{"id":614,"date":"2025-02-12T21:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/?p=614"},"modified":"2025-02-12T21:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:56:08","slug":"part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

REMEMBERING “THE WIZARD OF OZ\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON ITS 50th<\/sup> ANNIVERSARY IN 1989<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by                                                                                                                                          John Fricke<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Above: The story behind this one-of-a-kind ad — created to promote the 1989 VHS tape of THE WIZARD OF OZ on its 50th anniversary — will be found below. 😊 <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I want to begin this month with a quick, genuine apology. When assembling the blog for last August, I planned a \u201clook back,\u201d some 35 years, to the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer\u2019s film triumph, THE WIZARD OF OZ. The recap was intended as a single entry in this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I began to write about the unexpected but joyously participatory events I experienced leading up to that year \u2013 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 \u201cfinale\u201d 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\u2019d venture there wasn\u2019t anything quite like it again until last autumn\u2019s 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 \u201cedition.\u201d Also: just below Gabe\u2019s star-studded story are the first two parts of this series, offering the behind-the-scenes narrative of the 50th<\/sup> anniversary WIZARD OF OZ book \u2013 and how it grew.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The major reason for prolonging all of this comes from the fact that \u2013 in addition to writing most of that coffee-table tome \u2013 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 \u201cthe green book\u201d (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) \u201cswag\u201d for the patrons who\u2019d be attending New York\u2019s 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 \u201clocal\u201d; 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\u2019s now Sony Pictures Studio.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing I was in Los Angeles, Rick snagged an invitation for me to join him in his \u201cwalk around\u201d the birthplace of OZ, Judy Garland\u2019s professional home for 16 years, and the absolute pinnacle of Hollywood product and legend during \u201cthe Golden Years.\u201d We later found that MGM\/UA\u2019s George Feltenstein had been coopted by coworkers into conducting our visit, and George himself admitted that he really didn\u2019t expect to meet strangers as tied-into, familiar-with, and lovingly attuned to classic MGM as Rick and I. By the time we\u2019d 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<\/sup> Anniversary OZ VHS release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cfill in\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will come as no surprise to any reading here who\u2019ve met me in person: I started talking. In research for \u201cthe green book,\u201d I\u2019d been told by OZ fan Woolsey Ackerman that the complete soundtrack of \u201cThe Jitterbug\u201d and Buddy Ebsen\u2019s version of \u201cIf I Only Had a Heart\u201d 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 \u201cvocal\u201d 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\u2019s home movies, taken on the OZ set during \u201cThe Jitterbug\u201d dress rehearsal, but there wasn\u2019t enough footage to \u201ccover\u201d the whole audio routine. And there was no surviving OZ footage whatsoever of Buddy Ebsen. So, I jumped in and offered that I\u2019d found any number of mostly previously unknown OZ photographs of Buddy for the book \u2013 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 \u201claid over\u201d his \u201cHeart\u201d track on the video; I also indicated I could do the same thing with moody, serious, and trepidatious pictures of the film\u2019s four stars to illustrate the first minute or so of \u201cThe Jitterbug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick and I then started tossing out further ideas for other material \u2013 some of which was known to collectors, some of which had been briefly seen on TV, but none of which had been used as \u201cspecial features\u201d on an OZ home video release. These bits were quickly agreed-upon: Judy receiving her special Academy Award \u201cOscar\u201d 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\u2019s complete, deleted-from-OZ \u201cScarecrow\u201d dance, first seen \u2013 but only in part \u2013 in the theatrical film, THAT\u2019S DANCING! three years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 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\u2019s foresight proved omniscient when many Oz fans and collectors opened their tapes, discovered, never redeemed, and thereafter held onto THIS:<\/p>\n\n\n

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A couple of other things grew out of that day\u2019s 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, \u201cHow long?\u201d it should be, MGM\/UA foolishly said, \u201cOh, just write as much as you want.\u201d (In their defense, we\u2019d 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 \u201cgolden anniversary\u201d booklet:<\/p>\n\n\n

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Over the next few weeks \u2013 by now Warner Books and MGM\/UA Home Video were \u201cconferencing\u201d \u2013 it was also determined that the last page of \u201cthe green book\u201d and the last page of the VHS booklet would advertise each other. The book\u2019s 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):<\/p>\n\n\n

