Under the CineMat Ep. 136: 2024 Christmas Special

<v Speaker 1>The Lapsed Fan presents under the Cinemat. Yeah, I love
<v Speaker 1>to talk film.
<v Speaker 2>I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick at.
<v Speaker 1>A break go. You're going nowhere under the cinemat.
<v Speaker 2>Get it out, cracks, get it out, I pick up guns.
<v Speaker 1>Bad things happen to people. I don't like that. We
<v Speaker 1>have a movie to make. Can we all pull together
<v Speaker 1>here to make movies?
<v Speaker 2>It's Christmas morning and there is magic in the air.
<v Speaker 2>Magic is the word of the day because we are
<v Speaker 2>about to look at a movie which defines movie magic.
<v Speaker 2>It's not necessarily a Christmas movie by definition, but it
<v Speaker 2>has been shown so often during the Christmas season that
<v Speaker 2>it deserves that it served as an honorary Christmas movie.
<v Speaker 2>This Christmas, we are off to see The Wizard, the
<v Speaker 2>Wonderful Wizard of Oz under the Cinematic.
<v Speaker 1>Are you looking serious?
<v Speaker 3>Oh?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I you know this is the one I at
<v Speaker 1>least saw coming in the history of Lindardy Cinnademy.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean really, really, I mean there's one obvious one.
<v Speaker 2>There's one obvious connection.
<v Speaker 1>Now, I'm not saying no, no, no, I don't mean
<v Speaker 1>that we would ever do it. I mean that it
<v Speaker 1>would come now I don't know. I just if you
<v Speaker 1>asked me to guess how many. And I'm not suggesting
<v Speaker 1>there's a better time, because this is definitely I think
<v Speaker 1>of it as Thanksgiving as well.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean it definitely. It plays every year, and
<v Speaker 2>it started out playing every year around that Thanksgiving. You know,
<v Speaker 2>between November and December it airs quite a bit.
<v Speaker 1>And if I'm not mistaken, Judy Garland was the first
<v Speaker 1>to sing I'm dreaming of a white Christmas and meet
<v Speaker 1>me in Saint Louis.
<v Speaker 2>No, that's another one close though. Uh, it's yourself, yourself,
<v Speaker 2>have yourself. I'm sorry with what I say. Why Christmas
<v Speaker 2>is being always been bang, always will be bang.
<v Speaker 1>That isn't even what I meant. I said. I didn't
<v Speaker 1>even say what I meant. That's the ultra frustrating part.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I know, I understand, I understand. Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 2>Have you seen this other times? All right? Exactly? I
<v Speaker 2>mean who hasn't, honestly, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>You don't have to. You don't have to try to
<v Speaker 1>see this one. There are certain movies like that and
<v Speaker 1>this is one of them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, especially well, i'd say this, I'd say
<v Speaker 2>it's a little bit harder I think with with like
<v Speaker 2>our kids generation, I think it'll be a little bit
<v Speaker 2>harder because they don't watch I mean, I don't know
<v Speaker 2>about your kids, but doesn't watch TV like regularly, like
<v Speaker 2>TV TV, like she watches whatever she wants, she watches
<v Speaker 2>streaming stuff she doesn't like throw on the TV and
<v Speaker 2>just let whatever's on be on.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, no, no, no. The other day, like when
<v Speaker 1>you hit the channel up button these days, it's it's
<v Speaker 1>a huge fucking mistake. It's like a panic in the room, like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, yes, I threw out the DVR, or
<v Speaker 1>like now have to go back and I've now seen
<v Speaker 1>a window into a station that no one's ever watched
<v Speaker 1>in the history of its being broadcast. What do you mean?
<v Speaker 1>Whoa whoa?
<v Speaker 4>Whoa?
<v Speaker 5>Whoa whoa?
<v Speaker 2>What do you mean you're like changing? No, no, you
<v Speaker 2>know you don't. What do you Why are you surfing channels?
<v Speaker 2>But the guy at least put the guide on. Seriously,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the idea of like the channel up button
<v Speaker 2>must make no sense to like anyone the generation after us.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if there is a digital guide on your screen,
<v Speaker 2>you have no idea what that plus minus button is about. No, never, never,
<v Speaker 2>that was. I mean, that was it. I mean, honestly,
<v Speaker 2>the only the only time that ever is a thing
<v Speaker 2>that even for me is like in a hotel, although
<v Speaker 2>most hotels now have guides, but I mean I've been
<v Speaker 2>in a couple of hotels where they don't have the
<v Speaker 2>guide and you have to, like, you know, just channel up,
<v Speaker 2>and it's like, well, I don't know what this is now.
