Judy Garland Movie Club: Week Seven
MOVIE: THE WIZARD OF OZ
YEAR RELEASED: 1939
COME FOR THE GARLAND, STAY FOR HER LITTLE DOG, TOO
Like most friends of Dorothy, I approached this week’s selection of the Judy Garland Movie Club with familiarity. Unlike some of the previous movies examined that were entirely new to me, The Wizard of Oz is a film I have nearly committed to memory. The year I was born works out well on the timeline of home video consumption, and mine is certainly a generation that wore out VHS tapes with repeated viewings of our favorite films.
Luckily for me, the 50th Anniversary edition of The Wizard of Oz was nestled under the Christmas tree of a formative time in my development. The next few years were filled with countless viewings of the movie…and the special behind the scenes features that followed…and the commemorative Oz-themed Downy commercial that proceeded it. I didn’t know I was seeing the Kansas sequences properly tinted in sepia tones for the first time in home television viewing. I didn’t know how long the world had gone without seeing the extended dance sequence in “If I Only Had A Brain” or the grainy home videos of the deleted “The Jitterbug” sequence. Children often don’t know how lucky they are.
As an adult, I find myself in the very fortunate position of getting to skip ahead of first impressions and instead view this film again through focused lenses. What all my favorite movies I watched with frequency as a kid have in common is a wide variety of things for an audience to pick up on, which changes the tone of each screening depending on where in the frame they decide to focus their attention. This time around, I found myself transfixed by a performance I did not recall giving the proper respect it deserved in previous fuzzy VHS viewings, newly buoyed by loving restoration and the clarity of Blu-ray resolution. That performance is given by Terry: a six year old Cairn Terrier. A consummate dog actress, Terry had already shared the screen with Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney and been directed by Cecil B. DeMille by the time she landed the role of Toto in The Wizard of Oz. Terry is, literally, the first bitch to have a scene amongst the legendary all-female cast of the 1939 classic The Women. As Terry and I share a November 17th birthday, I have no problem admitting that hers is a film career of which I am deeply jealous.
Please, if you have already seen The Wizard of Oz (and really, who hasn’t at this point?) give it another glance with the goal of never looking away from Terry in any shot where Toto is visible on screen. It is a shockingly engaged performance. Her Toto watches with genuine interest when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, eyes focused and following the action even in long takes and wide shots where the choreography has her human co-stars traveling around the set. Sure, she sneaks a quick look to camera just as the bridge of “Over The Rainbow” comes to an end, but she also did all of her own stunts.
PLOT REACTION
Much in the way I’ve always taken for granted what a big deal this movie must have been to make, I had put very little thought into the very smart narrative decisions made to structure the film. The book does share a number of plot points, but is really presented in a more episodic manner akin to Alice in Wonderland. The MGM film sets out to ground the events with an emotional throughline and gets right to the point when it comes to establishing Dorothy as a young girl with relatable troubles. She loves her dog, she wishes her everyday life was more glamorous, and she does not feel she is truly heard by the adult figures in her life. Right before Dorothy wins the hearts of all people globally by singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” Aunt Em turns to her and instructs her to, “Find yourself a place where you won’t get into any trouble.” The line famous for being the cue to set up the prototypical and most famous “I want” song in the history of musicals occurs a mere 5 minutes into the movie. The drabness of her exterior surroundings contrasting the hopefulness of her interior imagination are so succinctly stated so early in the movie that you might assume the screenwriters are racing us to Oz, but I was surprised to realize we spend nearly 20 minutes in sepia-tinted Kansas. It’s being given enough time to understand the reality of Dorothy’s life that has us as ready as she is to explore more colorful places, as it were. The payoff of making us wait that long is having an audience that almost forgets the whole movie won’t be like this, who went to go see the Technicolor Triumph The Wizard of Oz and then were lulled into watching a sweet farm girl deal with monochromatic everyday problems like they might see in any number of other movies Judy Garland would have previously made.
When you’re able to put yourself into the mindset of those seeing this up on the big screen for the first time in 1939, nearly every scene that follows Dorothy’s arrival in Munchkinland is a marvel. Between watching for strong Toto-related acting choices this go around, I spent a lot of time truly noticing the makeup work. It is, at turns, remarkable in its simplicity (Scarecrow), beautiful in its depth and texture (Tin Man), and fantastical without inhibiting performance (Cowardly Lion). It occurred to me only as an adult that I found the near-glowing green of the Wicked Witch so striking in the attention it called to itself that as a child I never even noticed that the Wizard also had a full prosthetic-enhanced makeup plot distinct from any of the other characters Frank Morgan played in the film.