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Well, to sum up the \u201cfinale\u201d 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 \u2013 the precise 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the OZ premiere in Hollywood in 1939. Yet Jon McNeal \u2013 then a teen member of The International Wizard of Oz Club — brought the first \u201cpurchased\u201d copy of the book (of which I was aware) to the Club\u2019s Munchkin Convention several weeks earlier that summer; \u2018twas the first one I ever autographed! (The fact that he\u2019d found the book locally sent other conventioneers scrambling out and about to acquire their own before the day was out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even prior the pub date, however, Warner Books had put in for a second printing \u2013 and ordered a third a week later; by September, roughly 90,000 copies were in print. All those involved in \u201cthe green book\u201d 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<\/a> )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this was monumentally aided, of course, by the publicity forces of both \u201chome video\u201d (Sue \u201cPatty\u201d Procko) and publishers (Ellen Herrick). There was a monumental, by-invitation-only launch and screening in August at NYC\u2019s Museum of Modern Art \u2013 solidly crammed with several hundred sophisticated, professional \u201cManhattanites,\u201d who were suddenly reduced to volubly audible five-year-olds when the \u201cMiss Gulch\u201d 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, \u201cJohn, do you want to introduce the screening when we get downstairs?\u201d 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 \u2013 of everything! — was at some point during the film looking to my left: there was Christopher O\u2019Brien, 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\u2019d flown in from Milwaukee for the occasion. That\u2019s a memory that I knew I\u2019d never forget, and I summon it up in gratitude that we were all able to share it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 the first at Macy\u2019s 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<\/sup> Street was closed off, and thousands of people did a routine to \u201cThe Jitterbug.\u201d Lectures in the store itself were topped by \u201cThe Second Generation of Oz\u201d 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\u2019s daughter, of course), and Hamilton Meserve (that \u201cson of a witch\u201d!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, MGM\/UA flew me \u2013 and, as their guest, Christopher (who\u2019d never been to the West Coast) \u2013 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 \u2013 once again \u2013 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 who was watching from the green room with the day\u2019s other guests \u2013 later told me about the disgruntled consternation among them (and understandably so) when they realized their own airtime was being considerably diminished! But \u2013 hey! \u2013 pretty much everyone likes talking about Oz. 😊<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALL of this happened \u2013 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\u2019t remember all the locations, but I know they included Milwaukee (a wonderful \u201chometown\u201d 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 \u2013 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 \u201cwrap-up\u201d in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, as we\u2019d worked together several times in 1989, \u201cCoroner\u201d Meinhardt Raabe recommended me to the Chittenango, New York (birthplace of Frank Baum) organizers \u2013 and I received a call from Colleen Zimmer and Barb Evans, who encouraged me to come to them in 1990. I\u2019ve been working that festival ever since; it\u2019s 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 \u2013 with its attendance of nearly 30,000 annually. (See you in a few months?!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As might be intuited from that last statement, many of the personal friendships and professional associations that have grown out of the 50th<\/sup> 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\u2019s mom on a \u201cMunchkin Cruise\u201d 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: \u201cflowerpot\u201d\/ \u201csleepyhead\u201d Margaret Pellegrini and \u201cfirst herald-trumpeter\u201d\/\u201csoldier\u201d Karl Slover, with one of the celebrity guests, actress Jane Kaczmarek<\/p>\n\n\n

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Those last six months of 1989 concluded \u2013 in joy \u2013 just 45 minutes from my own birthplace, at the annual \u201cChristmas House for Cancer\u201d 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\u2019d by this time become friends with several of the little people, drove down and popped in \u2013 to be greeted by shouts of \u201cDotty! Wally!\u201d from Margaret and Fern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(To paraphrase a Sinatra song lyric: \u201cMemories . . . I\u2019ve had a few \u2013 but then again . . .\u201d FAR too many to mention — by the grace of Baum, Garland, Oz, and God.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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 \u2013 as well as the privilege of the company of innumerable people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s nothing more potent or wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I am grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER: REMEMBERING “THE WIZARD OF OZ\u201d 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 \u201clook back,\u201d some 35 years, to the 50th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer\u2019s film triumph, THE WIZARD OF OZ. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Part Three”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,3,8,21,2],"tags":[13,15,9,11,4,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allthingsoz.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}