The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, "The Wiz," and "Judy" -- Garbo

This article in the Los Angeles Times is about forty years of "The Wiz" and -- as it should -- the piece focuses on four decades of changes in Black culture. 

But today, as I write about L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and how it became a movie, then a Broadway musical, a second movie, and then a constantly-evolving series Broadway revivals, I'm thinking of child performers, the nature of show business, and how show business deals with the journey of growing up. 

The first book in the Oz series was published in 1900.  There had been other books with children as the main characters, but perhaps never one where a girl was quite so adventurous and out of her depth. 

As everyone knows, the 1939 film version of Baum's book followed the "Star Trek" model in public acceptance: cool reception at first release, then a huge hit much later because of television syndication. But while "Star Trek" became an after-school / after-dinner babysitter of a daily TV program, the annual network airing of "The Wizard of Oz" was an event. In the turbulent sixties, the movie, interrupted by commericals, was one of the few viewables that multiple generations could enjoy together. 

But were parents and children watching the same movie? I'm not sure they were. The adults saw the young-adult Judy Garland  as a grown-up pretending to be a child. We children saw her as a child, which is odd when I think about it. Normally I was creeped out by adults, especially women, on kids' television shows who had a "Let's play together, shall we?" message. 

As a child who observed adults closely, I could see in my parents, and in other adults in the community, sad and/or baffled children who'd only grown up in certain ways. Some grownups did seem to fit the part, but quite a few had, um -- gaps in personal development.  


The lingering awareness I developed when young may be why I felt so moved by Renee Zwellweger's performance in the recently-released film "Judy," and yet was not as moved by the flashback scenes of actress Darci Shaw playing young Judy Garland as she was bullied by adults.

And I think my growing childhood awareness that adults were former children was also why I was somewhat weirded out by the 1978 film version of  "The Wiz." Twenty-year-old Michael Jackson and 34-year-old Diana Ross playfully danced and sang as young creatures and peers.  Hmm.

And yet both Michael and Diana had high-pitched childlike singing voices, hard to tell apart when "Ease On Down the Road" was all over Top 40 radio in the late 70s.

Before it hit the big screen, "The Wiz" had made a big splash on Broadway in 1974.

Broadway vs. Hollywood: On the original-cast recording, the first high voice, easily mistaken for Michael Jackson, is actually that of the female lead (Stephanie Mills)  and then "Ease On Down The Road" develops, there is harmony instead of unison singing, because the voices of child and adult are differentiated. 

When I began thinking about all this, I considered the childhoods of Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross. Ross was separated from her mother, who developed tuberculosis, when young Diana was seven years old. She spent several years in Alabama with her father and other family, she came back on her fourteenth birthday to live in a Detroit housing project and go to vocational school, where she learned modeling among other things. Eighth grade, ninth grade, something like that? Then she was in a singing group and a huge star out in the world by age twenty. 

Judy Garland and Michael Jackson -- well, we all know how they grew up, because audiences were was looking at them both at the age when other kids were in kindergarten. 

Kids and show business, an unfortunate mix. But I really enjoyed reading the Los Angeles Times article (referenced above) about how "The Wiz" has changed with each new generation. Not only have the settings and messages evolved, but also it's been clearer with each iteration who the adults are and who the children are -- who is supposed to help whom during the journey on down the road of life. 

"Taller Children," by Elizabeth and the Catapult:

Garbo

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