THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER:
REMEMBERING “THE WIZARD OF OZ”
ON ITS 50th ANNIVERSARY IN 1989
by John Fricke

I want to begin this month with a quick, genuine apology. When assembling the blog for last August, I planned a “look back,” some 35 years, to the 50th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s film triumph, THE WIZARD OF OZ. The recap was intended as a single entry in this series.
So, I began to write about the unexpected but joyously participatory events I experienced leading up to that year – and across the year itself. The more I recalled about the magic and miracles that took place, however, there were more (and more) that came to mind. Thus, the recounting then spread as well to the September blog, and there were still additional tales to tell! However . . . I promise this “finale” will do its best to summarize, as simply as possible, the rest of the kaleidoscope of Ozziness that permeated the country and fandom back in 1989. For those who were around and remember, I’d venture there wasn’t anything quite like it again until last autumn’s jubilant, massive media blitz and outpouring over the film, WICKED. (An in-person account of the Los Angeles launch of that film from Oz author/explorer Gabriel Gale may be found in our November blog; just scroll down past this one — and the more recent Christmas “edition.” Also: just below Gabe’s star-studded story are the first two parts of this series, offering the behind-the-scenes narrative of the 50th anniversary WIZARD OF OZ book – and how it grew.)
The major reason for prolonging all of this comes from the fact that – in addition to writing most of that coffee-table tome – I was blessedly and concurrently propelled into another and equally major factor of the MGM anniversary. In autumn 1988, I briefly returned to Los Angeles for final research for “the green book” (as it came to be known). Coincidentally, a good friend from NYC, Rick Skye, was also in California; he then worked at the Metropolitan Opera House and had arranged to meet with honchos of MGM/UA Home Video in Culver City, CA, to enlist their aid in providing VHS (operatic and operetta) “swag” for the patrons who’d be attending New York’s annual Met Opera Ball. In his preliminary conversations with Home Video, Rick had been promised a tour of the original MGM studio lot once he was “local”; their MGM/UA offices were at the time housed in a modern building across the street from what had been MGM and had become Lorimar Television. (It’s now Sony Pictures Studio.)
Knowing I was in Los Angeles, Rick snagged an invitation for me to join him in his “walk around” the birthplace of OZ, Judy Garland’s professional home for 16 years, and the absolute pinnacle of Hollywood product and legend during “the Golden Years.” We later found that MGM/UA’s George Feltenstein had been coopted by coworkers into conducting our visit, and George himself admitted that he really didn’t expect to meet strangers as tied-into, familiar-with, and lovingly attuned to classic MGM as Rick and I. By the time we’d gleefully walked and nonstop talked, George had us back up in the Home Video offices, and we were being told of (and asked for ideas about) a potential 50th Anniversary OZ VHS release.
Well, the afternoon turned into a Johnstown flood of exchanges and vigor. As George explained, OZ already had been available on commercial tape for eight years; had been differently packaged three times; and had thus far sold nearly two million copies. If MGM/UA was going to do it again, it had to be for good reason(s). For example: there would be approximately 18 minutes of blank tape at the end of the two-hour OZ cassette; what might “fill in”?
This will come as no surprise to any reading here who’ve met me in person: I started talking. In research for “the green book,” I’d been told by OZ fan Woolsey Ackerman that the complete soundtrack of “The Jitterbug” and Buddy Ebsen’s version of “If I Only Had a Heart” had been discovered in the now-named Turner Vaults. I shared this information, and while George concurred that these would be great additions, they were “vocal” only; for instance, what would visually accompany the three-minute-plus Garland/Bolger/Haley-Ebsen/Lahr rendition of the famed (but deleted) song-and-dance number in the Haunted Forest? We were all familiar with composer Harold Arlen’s home movies, taken on the OZ set during “The Jitterbug” dress rehearsal, but there wasn’t enough footage to “cover” the whole audio routine. And there was no surviving OZ footage whatsoever of Buddy Ebsen. So, I jumped in and offered that I’d found any number of mostly previously unknown OZ photographs of Buddy for the book – in costume and/or make-up test-reference stills and in actual captures of the few scenes he completed before being taken ill and replaced by Jack Haley as the Tin Man. These pictures could be “laid over” his “Heart” track on the video; I also indicated I could do the same thing with moody, serious, and trepidatious pictures of the film’s four stars to illustrate the first minute or so of “The Jitterbug.”
Rick and I then started tossing out further ideas for other material – some of which was known to collectors, some of which had been briefly seen on TV, but none of which had been used as “special features” on an OZ home video release. These bits were quickly agreed-upon: Judy receiving her special Academy Award “Oscar” from Mickey Rooney in 1940 (honoring her work in OZ and BABES IN ARMS), and Bolger, Lahr, and Ebsen in rehearsal clothes in a 1938 promotional newsreel as they met with contest winners at MGM. Added as well was Ray Bolger’s complete, deleted-from-OZ “Scarecrow” dance, first seen – but only in part – in the theatrical film, THAT’S DANCING! three years earlier.
Rick really delivered the coup de grace, however. He and I were next drawn into a scheduled meeting between MGM/UA and the representatives of Downy Fabric Softener. Those of you who recall the 1989 home video of OZ will remember the charming (said John, tactfully) commercial that launched the VHS tape. Downy was sponsoring some aspects of the release, and best of all, were offering a $5.00 rebate for all who purchased it – knocking down to roughly $19.00 the suggested $24.95 retail price. The rebate coupon would be tucked into the tape box itself, but it was Rick who suggested that Downy could probably save itself a LOT of paid-out returns by making the certificate itself into a VERY Ozzy collectible. The reaction of all at the conference table was euphoric . . . and Rick’s foresight proved omniscient when many Oz fans and collectors opened their tapes, discovered, never redeemed, and thereafter held onto THIS:

