HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO “THE GREEN BOOK”!

THE OFFICIAL 50th ANNIVERSARY PICTORIAL HISTORY”

IS NOW 35 YEARS OLD

Part Two

By John Fricke

Above: Artwork detail from the cover of the weekly “TV Screen” supplement to the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL (Sunday, December 11, 1960). It heralds that evening’s network telecast of THE WIZARD OF OZ – the third in what would be a virtually annual series through 1998. Echoing their approach of the preceding year (when Red Skelton and daughter Valentina did the honors), CBS engaged one of their top series “names” (and offspring) to host the film. Shown here, bottom left, are Richard Boone and his seven-year-old son Peter; Boone was the star of HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. The OZ drawing itself was prepared by JOURNAL staff artist Einar V. Quist, and the original clipping was one of some 500 illustrations in THE WIZARD OF OZ: THE OFFICIAL 50th ANNIVERSARY PICTORIAL HISTORY coffee-table book of 1989, currently celebrating the 35th anniversary of its publication.

Welcome to Part Two of our birthday salute to the best-selling, full-length history of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 1939 production of THE WIZARD OF OZ, first published 35 years ago this past August to commemorate the film’s 50th anniversary in 1989. Its immediate and gleeful reception by Oz enthusiasts, film buffs, critics, and the public made the emerald-clothbound volume a happy success for me, Jay Scarfone, and William Stillman. “The green book” – as it’s often been termed – broke considerable new ground in telling AND illustrating the back-story of the OZ motion picture; it’s been gratifying and delightful to find that it continues to please both new and long-standing fans.

All those years ago, the book’s actual creation saw it burgeon from a proposed 200-picture offering — with brief comment and captions — to a final product encompassing 500 pictures and a full text. Many people continue to approach me for details on “how it all came to be,” whether the questions are posed at Chittenango’s OZ-Stravaganza! or other Oz festivals and events. So it seemed the 85th anniversary might be a good time to kick across the saga for posterity, and this is actually the second installment in the retelling. (Part one may be found below, at the conclusion of this entry.)

That initial account concluded in September 1987, when I approached Jack Haley, Jr. (Son of Tin Man!) for advice on how to get an okay from MGM to seek a publisher for such a book. Jack was way ahead of me; even before we met, he’d taken a copy of our 20-page outline/proposal to Roger Mayer, chief executive officer of the Turner Entertainment Company (TEC), recommending that I be given such permission. Roger was a long-time, respected official with a renowned reputation in the industry. (It would be impossible to tabulate how many of his compatriots were thrilled when he was presented with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award” Oscar in 2005.) Roger was also a fast-thinking, quick-moving decision maker, and I soon had a letter from him saying that the studio would cooperate with me and allow access to surviving MGM paperwork and art for use in the book. With that major hurdle surmounted, we could move ahead with what we had given a working title of THE WIZARD OF OZ: A PICTORIAL HISTORY.

Back home in New York City in autumn 1987, I became acquainted with Carole Orgel and Lois Sloane of TEC’s licensing and merchandising division. This was initially a bit overwhelming, as they immediately, unquestioningly, and basically blew the padlock off the hinges of the surviving MGM archive for me – even though Roger’s letter had merely implied that the company would allow reasonable entrée and use. I figured I needed to be honest and remind Carole of this, but when I expressed that thought, she simply said, “Hey – word has come down through the channels that ‘ROGER MAYER WANTS THIS BOOK!’” And that, in effect, meant that everything was mine to peruse.

Who was I to argue? 😊

Armed with such avowed corporate cooperation – and the proposal and the “assembled art” portfolio I’d assembled of material from the collections of we three authors – our agent Mitchell Rose went to work. He called just a few weeks later to announce that Warner Books had made an offer to publish a 256-page, hardcover, 8.5×11 inch volume, with sixty-four pages in full color. Even Mitch, a young pro, was thrilled; MGM/TEC were impressed; and the three “creators” were alternately jubilant, cautious, wide-eyed, and awed. (Well, I was, anyway!)

By March 1988, the contracts were signed, and they specifically called for (among other things) approximately 250 illustrations in the finished product. Of course, our collections were the foundation for much of the vintage and contemporary Oz memorabilia and merchandising we planned to use. It was decided, though, that we would plow some of the advance money right back into the project by sending me on a research jaunt to the West Coast. The admitted hope was that this might turn up a dozen or so rare pictures to add to the hundreds that Jay, Bill, and I already had on hand.

I undertook that trip for three weeks in April 1988. It was not only a revelation but provided the almost daily feeling that God was looking down and saying (in effect), “You want to do a book? I’ll GIVE you a book!” Rather than “a dozen or so” visuals, that journey turned up more than four hundred “new” photographs, studio memos, special effects work sheets, Technicolor test slides, clippings, and scores of script pages – most of which had been unpublished or at least unseen for almost 50 years.

