Brilliant: Salman Rushdie on The Wizard of Oz

“There’s no place home; there’s no place like home.” It’s an iconic line – and sentiment – from The Wizard of Oz, and certainly from the classic 1939 film version. But what does it actually mean?

Back in 1992, the British Film Institute launched the first four in an ongoing series of slender volumes about specific films – BFI Film Classics. That initial quartet were Double Indemnity, Went the Day Well, Stagecoach … and The Wizard of Oz.

 

The last of those was penned by Salman Rushdie, with an updated edition published in 2012.

 

Since starting a deep(er) dive into film than at any stage previously in my life, I have been getting some of these and reading them. Well … in the first case, trying to read. That was Michael Atkinson’s monograph on Blue Velvet, which I gave up on, not least because – in my opinion – it’s appallingly badly written.

 

The next one was by Dirk Bogarde biographer extraordinaire John Coldstream, on that star’s career-changing and social-challenging film Victim, which was eminently readable and informative.

 

And so to Rushdie’s contribution. Rolling in at 69 pages – without a few more including the full film credits, which all the books have – it is very, very good indeed and packed with philosophical insights in two sections. First, in an essay about the film and second, in a short story, which is effectively a very clever, and funny futuristic fantasy tale/satire about an auction for the ruby slippers. Both are centred on the concept of home.

 

If there is “no place like home”, what does that actually mean?

 

The essay starts with fascinating autobiographical insights, including some making links between the film and the cinema of India, where Rushdie grew up, and how it influenced him from early in his life.

 

He is detailed. He notes, for instance, a mention in the later stages of the film by the Wicked Witch of the West of “an insect” that she has sent on to take on our heroes. But there’s nothing else about that in the film.

 

As he points out, it relates to a cut musical number, The Jitter Bug. Bad editing! Though you can find grainy footage of said cut number here.

 

Now here I am going to go off piste a tad. I know that song.

 

I had loved The Wizard of Oz since being taken to the cinema to see a re-release of it as a child.

In the mid 1970s, at Fairfield High School for Girls, I played the Munchkin mayor in a school production.

 

Then, in late 1981, a couple of years after my family had moved to Lancaster, I was encouraged by Noel McKee, my wonderful music teacher at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, to audition for the annual Lancaster Footlights’ Christmas show – that year, to be The Wizard of Oz. So, with blesséd parental permission (it was the first time for a non-school production), I went along, prepared to audition for Gloria (she doesn’t appear in the film, but gets to sing Evening Star in the stage version – perfect for a mezzo like me).

 

I was 18, going on 19.

 

But something unexpected happened. While at packed auditions, I was asked if I’d read in the Wicked Witch of the West’s lines in an exchange with the Good Witch of the North, for auditions for the latter part. With no pressure on me – I wasn’t auditioning, after all – I thoroughly enjoyed doing full panto cackles and ‘witchy’ voice.

I landed the role (pictured left, centre) – without even trying for it! The Christmas production was always staged for a week, with the Saturday having a matinee as well as an evening production (often punctuated by dinner at Pizza Margherita on nearby Moor Lane). It was an utter joy.

 

I remember descending the steps from the stage to the stalls, in full costume and green face paint, with children backing up into their seats as I did so.

 

Weeks later, I was in Lancaster’s department store with my mother, when a young lad came up to and said, in awe: “You’re the witch!”. I played along, hissing back at him: “Tell nobody!” His mother, just behind, was at first embarrassed and then tickled pink. The power of theatre. The power of The Wizard of Oz.

 

So that’s my personal connection. Now, back to Rushdie’s own monograph.

 

He gets pissed off at the sentimentalised ending: why would Dorothy need to flee home only to be told, at the end, that the lesson is that she should never have wanted to. Is that really the only concept of home – that is limited to where you initially come from?

 

Contextually, bear in mind that, for Rushdie himself, this was written after the fatwa against the author for writing the Satanic Verses (published in 1988) was announced in early 1989 – effectively driving him away from ‘home’.

 

A number of things occurred to me.

 

First, Rushdie shows, in many ways, that The Wizard of Oz is a rebellion against simplistic ideas of ‘home’. Dorothy flees home to protect what is most important to her – Toto. It occurs to me, what happens to Toto when she returns? Is Miss Gulch still there to demand his death? If so, what are her values?

 

Rushdie points out that, in the series of books by Frank L Baum, Oz eventually becomes home – not just to Dorothy, but also to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

 

I did some checking: is this less a British/US understanding of ‘home’ and more a German one? ‘Heimat’ is one of those German words that holds within it layers of meaning. At its very simplest, it could be said to mean that home is ‘wherever you hang your hat’. Not ‘where you originate from geographically or in any other way’.

