner Home Video's release of the 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the film, Teleflora has created a commemorative bouquet. It’s available through a local Teleflora florist or online at teleflora for $64.95.
Q Can you share a behind-the-scenes story or a funny anecdote related to the movie?
A They're all in the latest book. The Wizard of Oz: An Illustrated Companion to the Timeless Movie Classic (coauthored with Jonathan Shirshekan) hits bookstores in September 2009 from Fall River Press. As they're a division of Barnes & Noble Books, such stores will have the 160-page, 500-illustration coffee-table book on an exclusive basis.
It retails for $20.00 and includes the Oz back-story (Baum and the books and the early stage plays, silent films, radio show, and etc.), plus all the preproduction M-G-M material: costumes and make-up tests (many of them bizarre and discarded before filming); plus stills of the first two weeks of shooting (with a different Tin Man) -- all of which footage was scrapped.
Then there's the week by week history of the actual making of the film -- what got included and what got left out of the final cut-- with behind-the-scenes photography, set reference stills, cast portraits -- and the history of the mammoth publicity campaign, with never-before-published material from one of Judy Garland's own Oz scrapbooks.
Q Did you have any idea that Oz would have the impact it did?
A I don't think anyone did; certainly Hollywood, at that time, wasn't much in the business of making movies to last beyond their initial release. As someone who came to it as part of that generation for whom Oz was a much-treasured annual TV special event, what's been wonderful for me is to have seen it endure, decade after decade, through and beyond that.
For example, I didn't see the film in color until I was a freshman in college -- and I wondered for weeks how I was going to commandeer the TV lounge in the all-male dorm for The Wizard of Oz. I didn't have to worry; there were more guys packed into the room for the movie than had watched the Super Bowl a few weeks earlier. Twenty years ago, when I began appearing around the country at Oz festivals, the parade routes were lined with countless children in Oz costumes -- and, of course, especially little girls in red shoes and blue and white checked dresses.
At that point, we wondered if Oz could possibly sustain such popularity -- never mind burgeon. Well, I'm still attending Oz festivals, and there are still little girls in costume, packing the parade route. But now they're the daughters of those we saw back in 1989.
Q Why in your opinion is it so admired and loved?
A There are a number of reasons, but paramount among them are the combined genius of L. Frank Baum, M-G-M, and Judy Garland. Baum was a master entertainer as a creative, imaginative, inventive story-teller. His (and the later) Oz books are almost three-dimensional; one opens to chapter one and immediately falls through the page and into and onto the adventures that follow.
At its peak in Hollywood's studio system era, M-G-M was the greatest playground for adults ever devised. The studio sought and hired the people who were the very, very best at whatever they did, whether in front of or behind the cameras. As a result, their output was prime and class entertainment, packaged and purveyed to excite, move, thrill, please, inspire audiences; as such, M-G-M was a master entertainer as well.
Finally, the girl who was later unhesitatingly billed, reviewed, and received/accepted/heralded as the "world's greatest entertainer" is at the very core of the picture. Garland's incomparable talent and communicative power pull audiences into the movie from the first moment she evidences concern about her dog, in the opening moments of the film. In summation: Only M-G-M would have taken the time and money to make Oz. Only Judy Garland could have brought it to life and kept it evergreen all these decades. And only Frank Baum had the imagination to create it all.
Q What is your favorite scene or moment?
A It's the moment when the famous foursome (and Toto) emerge from The Lion's Forest and first see The Emerald City across The Poppy Field -- and the amalgamation of those images and the color and the music. (If that's not the first glimpse and "soundtrack" of Heaven, I'm not going :)
Q Could this movie be made today and would it be as popular?
A Well, not THIS movie. But certainly there's a (however rare and much smaller) handful of artisans who create occasional great music and/or fantasy for books and for the screen...and which are as popular in their own way. Whether they'll endure for generations and decades remains to be seen.
Q Do you have a favorite family tradition around watching the movie?
A Now it's all about watching it with friends -- and/or their kids or my nieces. When I was growing up in the 1960s, I had the totally common, typical Oz experience of watching the film in the family den, accompanied by parents, brother and sister, popcorn and orange soda.