A couple of other things grew out of that day’s meetings. It was decided that I should write and provide illustrations for a booklet to be attached to the home video box cover. When I asked, “How long?” it should be, MGM/UA foolishly said, “Oh, just write as much as you want.” (In their defense, we’d just met, and they had no idea what they were unleashing . . ..) As I recall, the copy led to a 35-page attachment; this was the front page of that “golden anniversary” booklet:

Over the next few weeks – by now Warner Books and MGM/UA Home Video were “conferencing” – it was also determined that the last page of “the green book” and the last page of the VHS booklet would advertise each other. The book’s ad for the video is up top; the art from the inside back cover of the video, heralding the book, is just below (along with the later award-winning cover art for the VHS package):


Well, to sum up the “finale” of both . . . every little bit helps. 😊 As I recall, the official publication date of the book AND the official release date of the video was August 15,1989 – the precise 50th anniversary of the OZ premiere in Hollywood in 1939. Yet Jon McNeal – then a teen member of The International Wizard of Oz Club — brought the first “purchased” copy of the book (of which I was aware) to the Club’s Munchkin Convention several weeks earlier that summer; ‘twas the first one I ever autographed! (The fact that he’d found the book locally sent other conventioneers scrambling out and about to acquire their own before the day was out.)
Even prior the pub date, however, Warner Books had put in for a second printing – and ordered a third a week later; by September, roughly 90,000 copies were in print. All those involved in “the green book” were awed and ecstatic. Meanwhile, back at the video stores: Given the preceding VHS sales of OZ, as noted above, MGM/UA hoped for an additional tally of between 200,000 and 300,000 units of the 1989 edition. They were dazed and delighted when three million copies were sold by the end of the year. (Maybe, after all, it was the pull of the Downy commercial that opened the tape? 😊 https://youtu.be/P8xNcCociD0?si=2fG-CUbdcDhAOXmr )
All of this was monumentally aided, of course, by the publicity forces of both “home video” (Sue “Patty” Procko) and publishers (Ellen Herrick). There was a monumental, by-invitation-only launch and screening in August at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art – solidly crammed with several hundred sophisticated, professional “Manhattanites,” who were suddenly reduced to volubly audible five-year-olds when the “Miss Gulch” theme was heard on the soundtrack and Margaret Hamilton hove into view. The night remains a lifetime highlight for me. Leaving the floor-level cocktail reception (open bar, ice sculptures, and all), I rode down to the theater on the escalator, surrounded by MGM/UA honchos. In the process, one of the Major Moguls casually asked, “John, do you want to introduce the screening when we get downstairs?” Well, it was short notice and impromptu, to say the least, but it was an Honor Deluxe. I kept it short; I remember still that there were two Munchkins present, so they each took a bow: coroner Meinhardt Raabe and fiddler/townsman Mickey Carroll. And I spoke from my heart about the redoubtable magic of Oz and then quickly took the aisle seat that had been saved for me. What I remember most/best – of everything! — was at some point during the film looking to my left: there was Christopher O’Brien, my cherished partner of nearly seven years (and already terminally ill); plus my kid sister Patty and my mom and dad (Dotty and Wally!), who’d flown in from Milwaukee for the occasion. That’s a memory that I knew I’d never forget, and I summon it up in gratitude that we were all able to share it together.
The next morning, I did THE TODAY SHOW with Jane Pauley. I taped an interview for CNN, also in New York, and then traveled to Las Vegas for the Video Software Convention and some queries from ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT. (Perk: hanging out with more Munchkins, plus Buddy Ebsen and Ann Miller!) There were two NYC book signings – the first at Macy’s Department Store, which turned itself INTO the Land of Oz for three weeks that August: Ozzy display windows, live costumed performers and singers, emerald-green carpets with inlaid OZ letters in gold, and life-size statues of OZ film characters throughout the emporium. A record-breaking number of participants turned out on a summer afternoon for Tap-OZ-Mania, at which point West 34th Street was closed off, and thousands of people did a routine to “The Jitterbug.” Lectures in the store itself were topped by “The Second Generation of Oz” panel, where I was happy (very much so) to host Jack Haley, Jr., Jane Lahr and Maya Gottfried (daughter and granddaughter of Bert Lahr himself), Lorna Luft (Judy’s daughter, of course), and Hamilton Meserve (that “son of a witch”!).