<v Speaker 1>I I know exactly what you're talking about. What I
<v Speaker 1>don't understand is why that also means that, for some
<v Speaker 1>reason you have to jam the fuck out of the
<v Speaker 1>button to get the channel to change in every hotel
<v Speaker 1>I've ever What is that? Why is why does it
<v Speaker 1>not flick easily?
<v Speaker 2>I mean exactly, no, No, you gotta, like you like,
<v Speaker 2>oh my god, I said, you gotta. I mean, I'll
<v Speaker 2>I'll have to wave it in front of the TV.
<v Speaker 2>Is it the signal? Is it not reading the fucking clicker?
<v Speaker 1>Like? What the fuck? You have to press it so
<v Speaker 1>hard that like the pinkness of your fingernails turns white,
<v Speaker 1>right right?
<v Speaker 2>But it's fine.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I guess that's just what it is. What it
<v Speaker 1>means now to flip the channels? I guess so, But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this let's uh, with a Wizard of Oz. Let let's
<v Speaker 1>let's raise another toast he or TLFX to the era
<v Speaker 1>of channel flipping, of linears, of allowing you know, stations
<v Speaker 1>to decide what what belongs in cannon, instead of pretending
<v Speaker 1>that this decentralization gets us anything but isolation.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, it's exactly correct. So also, by the way, Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz eighty five years old this year. Wow, that's
<v Speaker 2>where we're at with this. So it's a it's a
<v Speaker 2>good time to do it. And uh, it's been one
<v Speaker 2>that I've been I've been wanting to do for a while,
<v Speaker 2>and I've been I've been kind of buying my time
<v Speaker 2>for it, and I thought, you know, no better, no
<v Speaker 2>better than to cap off TLFX and this holiday season
<v Speaker 2>with I Love It the Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 1>Now, this would have been one of those do you
<v Speaker 1>think that came to mind as soon as you came
<v Speaker 1>up with cinemat like and started thinking about.
<v Speaker 2>No, no, actually it didn't, because it's it's it's I
<v Speaker 2>don't think it came for a little while laser later.
<v Speaker 2>But because of the obvious reason, I mean, we there's
<v Speaker 2>no point in hiding this one. Obviously because of nash
<v Speaker 2>as Oz. That's that's the Oh yeah, that's the key. Now,
<v Speaker 2>I was not the only connection, which is why I
<v Speaker 2>also was excited to do it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, that's crazy because I watched this, this this
<v Speaker 1>I'd watch the whole thing, but watched a good chunk
<v Speaker 1>of it over Thanksgiving weekend this year just by happenstance,
<v Speaker 1>and it did occur to me like, oh my god,
<v Speaker 1>there's probably a wrestler in here somewhere, yep, yep.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yes, I'm not going to say I'm not going
<v Speaker 2>to say, we're not going to say what, but actually,
<v Speaker 2>I'll tell you this part. There are two. There are
<v Speaker 2>two wrestlers in the movie. Can you handle that.
<v Speaker 1>As it stands?
<v Speaker 2>No, Yeah, it's a it's a doozy, and I'll tell
<v Speaker 2>you it is a doozy of a fucking story as well,
<v Speaker 2>because our story begins on the Yellow Brick Road almost
<v Speaker 2>our story begins May fifteenth, eighteen fifty six.
<v Speaker 1>All right, So this is the first time we've gone
<v Speaker 1>to pre the existence of cinema itself.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I believe, so, I believe. I believe. Even even
<v Speaker 2>with the wrestling articles, I don't think we've gone this
<v Speaker 2>far back in chitten Angu, New York. It's about fifteen
<v Speaker 2>miles east of Heracuse. This was the place and the
<v Speaker 2>date of birth of Lyman Frank Baum L frank Baum.
<v Speaker 2>He was the seventh of nine children to Cynthia and
<v Speaker 2>Benjamin Baum.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know who L.
<v Speaker 2>Frank Baum? You must know who he is, right, you
<v Speaker 2>know it?