Much of the treasure trove was located at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. One of their newer acquisitions at that time was the John Truwe Collection; he’d been a make-up man at MGM for decades and had saved a handful of test stills from each of the many films on which he’d worked. THE WIZARD OF OZ, however, was the exception. There were more than seventy make-up and costume test reference photos that he’d retained from that production (most of them unfamiliar); they provided glowing visual proof of many behind-the-scenes rumors and/or anecdotes. We used a lot of them in the book, of course, and here are a few reminders of what had been, until 1989, hidden treasure.

Judy Garland’s Dorothy went through multiple hair styles, make-up applications, ruby slipper designs, and different dresses as MGM tried to transform the 16-year-old entertainer into a Kansas youngster of 12. There are many pictures of those efforts that more-or-less obliterate Dorothy in favor of lookalikes for Lewis Carroll’s Alice – or Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, and Marcia Brady (the latter decades ahead of the fact). But here’s Judy in her # 2 frock, and this one would not be out-of-place on one of the von Trapp Family Singers:

As a preteen, I’d been fascinated by a quote from a 1939 MGM press release, excerpted in the text for Alla T. Ford and Dick Martin’s delightful book, THE MUSICAL FANTASIES OF L. FRANK BAUM (1959). It offered that OZ had “terrified Hollywood by unique production problems. Characteristic of innumerable dilemmas was that posed by the flying monkeys. MGM borrowed wings of giant condors from museums, attached them to midgets dressed in monkey suits, who were hung on wires and manipulated from an elaborate control board.” Well, that made for a great story, but certainly none of the actual movie simians bore such an on-screen appearance. Imagine my thrill, however — nearly thirty years later — to find visual proof that some sort of attempt or variation along those lines had indeed been tested at the studio. (Notice, too, the electrical cord on the floor, trailing off to the right side of the photo. Battery packs would be used to “flap” the small wings in the ultimate film, but electricity was employed here for test purposes.)

I wouldn’t meet Jerry Maren until the actual 50th anniversary of OZ in 1989. But from that day on, he and wife Elizabeth – a preeminent “Munchkin by Marriage” — became steadfast and remarkable friends and coworkers. Thus, there was some exceptional foreshadowing for me in the 1988 discovery of this next costume test shot. Jerry’s flanked here by his “Lollipop Guild” compatriots: Harry Doll on his right, Jackie Gerlich on his left. (The signboard is incorrect.) Note that wigs and make-up were yet-to-come as part of their costuming.

It was a fortunate thing that I first examined all these extraordinary mementoes in a library . . . or I would have been voicing a lot of exclamatory reactions. I think this “discovery” created the greatest initial thrill for me, as there were decades of reports that Gale Sondergaard had been cast, costumed, and tested as a beautiful Wicked Witch of the West — only to leave the production when it was decided she’d appear instead as a typical old harridan. I found the latter “look” among Truwe’s archive, as well, but the best image was this first one: the slinky, sequined, eye-shadowed Evil-Queen-of-SNOW-WHITE-styled visage. (That night, when I got back to the Hollywood hotel from the library, I called Jay and Bill long distance to exult about the existence of such a photo.)

Meanwhile, the Academy held much other amazing material. There was the Tom Tarr Technicolor Collection: roughly 190 35mm film frames, each taken from WIZARD test footage. These captured between-the-scenes and often casual moments never visible in the actual film. There were also the personal collections of the newspaper columns written by Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Sidney Skolsky. That fact that they’d been gathered made a much simpler task of following the OZ commentary of three preeminent daily reporters of that era.

Perhaps best of all, the Academy possessed some of the papers of A. Arnold “Buddy” Gillespie, the gentleman whose genius and staff were responsible for the OZ special effects. (All of them were, of course, created “out of whole cloth,” so to speak; there was no CGI in 1938-39.) Buddy’s files included the forms he was required to fill out to explain the dates, costs, and procedures attendant to creating OZ film magic. Paramount among his sorcery — to this day — might well be the “twister,” which he formulated at a time in history when there were only still photograph captures of actual tornadoes, plus a single, 30-second bit of grainy black-and-white film footage of a Caribbean waterspout. (We used a tornado-in-repose picture in the 50th ANNIVERSARY book; here’s a more-recently-discovered frame of the Gillespie “cyclone” in action as it’s about to envelop the farmhouse. This bit of film was trimmed from the OZ rough cut prior to its premiere, possibly because it proved too intense for the youngsters in the OZ “sneak preview” audience.)