Next, MGM/UA flew me – and, as their guest, Christopher (who’d never been to the West Coast) – to Los Angeles for a gala party in the foyer of their office building. Something like seventeen Munchkins had been brought in, too; there was a hot air balloon tethered in the parking lot; and – once again – I was asked to speak along with the little people, Jack, Jr., and Lorna. A day or so later (and among a half-dozen other interviews), I appeared with Stephanie Edwards on her local, hour-long, morning TV talk show. She was glorious – and a major Oz/Garland enthusiast — who also had the power to create a certain amount of havoc. During a commercial break after what was to be the conclusion of our eight-minute interview, she (unconditionally) told the director and producer she wanted to keep me on for another segment. She had her way, of course; we did something like 23 minutes altogether, and Christopher – who was watching from the green room with the day’s other guests – later told me about the disgruntled consternation among them (and understandably so) when they realized their own airtime was being considerably diminished! But – hey! – pretty much everyone likes talking about Oz. 😊
ALL of this happened – and it was still only mid-August 1989. Because of hoopla beyond even the imaginations of Warner Books and MGM/UA, they teamed forces again and continued to book me all over the country for signings and media. I can’t remember all the locations, but I know they included Milwaukee (a wonderful “hometown” reception), Chicago, Topeka, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia. I attended the Oz Festival in Liberal, Kansas, and made an appearance at the already long-running Chesterton, Indiana, Oz weekend. As a result of the latter trip – and thanks to the heart and beneficence of founder Jean Nelson — I then became their annual master of ceremonies, virtually every year through their own “wrap-up” in 2012.
Meanwhile, as we’d worked together several times in 1989, “Coroner” Meinhardt Raabe recommended me to the Chittenango, New York (birthplace of Frank Baum) organizers – and I received a call from Colleen Zimmer and Barb Evans, who encouraged me to come to them in 1990. I’ve been working that festival ever since; it’s led to immeasurable merriment, PLUS this blog, AND the joy of watching their annual event expand from a Saturday morning/afternoon into the now-flourishing three-day OZ-Stravaganza! every June – with its attendance of nearly 30,000 annually. (See you in a few months?!)
As might be intuited from that last statement, many of the personal friendships and professional associations that have grown out of the 50th anniversary continue to this day — three-and-a-half decades later. In the photo below, taken at a Hollywood OZ screening in which several of us participated, Meinhardt displays his newly published autobiography (2005) lavishly assembled by Lieutenant Daniel Kinske, U.S.N. After meeting Dan’s mom on a “Munchkin Cruise” of the Caribbean in 2002, I introduced her naval officer son to Meinhardt. They were both in Florida, and Danny wanted to write; as it turned out, he did exemplary work on behalf of our Coroner. (Also pictured: additional and treasured Munchkin compatriots: “flowerpot”/ “sleepyhead” Margaret Pellegrini and “first herald-trumpeter”/“soldier” Karl Slover, with one of the celebrity guests, actress Jane Kaczmarek

Those last six months of 1989 concluded – in joy – just 45 minutes from my own birthplace, at the annual “Christmas House for Cancer” in Racine, Wisconsin. Munchkins were (naturally) prevalent, including the especially cherished Ms. Pellegrini and the too-soon-departed Fern Formica. This was an event mounted every December by a local hospital, in which a vintage house was theme-decorated as a charity tour; Oz was an obvious choice for 1989. My parents, who’d by this time become friends with several of the little people, drove down and popped in – to be greeted by shouts of “Dotty! Wally!” from Margaret and Fern.
(To paraphrase a Sinatra song lyric: “Memories . . . I’ve had a few – but then again . . .” FAR too many to mention — by the grace of Baum, Garland, Oz, and God.)
Many thanks for indulging me in all of this, but I really tried not to be inconsiderate; I left out A LOT! 😊 I must admit it’s been wonderfully warming to look back at these things, and to be thrilled all over again by the excitement everyone shared. Of course, pretty much the entire long list of Ozzy and Garland-esque projects in my life since then has grown out of the 1989 events – as well as the privilege of the company of innumerable people.
I thank and toast to all of them and myriad more: friends, absent friends, and friends yet to be met. The magic of Oz . . . there’s nothing more potent or wonderful.
And I am grateful.