And then look at Baum’s name – and yes, he did have German heritage: ‘Baum’ is ‘tree’ in German.

 

To go further on the subject of home: given that ‘the friends of Dorothy’ is a euphemism for gay men, can we also, at this time, see that ‘home’ can refer to any community of which we choose/feel ourselves to be a part? Again, a sort of riff on heimat.

And finally, after re-watching the film, it struck me that the move from monochrome to colour is like a move from binary to non-binary. Indeed, the land of Oz is a vastly more diverse place than Kansas. Further, the Cowardly Lion is effeminate, though we learn that he is also not a coward.

Of the central four characters, Dorothy is the least camp, while many of the Munchkins are quite androgynous.

 

There are few books – let alone ones with so few pages – that can set readers thinking like this, but this is superb. And of course, it’s also superbly written.

 

Zellweger shows us the isolation – and guts – of Judy

It’s not news that Judy Garland led a troubled life – or that her problems began as a child – but one of the things that Rupert Gould’s new film, Judy, does so well is to shine a light on those problems from a contemporary perspective of understanding about mental health and abuse.

It’s 1968 and Garland – pretty much unemployable and uninsurable in the US – is broke, homeless and about to lose custody of her two children by third husband Sid Luft.

Her only chance seems to lie in leaving them with their father in the US and taking up an offer of a season at the Talk of the Town in London.

But thousands of miles away, her problems remain.

In a series of flashbacks, we see gaslighting MGM boss Louis B Mayer during the filming of The Wizard of Oz, feeding her insecurities about her looks, while at the same time, she was being chronically overworked, forced to diet drastically and then given pills to quell her appetite/keep her awake/help her wake up – and sleeping tablets to allow her to sleep.

While it’s only barely noted here, her mother’s part in all this was not a positive one. It’s also a pertinent reminder that, while the studio system produced many great movies, it was also an abusive system of labour.

Tom Edge’s script in an intelligent one: it allows us to see and understand that, while Garland most certainly was “impossible,” the seeds of that had been sown long before she had any control over her own life.

While this is central to the film, it avoids making Garland a simplistic victim. She is vulnerable and emotionally frail, without doubts, but she also has guts. And, while she detests the “business,” once on a stage and with a loving audience, she comes alive. Most of all, this Judy is complex.

It’s possibly a good 10 minutes overlong. One could make the case that none of her relationships with other character is fully developed. Yet one of the things that the film achieves is to make clear the conflict between Garland’s desperate loneliness, her equally desperate desire for love and friendship – and her constant ability to push away those who care and want to help. This is isolation.

Jessie Buckley is excellent as Rosalyn, the woman charged with looking after her in London; Rufus Sewell turns in a neat, nuanced performance as Luft, Michael Gambon appears as impresario Bernard Delfont, Richard Cordery is suitably slimy as Mayer, Royce Pierreson is excellent as bandleader Burt and there is a delightful performance from Andy Nyman as a gay fan.

But ultimately, the film rests on Renée Zellweger – and expect to see her deservedly in the awards nominations lists next year.

This is no impersonation, but what she conjures is a really deep sense of the internal struggle in Garland: this is a woman caught between performance (even if dealing with hotel staff or a doctor), the pain of not having her children with her, her own self-doubt, her need for friendship and support, and her inability to maintain any meaningful relationship.

In the stage performances, Zellweger is more than equal to the task.

Garland was an extraordinarily gifted performer. This year is the 50th anniversary of her death – as well as being the 80th anniversary of the iconic Wizard of Oz.

Judy makes one wonder if, given the abusive conditions under which it was made and Garland’s career created, it is acceptable to watch the latter. Yet her films remain her legacy and continue to give joy. It is a positive from a negative.

At the end of the film, she asks the audience: “You won’t forget me, will you? Promise you won’t.”

No. We won’t. And the films are precisely what will ensure that her iconic status continues.

The wonderful ... WONDERFUL Wizard of Oz

We didn’t go to the cinema a lot when I was child, but memory suggests that the most regular period for family film-going was from around about 1968-1971 when we lived in west London and would pop over the river to a cinema in Putney. It was during that period I saw Disney’s Snow White on re-release – and was terrified.

This was still the era of two-film programmes: Snow White was my first cinema trip and it was paired, if I remember correctly, with MGM’s Tom Thumb (Russ Tamblyn, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers et al).

It seems fairly safe to think that I saw The Wizard of Oz at around this time – 1969 would have marked the 30^th anniversary of the film’s release and explain why it was back in cinemas.

Wizard of oz t captured my imagination then and has never stopped being an important part of my cultural life since – which includes being in two stage productions (as the Mayor of Munchkinland in a girls’ school production and later, as the Wicked Witch of the West, before you ask).