The Academy library had other photos of major interest, too. The theory has been that MGM, back in the day, circulated very few OZ stills that depicted the actual filming process; by that I mean, on-set or set-adjacent photos that showed the lights, cameras, and non-acting personnel. The rationale attendant to this hesitation on the part of the studio has been ascribed to the idea that such pictures – seen in the press or in the showcases or lobbies of theaters — would break the spell of the fantasy on screen. This, however, didn’t mean such images weren’t taken, and among others, we found a distant “capture” that took in both acting and activity:

There were also stills from deleted moments of OZ, including several from the excision I most regret. It’s the sixty seconds when 300+ green-clad Emerald Citizians – singing, dancing, marching, or viewing — welcomed the Fab Five back to town as the Scarecrow brandished the broomstick of the fallen Witch of the West. The principals aren’t visible in this capture – but it surely denotes an extraordinary musical minute that I would put back into OZ, pronto. (If only it existed!)

Unfortunately, most of MGM’s actual production paperwork for their films was destroyed circa 1970. Yet the legal files remained and were housed at Turner at the time I was researching; that information was made available to me, as well. (Another appreciative salute here for the trust of Roger Mayer, by way of Jack Haley, Jr.) Those papers included astonishing background data and many remarks — or even fragments of remarks — that could be assembled with other facts to paint a word picture in accompaniment to our ever-growing stacks of illustrations.

The University of Southern California furnished another significant cache of material. Its Arthur Freed and Roger Edens Collections contained surviving memos, discarded lyric sheets, and stacks of script pages that contributed many revelatory Ozian insights – even for someone who’d already spent several decades researching the film for fun.

At this point in the story, it’s important to note that (almost despite ourselves) we found the book evolving from a planned, simple pictorial into a complete retelling of the making, editing, promotion, reception, and subsequent history of MGM’s WIZARD. There were two primary reasons for this: first, such background was required if a reader was to make adequate sense of the mountain of art the book would possess. Of equal importance, however, was the unexpected actuality that so much of the material that turned up was new or provided clarification (and even major correction) of some of the hitherto accepted “facts” behind the film.

Meanwhile, material continued to pile up from other West Coast sources – notably those somehow connected to the production. Sarah, the youngest daughter of OZ director Victor Fleming, made available remarkable material from her father’s WIZARD scrapbook. Robert Baum, great-grandson of L. Frank himself, shared another amazing scrapbook, this one compiled in 1938-39 by Maud Gage Baum, Frank’s widow. It contained a mass of rare clippings, telegrams, advertisements, an invitation to the movie premiere — even a ticket stub! Linda, the daughter of OZ producer Mervyn LeRoy, gave us access to her father’s papers. Sid Luft, longtime manager and once husband of Judy Garland, offered WIZARD items from the material Judy herself had maintained throughout her life and which he had preserved since her passing. Jane Lahr, daughter of the Cowardly Lion, answered questions about her father.

Furthermore, the generosity of other Oz and Judy Garland collectors made for preeminent blessings. Bill Chapman possessed five original color transparencies of the OZ cast, including a classic portrait of Dorothy and Toto. We used all of ’em in the book, and although this one has since been seen everywhere, it first appeared in the 50th ANNIVERSARY tome:

I’d been a member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc. (ozclub.org) since 1962, and several compatriots I’d met during my first year in the organization jumped in — more than 25 years later — to offer rarities from their own archives: Fred M. Meyer, Dick Martin, and Douglas and David Greene. Rob Roy MacVeigh was a younger affiliate but an “MGM-er” from way back and every bit a match to our excitement about the book. Marc Lewis allowed us to borrow all forty of his first editions of the Oz book series, so that their covers could be professionally photographed for the three-page spread demonstrating the scope of Oz far beyond Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Woolsey Ackerman tracked down one of the OZ assistant directors, Wallace Worsley — Woolsey and I interviewed him together — and then also discovered an Adrian collector who owned and entrusted us with the loan of four of that genius’s original Munchkin costume sketches. (See pages 32 and 33 in the book.) The movie’s “Munchkin Coroner,” Meinhardt Raabe, was a longtime friend to the Oz Club, and he sat for a warm, detailed interview with Jay and Bill, while other audio and printed interviews were made available through the Academy, historians, and fans.

Further, the project was a marvelous way to make friends. Buddy Ebsen, the original OZ Tin Man, was overjoyed when I was able to point him to the location of some of his costume and make-up test stills – and even those of “his” Tin Man in the few scenes he was able to film before becoming ill. He was ever interested in revisiting the crazy association he had with OZ, although his remembrance turned rather wry when he recalled the heat and heft suffered in wearing two costumes at once. He’s shown here with Ray Bolger and Bert Lahr in the sequence where the friends of Dorothy don coats of the Winkie Guard:

By August 1988, we’d accumulated more than 700 images from which to choose the illustrations, and the book grew to a 500+ picture project. We next dug in to write the captions for all that art, endeavoring to get as much information into the wordage as possible. This was not only for the sake of imparting history but to minimize the amount of actual text writing yet to do. Jay and Bill did the majority of the labeling of the promotional material, along with that to accompany past, interim, and present-day merchandising. They also contributed first drafts of chapters 14 and 20 to discuss the Ozzy film-related products.

