The elements in The Wizard of Oz powerfully fill a void that exists inside many children. For kids of a certain age, home is everything, the center of the world. But over the rainbow, dimly guessed at, is the wide earth, fascinating and terrifying. There is a deep fundamental fear that events might conspire to transport the child from the safety of home and strand him far away in a strange land. And what would he hope to find there? Why, new friends, to advise and protect him. And Toto, of course, because children have such a strong symbiotic relationship with their pets that they assume they would get lost together.
--Film critic Roger Ebert
Some hifalutin' talk there. So just what is this Wizard of Oz that Ebert's so gung ho about? Let's look at the trailer (by the way, don't be fooled by the Warner Brothers logo in the bottom right-hand corner. It was made at MGM, but Ted Turner, who owned the once mighty studio for about three minutes in the 1980s, sold it off but kept the film library, before selling it and just about everything else he owned to Time Warner.)
Oh, all right, Rog, you win. I'll give it a thumbs up.
Now, I got another quote for ya:
Let bygones be bygones.
--Anonymous.
Hi, Kirk!
ReplyDeleteI loved (and miss) Roger Ebert, and your post gives me a chance to play Six Degrees. Ebert co-wrote the screenplay of one of my favorite movies, Russ Meyer's Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. The announcer doing the voice over on that trailer for The Wizard of Oz sounds like John Furlong who narrated several of the Russ Meyer nudie films I watched at drive-in theaters in the 60s. Furlong also appeared as an actor in five of those films. Does that last picture show Judy reunited on stage with The Wicked Witch of the West? I remember Margaret Hamilton playing "Cora" in the popular 1970s ad campaign for Maxwell House coffee.
Have a great week, good buddy Kirk!
Shady, that is indeed Margaret Hamilton. She and Judy were reunited on The Merv Griffin Show sometimes in the late 1960s.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested, I did a post Ebert when he died:
http://wwwshadowofadoubt.blogspot.com/2013/04/in-memoriam-roger-ebert-1942-2013.html
I very much enjoyed the tribute to Ebert. It's horrible how disfigured he became near the end. The quotes you posted are fabulous. I agree with Roger:
Delete"Every great film should seem new every time you see it."
However, if I had kept score, I think the final tally would show that I agreed with rival Siskel more often than with Ebert.
I see YouTube took some of those Siskel and Ebert videos down. Oh, well.
DeleteShady, in Ebert's autobiography, he tells how due to his changed face and inability to speak (he had his vocal chords removed)people tended to talk to him as if he was a child. It's not like he lost his IQ along with his jaw and voice!
Oh, and Shady, Hamilton also played Morticia's mother on The Addams Family.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that! I'll check out your Ebert post. Thanks, Kirk!
DeleteI never really understood why Dorothy wanted to go back to Kansas after the problem with the witch was solved. But that's just me.
ReplyDeleteMitchell, I wrote an essay on The Wizard of Oz a few years ago (the link to it is in this post) where I try to answer that very question. Here's what I came up with:
DeleteOz proved to be too much like real life. It was in color, after all.
Nice to see Margaret Hamilton without that green skin!
ReplyDeleteA person's complexion makes all the difference, Debra.
DeleteAh Ebert's fat days, kinda forget that, and I also kind of forget he's dead.
ReplyDeleteWell, Adam, since I'm addressing him in this post, I'm kind of pretending he's not dead.
Delete