Last weekend, The Other Half and I went to our usual cinema to watch a single screening for the 80^th anniversary.

I know the film so well that I can mouth along with the songs and a load of the lines, but seeing it on the big screen for the first time in ... gulps ... 50 years was a fascinating experience.

Being in a cinema makes you pay closer attention than if you’re watching at home, with all the distractions. Never before, then, had I really appreciated Harold Rosson’s cinematography – particularly in the opening sepia section of the film.

As times change and history moves on, you can view cultural works through a changing prism.

Today, Frank Morgan’s blustering conman wizard seems like a harbinger of politicians and political leaders for whom bluster and empty rhetoric is all they have.

Terry the cairn terrier – cast first and paid best of all her co-players – really is more than a set-dressing. She’s in is much of the film. Apparently, when she broke a paw during filming, she convalesced at Judy Garland’s home – and Garland desperately tried to adopt her.

Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West remains scary – there is nothing to make her more ‘child friendly’ at any stage. There’s nothing to blunt the fact that, for instance, she is a torturer – not least in her psychological torture of Dorothy as the film builds to a climax.

And so to Dorothy and Garland’s iconic performance. Somewhere Over the Rainbow retains its magic – not least in her rendition.

She produced an extraordinary performance: there is nothing brattish about Dorothy: she’s a serious young girl – an orphan with (apparently) no friends of her own age; vulnerable at the same time as being self-reliant and with a simple yet strong sense of what’s right and what’s not.

There is an extent to which The Wizard of Oz is like Casablanca: there are many ways in which it shouldn’t work – or at least, not have travelled well down the decades.

The message of there being “no place like home” is twee and limiting. The film as a whole is arguably over long and, with the introductions of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, repetitious.

And yet, and yet ...

At the cinema we went to, a new generation was seeing it on a big screen for the first time

Eight decades on, The Wizard of Oz defies so much and, in retaining its own magic, reveals for us again why cinema as a whole can be such a magical experience.

The sound of Christmas

Bogart. Pencil sketch.

Everyone has memories that are linked to times of year; to occasions; to places. Christmas and New Year are hardly unique, but they’re always going to feature highly on any such personal list.

For Nigel Slater, many such memories are inextricably bound up with food – and that includes his festive ones. His memoir of his early life, Toast, is well worth reading.

But while I have memories of Christmases past, food has never been the main part of those – not least, I suspect, because of a strong memory of my mother, sister and me sitting around, waiting for my father to return from taking morning services before we could begin the big festive meal, the crackle of unspoken tension alive in the air.

And turkey was never a favourite meat anyway: bland and less than moist. My mother's stuffing balls – she never actually stuffed the bird – and the sausages were always welcome, perhaps especially when cold, and particularly when accompanying cold turkey sandwiches on Christmas night.

Ah yes: Christmas night in front of the telly, watching the late-night BBC2 classic movie after my sister had gone to bed.

Sometimes you don’t even need things to have been replicated often for them to be linked and lodged in your head.

The sandwiches – brown meat, well salted – were traditional, but I remember just one specific such film, and thus it has become a norm for those times.

It was The Big Sleep; 1946, Bogart and Bacall setting the screen alight with their chemistry. The plot a mystery, but who ever cared?

Films were a vital part of my life; welcome escapism. There would be Saturday evening westerns after Grandstand had finished; an event that made sure my first heroes were not pop stars, but the likes of Jimmy Stewart and, most of all, John Wayne.

But then came that Christmas night and, at something like 13 or 14, a sudden burst of growing up. Wayne became a thing of the past – Bogart, a Christmas Day birthday boy himself, usurping utterly more simplistic tastes.

It was not without ramifications. Destined (according to teachers and, therefore, parents alike) to be a graphic artist, pencils were turned to conveying this new, noir passion. It continued unabated and fed into my O level work.

But that wasn’t the only Christmas Day film that had a lasting influence.

Pick a Pocket or Two – or just skip lunch.

Around much the same time, the BBC screened Oliver! for the first time one Christmas afternoon.

I have no memory of the rest of the family sitting down to watch. They might have. They might not. But memory is an odd beast, and mine is of seeing it in a sort of vacuum of personal delight.

A few years earlier, there had been an attempt to have me learn to play the piano. My mother’s parents had given us one and, when I was considered old enough, one of my father’s church organists was given the task of teaching me.

It was tedious: he lacked any inspirational qualities and I lacked any interest.

By the time the attempt withered, I had learned little more than to recognise middle C on both page and instrument.

But from nowhere came the desire to play. I saved school lunch money for a week or so, pretending I’d eaten but going without, and bought the film score instead.