<v Speaker 1>Bell? But not really? Okay, Well, well.
<v Speaker 2>He is the author of the Wizard of Oz, of
<v Speaker 2>the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I should say so. So, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he was seventh of nine children to Cynthia and Benjamin Baum. Uh,
<v Speaker 2>three of them had died before he was born, and
<v Speaker 2>the ninth, the ninth child, died at the age of two.
<v Speaker 2>So that's I mean, that's that's that's nineteenth century shit
<v Speaker 2>right there. You know you're dying. You get kids who
<v Speaker 2>die that young, which is just it's a it's kind
<v Speaker 2>of amazing. Obviously it happens now, but it's kind of
<v Speaker 2>amazing that only you know, uh, you know, I guess now.
<v Speaker 2>But even even so, like within within one hundred years,
<v Speaker 2>the idea of losing three children that quickly, it's like
<v Speaker 2>it just doesn't happen anymore.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it's true, and it was it was accepted.
<v Speaker 1>It was kind of like the risk you took. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>think about fuck that, what about mother mortality, you know,
<v Speaker 1>dying in childbirth. It was like a huge risk to
<v Speaker 1>deliver a baby, a huge risk totally. So yeah, it's yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's it's jarring when you go back and you know,
<v Speaker 1>you think about, like you read about like how many
<v Speaker 1>people in the Mayflower died. Now that's not like a
<v Speaker 1>birth thing, but you know what I mean, it's.
<v Speaker 2>Like, right, that's just a simple disease.
<v Speaker 1>That's just a survival rate in the wild, you know.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, and I get what's amazing is that? Is
<v Speaker 2>that really that significant advancement has only happened in the
<v Speaker 2>last what hundred Yeah, you know, one hundred and fifty years. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's what's wild too, is that. Who'd have thought that?
<v Speaker 1>Shit, Yeah, life expectancy, it's kind of weird. Like when
<v Speaker 1>life expectancy was so low and it was such a risk,
<v Speaker 1>you would think there'd be less children because it's such
<v Speaker 1>a risk to have children, but there were so many more.
<v Speaker 1>But ye, it was offset by the fact that you
<v Speaker 1>needed farm hands basically, right, you couldn't really survive as
<v Speaker 1>a family without a ton of help exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Now, if you were born with the name of Lyman
<v Speaker 2>as your first name, would you be happy without that?
<v Speaker 2>Would you be okay with that?
<v Speaker 1>I'll tell you what. I'd tell the truth as often
<v Speaker 1>as I could, because the jokes right themselves.
<v Speaker 2>Baum hated his first name, that's correct, hated Lyman. That's
<v Speaker 2>why I went by l And believe it or not,
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to send you a picture here. By the
<v Speaker 2>time he was four years old, okay, when the eighteen
<v Speaker 2>sixty I said that eighteen sixty census was being done,
<v Speaker 2>he he was already going by the name Frankie. I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna send you a photo of the eighteen sixty census
<v Speaker 2>page so you can see if you look, Uh, he
<v Speaker 2>would be fourth up from the bottom, age four. That's unbelievable,
<v Speaker 2>Frankie Baum And uh, it's like a Ralph Lauren.
<v Speaker 1>You know you hate it. You know what his name was? No,
<v Speaker 1>it was he was Ralph lift Ships. I'm not kidding.
<v Speaker 1>He changed it why because he fucking hated the name.
<v Speaker 1>Because it's coming. That's worse than Lineman as a first name.
<v Speaker 1>All right, like lift Ships. I'm gonna take a big
<v Speaker 1>fat list. Yeah, in fairness if there was a wrestler
<v Speaker 1>with that name, Like we've been talking about anything else
<v Speaker 1>for a year. Oh I know, I know exactly.
<v Speaker 2>So so the Ben ben Baum.
<v Speaker 1>See now it's starting to sound like a cosmetic product, it.
<v Speaker 2>Does Ben Lipbaum. Yeah, if you know what liveman, how
<v Speaker 2>about lip Yeah right lipmann Baum. So he was the
<v Speaker 2>patriarch is Benjamin and he was he's interesting. He he
<v Speaker 2>he was successful and like you know, you know, you
<v Speaker 2>think of today as a successful businessman. You kind of
<v Speaker 2>you you make a business and then it becomes successful
<v Speaker 2>and you're a successful businessman, right. I mean he was
<v Speaker 2>successful because if he had like he would keep making
<v Speaker 2>new businesses when the other one would close down, like
<v Speaker 2>you were just like kind of there was no longevity,
<v Speaker 2>but he still made enough money that he was successful.