The strength of the visuals account for a great deal of the movie’s lasting success, never looking outdated even as each subsequent generation was raised with higher and higher technical standards of film making to compare it to. But the focused screenplay has to be given a lot of credit for elevating what could have been a very attractive children’s film to something more resonant to a larger audience. Dorothy’s three travel companions were always in search of a brain, a heart, and courage going back to the original novel, but having done the work of establishing Dorothy as a burgeoning young person in search of more in the expanded Kansas section of the film enabled screenwriters to link her more directly to the emotional arcs of those journeys. Rather than a passive traveler to whom Oz…happens…MGM reshapes the trip into an allegory for self-discovery, strengthened by the movie’s convention that the entire adventure was a dream. While finding confidence in yourself, as a young person entering adulthood or as a small town person exploring the larger world out there, might be a small aspect of the book, it becomes the crux of the screenplay.
To the benefit of all involved, vulnerability, honest reflection, and earnest wonderment are the strongest tools at young Judy Garland’s disposal. While this is the revelatory performance that skyrocketed her into international recognition, in many ways it’s the most expected and logical performance to follow in the line of films she had done up until that point. Dorothy was the culmination of Sairy Dodd’s farmgirl wishes for more in life, Betty Clayton’s youthful daydreaming, Cricket West’s loyalty to friendship, Judy Bellaire’s intense love of family, Betsy Booth’s wisdom beyond her years, and Pinkie Wingate’s tearfully noble sense of sacrifice to benefit those she loves. MGM finally knew what to do with Judy Garland…
…I mean, sort of. Eventually.
REACTION AS A MODERN 2018 AUDIENCE
More has been said about The Wizard of Oz than I will ever be able to hear, watch, or casually absorb through internet search wormholes. The published stories were already beloved and had been adapted multiple times for the stage and screen before MGM’s big budget, Technicolor treatment. It’s interesting to realize that even in 1939, so relatively early in the history of cinema, Hollywood was already dealing with concepts we’re all too familiar with today: screen adaptations of popular characters, rebooting established intellectual properties, public expectations, gossip about production setbacks and on set mishaps, test screening feedback leading to cuts in the film…even if it was before some of those issues had current buzzwords attached to them in media coverage.
It’s also truly interesting to note, in an age of internet think pieces and fandom backlash, that some of the most identifiable characteristics of The Wizard of Oz in the pop culture zeitgeist come from this adaptation of the source material, in which many drastic liberties were taken. Taking a look at early studio discussion and script notes on early drafts indicate there were concerns about making sure some fundamental aspects of the original story. The idea that Dorothy’s trip to Oz could all be explained as having been a dream comes from this film, as the books treat Oz as an actual place Dorothy was actually brought to and later revisits in other books; the real world counterparts of Kansas explaining the fantastical characters she dreamed of meeting in Oz is also a creation for the screenplay. Even two of the most striking visuals of the movie come from film-making decisions without any support from the original books: the ruby slippers and the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. The silver slippers of the source material became ruby to better show off the Technicolor filming process, and a witch who was described only as ugly in the book was likely only given an otherworldly green makeup treatment to take advantage of the available level of color vibrancy. It’s a delicate balance of “make things look as visually stunning as we can” for an audience who had largely never seen a film that looked like this with “but give them a logical explanation to ground this” for that same audience they worried were too sophisticated for a story sincere in its presentation of fantasy.
Whether or not they could have had more faith in their audience at the time is moot, since (either by careful design, total accident, or some combination of the two) the filmmakers landed on a look and tone that achieves something very few do: timelessness. I was lucky enough to have seen the 3D remaster of the movie during the limited theatrical release to commemorate its 75th Anniversary. It’s usually silly to put too much stock in the idea of a new high resolution, digital print for something as old as this, because technology can only make something look as good as the limitations of the original source. Seeing The Wizard of Oz blown up at that resolution with added 3D presentation was shocking for exactly the opposite reason. Somehow, in 1939, this studio was able to produce a film that still looks beautiful by modern standards. The mixed media shots combining matte paintings with sound stage sets, the practical effects, the elaborate make up design of many of the characters could all have aged poorly to a present day audience, and yet somehow all stand up to modern scrutiny. This is all the more shocking compared to the aesthetic quality of the other films we’ve seen Garland make up until this point. To identify Listen, Darling and The Wizard of Oz as having been made within months of one another on paper is easy to understand, but to look at the two films it is hard not to see them as being made worlds apart in terms of visual depth, texture, lighting, and scenic design, let alone color.