At home, perched on the long bench, padded, and covered in shining emerald green fabric, the lid raised as neglected ivories itched to be tinkled, I started picking out the tunes.

It drove everyone mad. After such a previous lack of enthusiasm, now I’d happily play away for hours. Not smoothly or flowingly; but I worked at it and learned some of the pieces.

And later, I bought more sheet music. Inevitably, more show scores, although I made attempts – slow and error-strewn – at Beethoven and Chopin.

Many years later, reviewing for the Morning Star, the National Youth Theatre staged Blitz!, another Lionel Bart show. The rest of the media, which never before bothered to review these ‘amateur’ productions, feigned interest – amazed that Bart was even still alive.

Could they have an interview? No, he was not a well man. But 12 months on, when the group staged Maggie May, National Youth Theatre artistic director Ed Wilson, to whom I had told the story of my pianistic endeavours, invited me to the announcement of the new season, and engineered a meeting with the man himself.

“Tell him the same story,” said Ed, “and you’ll have him eating out of your hands”.

It was the final interview Bart ever gave. And setting aside any cynical hackery, I stood transfixed, starstruck even, as, lost in own memories, he regaled me with stories of how, on the opening night of Maggie May, he’d attended the premiere with Judy Garland on his arm.

Judy Garland: oh my.

'I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.'

The Wizard of Oz was never a Christmas film for me, but it came to have a Christmas connotation. One of the earliest films I’d been taken to see at the cinema on a re-release, I’d been terrified by the witch.

At 12 or 13, I played the Munchkin mayor in a school production. Some six or seven years later, I was unexpectedly playing the witch in a production at the Grand Theatre, Lancaster.

I say “unexpectedly”, because there were plenty more senior actors around who could have expected to win the role, and anyway, I’d auditioned for Gloria, on the basis of a combination of age and singing voice.

But I’d been asked to read the witch during auditions for the part of Gilda, the good witch – and had had enough of a ball that I’d been given the part.

A week in December, with matinees – a week to remember, seeing small children slither up the backs of their seats at the front of the stage, scared, but unable to take their bloggling eyes off what was happening under the bright lights as I – as the witch – slowly descended the stairs over the pit and into the stalls.

Oh, such power!

Weeks after, I was with my mother in a shop in Lancaster when a small boy suddenly yelled: ‘It’s her! It’s the witch!’ And that was without the make-up.

But that’s not the only Judy Garland connection in my Christmas memory bank.

Years later, I was helping my mother decorate the house one Christmas Eve (it’s always a last-minute matter) and we had the television on to accompany us. It was Meet Me in St Louis.

My father, late home from a service or a meeting, came into the room, stopped and stared at the TV long and hard, eyes narrowed in intense concentration.

Yes Dad: it's Judy.

Eventually, he said: “It’s The Wizard of Oz.” Well, at least he’d recognised Judy.

But going back to those earlier Christmases, the bumper issue of the Radio Times would have been scoured several times over before any of the programmes aired, just to pick out what films I might hope to see and makes a note of them.

And this was in simpler times, remember, when there were only listings for three channels.

Films, films and more films: I was in love with the Golden Age of Hollywood. Later, the magazine would be plundered for my scrapbooks, carefully-snipped stills joining cast lists and comments of my own.

The Radio Times Christmas edition has continued to be a part of my personal festive season, though to be honest, there seems little more on that I want to watch than there was in the 1970s.

Yesterday, scouring it once again for something to watch on a grim, rain-sodden afternoon, I could find nothing.

Rainy entertainment for a rainy day.

But a thought occurred. On the shelf was a copy of the 60^th anniversary BluRay of Singin’ in the Rain. What could be better?

It’s easy to imagine that technological advancement takes us further and further away from the past. That, after all, is partly what this Gene Kelly classic is all about.

But fully restored and on a format that allows the full glory of the original design and cinematography to be enjoyed once more, it snapped into life.

Kelly himself, utterly brilliant – what a dancer; Debbie Reynolds in delightful girl-next-door-becomes-a-star mode and Donald O’Connor showing fabulous slapstick skills – oh, it was as much a joy as ever.

So that’s my Christmas rediscovered: old movies. Classic Hollywood. Glitz and glamour and escapism, and yes, a little sentiment too. Although I draw the line at the schmaltz assault of A Wonderful Life.

I could stand in front of a little bookshop in Lancaster, waiting for the bus home after school, and put names to all the faces on the covers of large studio histories, then linking them according to who had appeared with whom on film.

I never sat down and learned such things; they just stayed put once imbibed.

So what’s up next? Well, it just has to be the BluRay copy of The Wizard of Oz. It too has been on the shelf for some time. This is clearly the moment it’s been waiting for.