<v Speaker 2>They bought like a mansion.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it was serial entrepreneur, as they say, serial entrepreneur.
<v Speaker 1>Serial there we go, serial entrepreneur.
<v Speaker 2>I guess kind of like like a Kip Fry in
<v Speaker 2>a way, a serial CEO.
<v Speaker 1>Cereal see exactly. Yah, you're right in a lot of
<v Speaker 1>ways like Kellogg as well.
<v Speaker 2>So eighteen fifty four, for example, his the the job
<v Speaker 2>that he has This is two years before Frank was born.
<v Speaker 2>Benjamin and his brother they manufactured are you ready manufactured
<v Speaker 2>tight barrels for liquids and butter frikins.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, got it, normal job. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And then then yeah, totally was you needed you needed
<v Speaker 2>butter frikins. You know, you got to make your own
<v Speaker 2>butter frikin style. Then ten years later he's working, he's
<v Speaker 2>a petroleum dealer and uh yeah, so ben bottom line
<v Speaker 2>very much. You know, a practical you know, got to
<v Speaker 2>be a man type of of of of guy and
<v Speaker 2>his son, Frank dreamer, total dreamer m And he liked,
<v Speaker 2>think about this with today's generation. He liked to spend
<v Speaker 2>his time just lying in the field, lost in imagination. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>Like kids don't daydream anymore because their phones daydream for them.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, Why would you? Yeah, the only reason you would
<v Speaker 1>daydream is because you wouldn't have constant stimulation within arm's reach. Exactly.
<v Speaker 1>No daydream just because they're you know, cherubic little angels.
<v Speaker 1>They daydream because they're fucking bored and bring back boredom.
<v Speaker 1>Bring back boredom exactly, and not the kind of boredom
<v Speaker 1>that causes people to do mass shootings by the way
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking about, you know, boredom that actually sparks creativity
<v Speaker 1>and self discovery and reflection.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we get to the point you're like, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I gotta do something. I'm gonna go out. I gotta
<v Speaker 2>I gotta create something. And that's what he was. He
<v Speaker 2>was like that, and that's why I took him so
<v Speaker 2>long to actually find his calling. He suffered from a
<v Speaker 2>weak heart physically, not emotionally. He was homeschooled until the
<v Speaker 2>age of twelve, when this is all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 2>his parents are like, you know what, enough homeschooling. You
<v Speaker 2>gotta get out of your fucking imagination. Get out of
<v Speaker 2>the field, all right, You've got to get out of
<v Speaker 2>the fucking field. All right, We've had enough of this shit.
<v Speaker 2>It's time for you to go be a fucking man.
<v Speaker 1>He's so, this is what you're eighteen what eighteen sixty eight,
<v Speaker 1>here's a contrast for you. Eighteen sixty eight, Will you
<v Speaker 1>get the fuck out of the field and get inside?
<v Speaker 1>Twenty twenty four, you get the fuck out of the
<v Speaker 1>house and go outside from once we got well we
<v Speaker 1>asked for.
<v Speaker 2>That's right exactly. Keep in mind to you also, Civil
<v Speaker 2>War period. Hello, this is the first time we've kind of, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>really kind of gone into the Civil War era, I
<v Speaker 2>would think.
<v Speaker 1>So, I can't unless we're gonna talk about John L.
<v Speaker 1>Sullivan or the Catches catch Can grapplers of the eighteen sixties.
<v Speaker 2>Or someday, someday one of them is going to be
<v Speaker 2>in a movie. Yeah, or there'll be a movie about them.
<v Speaker 2>So they sent him to the Peak Peak Skill Military Academy,
<v Speaker 2>they e Colledom me for two years.
<v Speaker 1>No, you know a movie that would be by the way,
<v Speaker 1>sorry to cut you off. You know what movie that
<v Speaker 1>would be? Is it would be Lincoln? Oh? Yes, of course,
<v Speaker 1>because he was a grappler in that vintage you know,
<v Speaker 1>in that era.