FAVORITE PART
Let’s go obscure here! Because the merits of the film are numerous, well-known, and oft-discussed, just quick mention of some little things:
The Wizard of Oz is a film filled with character actors doing strong character work. Interesting faces, broad comedy, and no attempts to cover up regional dialects. Between Ray Bolger’s blustery fast-talking, Bert Lahr’s Jewish New York comedy rhythms, and Jack Haley’s non rhotic Boston accent, both the Kansas farmhands and citizens of Oz evoke the northeastern vaudeville circuit far more than they do the Midwest or any sort of Magical Otherplace. Sometimes it really is funnier to let old pros lean in with their uniquely established brands of humor, and the three characterizations are more distinct and richer for it here. It’s lovely to see Charley Grapewin and Billie Burke, both having been among my favorite things in Listen, Darling and Everybody Sing, respectively.
Burke’s straight-faced approach to Glinda the Good Witch is especially enjoyable on a camp level, gently alternating between showy over-gesturing and bored looks of disinterest. One has to applaud anyone who manages to somehow both highlight AND underplay the comedy in her reading of the line, “Only bad witches are ugly,” delivered only seconds after having asked Dorothy if she herself was a bad witch. Were one to do a modern take on the material, Glinda is closest the 1939 script has to a problematic plot point. While the streamlining of the novel’s more episodic nature for the screen in most cases makes things clearer, the decision to combine the two good witches of Oz does create something of a plot hole. There’s no problem with the Good Witch of the North advising Dorothy to seek out The Wizard in the Emerald City for help only to later learn from Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, that she had the power to help herself all along when those characters are separate entities. Merging them into one Glinda, the Good Witch of the North creates the unanswered question of why information that could have been revealed immediately to Dorothy was kept from her. Of course, most discussion and dissection of Glinda’s actions came years after the making of the film, so Burke plays up no subtext or hinting that anything deeper is going on than her dialogue suggests. Lovely as her light turn is, it’s Margaret Hamilton that takes Most Valuable Character Player this time around. By all accounts, Hamilton was a real sweetheart to work with (her appearance on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood 36 years later reveals her to be a sweet, soft-spoken dear) which makes the angry pitch of her performance and genuine terror she instilled in the hearts of millions of children all the more impressive.
Her legendary villain work shaped history’s idea of what a witch could be on film, but even before her entrance in an explosion of red smoke 29 minutes into the movie, my love of Hamilton was secured with every moment of screen time she milks for laughs as sour spinster Miss Gulch. Yea, yea, yea, the laugh…but the incredulous comedy take she gives Charley Grapewin’s Uncle Henry at the end of her scene in the farmhouse is a treasure.
In a film with such high production value, I do also love to take note of one scene where things…could have used a bit more art direction. The Haunted Forest scene was to have been the setup for the deleted production number, “The Jitterbug.” I’ve personally always been a big fan of the song musically, but I do respect the impulse to cut the number as a “trendy” element that would date itself faster than the other more classic storytelling elements at play. Losing the song, however, meant cutting the effects where, one might assume, the budget had been spent. What we are left with are two establishing shots of owls and vultures in trees.
The birds, with red light up eyes and limited mobility, might as well be Halloween decorations compared to the film’s art direction in other scenes. Speaking of Halloween, in that same scene, the group are carrying various props to protect themselves. While the Cowardly Lion’s whimsically oversized butterfly net is amusing, the Scarecrow is inexplicably carrying a revolver. In a movie devoid of any modern artillery, where castle guards are armed with staffs or lances, the gun is jarring to see.
NOTABLE/QUOTABLE DIALOGUE
CITIZENS OF THE EMERALD CITY:
We get up at 12 and start to work at 1,
Take an hour for lunch, and then at 2, we’re done.
AUNTIE EM: For twenty-three years, I’ve been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now… well, being a Christian woman, I can’t say it!
