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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Last weekend's gathering featured everything from real Munchkins to a newly authorized pillbox depicting Dorothy and Toto. (A Judy Garland pillbox? Hello?)
Jul 27, 2000 | Yes, it's true: There were reports of Munchkins unwinding with wild orgies after a hard day's work skipping around the Yellow Brick Road during the filming of 1939's "The Wizard of Oz." And yes, Judy Garland once referred to the actors who depicted the denizens of Munchkinland as "drunks," telling a national TV audience, "They got smashed every night, and the police had to pick them up in butterfly nets."
But Jerry Maren, the original Lollipop Kid, says that reports of the Munchkins' debauchery were greatly exaggerated. In fact, he recently told a roomful of fans, the misadventures of fewer than a dozen wild-and-crazy actors unfairly sullied the reputation of all 124 Munchkins. You'd have learned all kinds of things like that if you'd attended the International Wizard of Oz Club's special centennial celebration at Indiana University in Bloomington last weekend.
At the "Meet a Munchkin" panel, for example, Maren, now in his 80s and sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, noted that he and his fellow little people on the set made $50 a week (less than half of Toto's pay) during the making of the classic film. "How could you get drunk on $50 a week?" groused Maren, who presumably made more for his appearance much later in the "Yada Yada" episode of "Seinfeld."
And while we're at it: Despite a persistent urban legend, there is no dead Munchkin hanging from a tree in the forest where Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman first traipse off together. (Nor is there a dead stagehand, a despondent actor or, in the story's latest incarnation, a dead Munchkin wrapped in aluminum foil hanging from a tree.) "Can you imagine that happening with 124 midgets looking?" scoffed Maren, who wrapped up his remarks with a demonstration of how he hefted the oversize lollipop from his shoulder and handed it to Dorothy -- a reprise that earned him a standing ovation.
I'd come to Bloomington hoping to learn why L. Frank Baum's classic children's book still retains such a hold on the American imagination exactly 100 years after its publication. I also wanted to find out what had impelled nearly 400 fans from around the world to converge for four days of festivities that included the panel featuring four of the 11 remaining Munchkins.
Other events included a session examining Oz's unique attraction for gay men, lectures by Baum descendants, a Sunday morning Oz-themed Christian worship service led by a Methodist pastor and self-described minister of the "g-Oz-pel" and a multimedia presentation about a planned $860 million Oz theme park in (where else?) Kansas.
Luring participants from as far away as Tokyo, Tel Aviv and Moscow -- the "Oz" story is wildly popular in Russia -- the conference threw together an oddly eclectic mix of people, from pointy-headed academics to collectors hot on the trail of "Oz" memorabilia.
Scholars in attendance included Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie, who lectured on "Oz and the New Woman" -- Baum's mother-in-law, it turns out, was noted suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage -- and Michael Patrick Hearn, an authority on children's literature. Hearn noted that many serious writers have acknowledged the influence of "Oz" on their work, including Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Gore Vidal, who, when asked to name his three greatest literary influences, replied "Montaigne, Petronius and L. Frank Baum." Salman Rushdie has also acknowledged an intellectual debt to "Oz," even if he also once memorably characterized Toto as "that little yapping hairpiece of a creature, that meddlesome rug, that turbulent toupee."
At the other end of the spectrum were the "Ozzies" for whom true fandom means collecting tchotchkes and gewgaws and kitsch (oh my!). In fact, it was hard to turn around without running into "Oz" memorabilia or people scrambling to find more of it -- everything from "If I Only Had a Brain" T-shirts to 1940s Oz-themed peanut butter cans to a newly authorized pillbox featuring Dorothy and Toto. (A Judy Garland pillbox? Hello?)
"Almost everybody goes through the same thing," explained Richard Rutter, a California professor of orthodontics who has been collecting for 25 years. "The first thing you want to do is get all 40 books" in the "Oz" canon, which includes Baum's work as well faithful sequels by other authors. "Then you realize one of your books looks a little ragged around the edges, so you want a better copy," he told me. One thing leads to another, and before long, you're hooked.
Since Rutter had just wowed a crowd with a 320-slide presentation of his Scarecrow memorabilia, I figured he knew what he was talking about. In fact, he recently added an extra room to his home (complete with a yellow brick road, of course) to accommodate his 1,600 "Oz" books and magazine articles, in addition to plates, figurines, nutcrackers, glasses, ornaments and mugs.
In hopes of better understanding the addictive pull of "Oz" memorabilia, I slipped into one of the officially scheduled "Show and Tell" sessions, where devotees gathered to share their treasures. One man lovingly held up an elaborate domed Oz scene that his grandmother had sculpted from tiny bits of modeling clay. Oohs and ahs all around. "If there's ever a fire in my house, or a tornado, this is the first thing I'll grab," he said.
The next presenter stood up, then, with a flourish, whipped out a photocopy she'd made of the birth certificate of Margaret Hamilton, the movie's wicked witch. "I have more copies that I'm selling for a dollar!" she announced, then unloaded several right away.
A 13-year-old named Jimmy held up a can of Baum's Castorine he'd scored on eBay. The round red can, he told envious adults, contained a type of axle grease that Baum had invented and sold before he began writing books. (In fact, Baum's checkered career included stints as a traveling salesman, chicken breeder, baseball team manager and publisher of a magazine for window dressers.)