<v Speaker 2>Well he's he will link and chain grappling obviously go
<v Speaker 2>hand in hand. Actually, you know, if there's probably somebody
<v Speaker 2>in Lincoln. I bet Spielberg hired a fucking wrestler in Lincoln.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Well the Abes wrestling history is good enough for me.
<v Speaker 1>I mean all right, hey, all right, maybe maybe we'll
<v Speaker 1>do that.
<v Speaker 2>So, yeah, he goes the to the Peak Skill Military
<v Speaker 2>Academy for two years, and he was Do you think
<v Speaker 2>he liked it there? Do you think the dreamer would
<v Speaker 2>like it at a military academy.
<v Speaker 1>Sounds like he would. Yeah, sure, of course.
<v Speaker 2>It was fucking miserable, that's right, wrote home. All the time, complain,
<v Speaker 2>dearest mother, dearest mother, the faculty are abusive, both mentally
<v Speaker 2>and physically.
<v Speaker 1>Please take me home, yeah, mother, father, Right, mom writes back,
<v Speaker 1>what is mental abuse? Everyone heard of such a It's
<v Speaker 1>what father does to you all the time. Oh so
<v Speaker 1>they're fucking you. Then I was going to get something,
<v Speaker 1>all right, Sorry, you don't have to.
<v Speaker 2>And uh so in one day, he's caught daydreaming, uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, looking out the window, thinking of you know,
<v Speaker 2>fantasy things and whatnot, and uh, you know, instead of
<v Speaker 2>doing schoolwork. So the teacher decides to discipline him. And
<v Speaker 2>in the midst of this, in the midst of this discipline,
<v Speaker 2>he has a fucking heart attack. Though they it's it's suggested,
<v Speaker 2>it's it's believed that it was psychogenic, not like a
<v Speaker 2>legit heart attack, but like because of just the way
<v Speaker 2>he was that he kind of brought it on himself
<v Speaker 2>in a way, got it. Yeah, And so then you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're like, okay, all right, come on home, let's uh
<v Speaker 2>we can restart homeschooling. You can read Dickens, all right.
<v Speaker 2>He loved Dickens. Yeah, he loved Dickens. Go ahead and
<v Speaker 2>day dreams some more. And this is a I'm gonna
<v Speaker 2>play a clip here. This is from a documentary called L.
<v Speaker 2>Frank Baum, The Man behind the Curtain.
<v Speaker 6>When not engaged in home schooling, Baum loved to disappear
<v Speaker 6>into a book or to wander over the expansive grounds
<v Speaker 6>of the family estate, where he played on the yellow
<v Speaker 6>plank road and found a deep fascination with it.
<v Speaker 1>The what now, I know what that purpose?
<v Speaker 2>It's all there.
<v Speaker 6>Scarecrow that guarded over the family's crops. At the age
<v Speaker 6>of fourteen, Bam had his first encounter with publishing after
<v Speaker 6>seeing the wonders of a printing press at work. As usual,
<v Speaker 6>his doting parents indulged his new passion by buying him
<v Speaker 6>a small press, and within a few weeks he and
<v Speaker 6>his younger brother were already turning.
<v Speaker 1>Out their first newspaper.
<v Speaker 7>It was called the roselawn Holme Journal and was published
<v Speaker 7>whenever they could publish it and hand it out, mostly
<v Speaker 7>to family members and so forth. And I think actually
<v Speaker 7>you started thinking about the world of printing.
<v Speaker 6>But for someone with as fertile and active an imagination
<v Speaker 6>as Franks, Sticking to one thing proved a great challenge,
<v Speaker 6>and he found himself drawn into a kaleidoscope of other
<v Speaker 6>interests that ranged from stamp collect to raising a select
<v Speaker 6>breed of chickens known as Hamburg's.
<v Speaker 8>Then he got into acting. His family wasn't so excited
<v Speaker 8>about him getting into acting, but supported him. Ended up
<v Speaker 8>buying a theater so that he could write plays, perform plays,
<v Speaker 8>produce plays, be very involved in that, and eventually travel
<v Speaker 8>with them, which he did successfully until the theater burned down.
<v Speaker 1>There was a lot there, man, I'm like, there's a
<v Speaker 1>lot there. I have like sixteen jokes backed up. I
<v Speaker 1>forgot all of them now, Oh yeah, yes, mister author.