I wrote the remainder of the text and captions between mid-August and December, trepidatiously delivering the manual-portable-typewriter manuscript just prior to the holidays. I also took another jaunt to the West Coast, spending ten October days to check out several new illustrations that had come to light since the first swath of research in April. Meanwhile, Mitchell Rose and/or Warner Books were becoming ever more revved about the project’s possibilities. In their fervor, they sold OZ to British publishers Hodder & Stoughton, as well as to the Book of the Month Club and to the Movie/Entertainment Book Club. Amid all this, Turner Entertainment – in the mildest tone of inquiry – asked if we would mind changing the subtitle from A PICTORIAL HISTORY to (what was, to say the least, an honor designation) THE OFFICIAL 50th ANNIVERSARY PICTORIAL HISTORY. Mind you, at that point, no one had read a single word of the manuscript. Talk about the magic of Oz!

Our man at Warner Books, Jim Frost, returned the manuscript to me in early January 1989, fresh from the copy editor. As someone who’d never before written a book, I was terrified of that meeting, fearing that wholesale chopping, rearranging, and dismissal might have occurred, been recommended . . . or demanded. Instead, there some minor “cosmetic” changes — and a few suggestions for clarification here and there. But that was it. My pendulum quickly swung the other way, and I pointedly asked Jim if it wouldn’t be best to have someone more critical look at (if not take a hatchet to) all those chapters. He paid me a compliment that eventually went to the hearts and souls of all of us Ozians who’d worked so diligently to assemble the raw materials: “John . . .  very seldom do we receive this seamless a manuscript.”

Happy day? To be sure – but there were more of those in the immediate offing. The copy was in galley by February, and I spent many days through the spring at the NYC design studios of Sylvain Michaelis and Irene Carpelis, the independent firm hired to create the physical book. They involved me in every department, and ideas flew around the office. We were all so much on the same page (. . .) that immediate coalescence was the order of each session. At their request, I keyed the artwork into the text and assembled the color materials on their 64 pages so that correct prominence was given to the best of the 1939 (and beyond) MGM-related images. We all agreed on green binding and endpapers, and to 1930s art deco as an appropriate, tangible through-line for the page-by page appearance. Without exception, Sylvain, Irene & Co. were patience-squared in dealing with the incessant Ozzy perk (i.e., Fricke) at hand.

And then . . . to the surprise of all of us: The entire text FIT, all the desired pictures FIT, and the book came to exactly 256 pages – with no deletions, several last-minute additions, and the inclusion of twice as many visuals — and four or five times as many words –as was thought possible.

By the end of May, it was done, and Warner Books sent off the page mechanicals and art to a printer in Tennessee. In late June and over the 4th of July weekend, Warner representative Charles Morea forsook holiday time and flew down to oversee the final printing process. The first book was delivered to Warner’s in New York on July 18th, and Jim Frost called to alert me at the end of that business day: “We have ONE copy. We need it back here by 10 a.m. tomorrow. But if you come over now, you can take it home overnight.” Moreover, the finished product had already swept through the offices that afternoon, and when I arrived, the head of Warner Books came down to Jim’s office to congratulate us. (There’s an additional, very personal saga to the rest of that evening, but we’ll have to discuss that in person. 😊 Meanwhile. this picture wasn’t taken on that specific date — but very soon thereafter:)

And all THAT was just the beginning! I promise to wrap this up next month in a reminiscence about the nationwide tidal wave of enthusiasm caused by “the green book,” for it immediately became a surprisingly pivotal part of the overall 50th anniversary celebrations. There was also an additional, concurrent project on which I was asked to work, plus a multi-city promotional and “signing” tour arranged on behalf of that second product and the book . . . plus TV, radio, and Macy’s – all for MGM’s wonderful WIZARD OF OZ.

One anecdote still makes me laugh. The poster above was on display in countless cross-country bookstores from late July until Christmas 1989. A cherished friend from college days, Lillian Polus Gerstner, managed one such emporium, and she was a “theatrical” as well; we’d done several shows together and shared our enthusiasms for many things. When the OZ poster arrived at her shop, she was excited to discover there was such a book in the offing but gave the oversize “ad” only a cursory glance, planning to display it as soon when she had time. She also (as she told me later), planned to call her Oz-obsessed old buddy, John Fricke, to make sure he knew about the existence of such a volume. (Hands up, please, all Ozites reading here whose entire acquaintance of family, friends, associates — and strangers met on a bus — SOMEhow knew you were OZ fans, because you discussed it MULTIPLE hours a day. Every day. 😊 ) A few hours later, Lillian took a break to unfurl the poster and was astounded at one of the names on the book cover. As she did tell me later that night, “It made sense, of course . . . but it sure was a surprise!”