<v Speaker 1>Do you recall your first, uh what was it encounter? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Do you recall your first encounter with publishing? There's strange
<v Speaker 1>way to phrase that. That was your first encounter with publishing.
<v Speaker 1>I saw a print press one time. That was an
<v Speaker 1>encounter with publishing.
<v Speaker 2>And that's yeah, technically, Drew, is both you encountered publishing.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if you go for a tour of the
<v Speaker 2>of the newspaper office and you the real you are
<v Speaker 2>encountering publishing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, isn't the first time you held the first
<v Speaker 1>time you held the book in your hand. Isn't that
<v Speaker 1>your first encounter with publishing? Now, if there's a kind
<v Speaker 1>of a select breed of chickens known as Hamburgs, is
<v Speaker 1>there a select brate of hamburgs known as chickens?
<v Speaker 2>Must selectory of cows? I should say my hamburg chicken.
<v Speaker 2>That's like a that's like a chick fil a slogan, right.
<v Speaker 1>There, sure is. You know, that's how Gunter likes his
<v Speaker 1>prepared But uh, well, what a what a wow? The
<v Speaker 1>scarecrow is a real thing. I had no idea scarecrow
<v Speaker 1>is a real thing.
<v Speaker 2>Uh did you did you when when you were a
<v Speaker 2>newspaper man? Did you did you want on your own press?
<v Speaker 2>Did you say, hey, oh I wish I had my
<v Speaker 2>own press, like a machine printed? What he said they
<v Speaker 2>got his own press?
<v Speaker 9>Well?
<v Speaker 1>I mean that, yeah, yeah, that that probably had a
<v Speaker 1>lot more novelty at a time when people didn't have
<v Speaker 1>home printers. You know, of course that that that's kind
<v Speaker 1>of me I guess I guess that is the home
<v Speaker 1>press these days, isn't it the printer? Yeah? Exactly, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>that's not the same. Have the metal plates that's you
<v Speaker 1>you know, well, yeah, that used to be craftsmanship. I
<v Speaker 1>mean you'd have to arrange the type set just so
<v Speaker 1>and column inches and you would have to Yeah, there
<v Speaker 1>was there was, there was handy work there, that was
<v Speaker 1>a skill, that was a skilled trade type setter I
<v Speaker 1>think they called them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's amazing. It's honestly amazing how that it is,
<v Speaker 2>all that was put together. And like when you think
<v Speaker 2>about how big a newspaper is, you know, especially back.
<v Speaker 1>Then, how thick it was, and it's it's new stuff.
<v Speaker 1>It's every day you got to do it new. And
<v Speaker 1>you can't trans here's the thing. You can't transmit the
<v Speaker 1>text electronically exactly. You know, if you go back far enough,
<v Speaker 1>you'd have to run a physical copy of like the
<v Speaker 1>little sliver of the page that the story would be
<v Speaker 1>and have to you know, arrange it and typeset. It's wild,
<v Speaker 1>you know. I don't really feel like I've ever seen
<v Speaker 1>it in person done to that old school of a degree,
<v Speaker 1>as far as I've ever seen, even on TV, it's
<v Speaker 1>always been you know, it comes up on a computer
<v Speaker 1>and there's some handiwork from there. But for the most
<v Speaker 1>part it's delivered electronically and then run off on the
<v Speaker 1>print press, right, But to actually typeset my hand, that's
<v Speaker 1>just amazing, agreed.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's you know again, you know, it's one
<v Speaker 2>of those things.
<v Speaker 4>I know.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously obviously doing things digitally is easier and it makes
<v Speaker 2>things go faster, but there is a lost art and
<v Speaker 2>there's a lost when you can't touch the stuff that
<v Speaker 2>you're actually creating. Yes, to me, you lose out, you
<v Speaker 2>miss something. One of my favorite memories of like you know,
<v Speaker 2>my my, my limited working in the film industry from
<v Speaker 2>behind the scenes stuff was working for Ken Burns and
<v Speaker 2>cutting touching film, like cutting and touching film like actually
<v Speaker 2>there was a magic there. As much as we make
<v Speaker 2>fun of Pierre to zir, there is a fucking magic
<v Speaker 2>like actually holding the material and and manipulating it. And
<v Speaker 2>you know it's it's it's lost. You just don't have that.
<v Speaker 2>You can't have that feeling anymore. I mean you can,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, you go find yourself a fucking steam
<v Speaker 2>deck machine, right or a printing press.
<v Speaker 1>And two it brings it brings a necessary blue collar
<v Speaker 1>element to creative arts and communications. Yes, that is so
<v Speaker 1>vital to public trust, like, yes, you know, if I
<v Speaker 1>was a if I was at a graduate studies program
<v Speaker 1>for journalism, I think I'd look at like how the
<v Speaker 1>fact that a whole family could earn a living and
<v Speaker 1>a pension working for the local newspaper. And I don't
<v Speaker 1>mean writing for it, I don't mean reporting. I mean
<v Speaker 1>driving a truck, delivering, running the printing press, cleaning the
<v Speaker 1>printing press, delivering roll, you know, roll to roll paper,
<v Speaker 1>all the blue collar components. Is what made I think
<v Speaker 1>a much broader cross section of society look at the
<v Speaker 1>news media as of them, not something that was seeking
<v Speaker 1>to deliver wisdom from on high, not something that you know,
<v Speaker 1>slipped through your fingers as quickly as you could read it,
<v Speaker 1>that that was so vital. I mean, people no trust
<v Speaker 1>in media and all that. But you remember your dad
<v Speaker 1>reading the paper. And if your dad was alive today
<v Speaker 1>or your granddad was alive today, he'd be the grumpy
<v Speaker 1>and I don't trust the media guy. Back then, he
<v Speaker 1>couldn't even start his day until he'd read at least
<v Speaker 1>the sections of the paper he cared about. And it never,
<v Speaker 1>I don't even probably never crossed his mind to be like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 1>this is all bullshit propaganda, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Was there was you know, that's you. This is what
<v Speaker 2>you trusted to to get outside information.
<v Speaker 1>And it wasn't even like a question, I don't think,
<v Speaker 1>from what I gather, from what I gleaned, from what
<v Speaker 1>I sense, it wasn't even really a question of like
<v Speaker 1>deciding that these people can tell you what's true. It was,
<v Speaker 1>like I said, it was. It was tethered in the community.
<v Speaker 1>You could walk down this you know, you could walk
<v Speaker 1>downtown and walk into the newsroom, and these are people
<v Speaker 1>who lived among you. These are people who understood where
<v Speaker 1>you lived and what you did. And you had an
<v Speaker 1>uncle or a cousin, or a brother or a sister
<v Speaker 1>who was a secretary or a truck driver. And it's
<v Speaker 1>not a million jobs, it's not the biggest employer in town.
<v Speaker 1>But I'll be damned if every important American city didn't
<v Speaker 1>have that at its beating heart.
<v Speaker 2>And I think too, because you know, there was I mean, obviously,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you care about circulation, you care about subscriptions
<v Speaker 2>and whatever, but there's also a comfort knowing you know
<v Speaker 2>back then that people are going to buy You know
<v Speaker 2>that they're going to buy there. It's like they're you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're going to buy the paper because they need they
<v Speaker 2>want to know what's going on. They want to know,
<v Speaker 2>you know, not only what's going on in the world,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but also what's going on in their town.
<v Speaker 2>Like it's it's it's like it's a reliable source. So
<v Speaker 2>you do you you you need to be trustworthy because
<v Speaker 2>people are counting on now. You know, you know who
<v Speaker 2>your audience is in a in a news organization, so
<v Speaker 2>you don't need to you know, it's like you don't
<v Speaker 2>care about trust. All you care about is well you
<v Speaker 2>you're watching me, you listen to me, So I'll just
<v Speaker 2>make sure I panter to you totally.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, here we are right. I mean a lot of ways,
<v Speaker 1>like we try our hardest not get into that box
<v Speaker 1>and right and try to push outside. But that's just
<v Speaker 1>a point of like personal philosophy that that isn't necessary
<v Speaker 1>these days. It's and you know what it was, It
<v Speaker 1>wasn't you. You didn't get sense that everybody needed you
<v Speaker 1>and everybody read you just because you know they picked
<v Speaker 1>up the paper every day. It's because that advertiser phone
<v Speaker 1>kept bringing right it matters for the business. Right is
<v Speaker 1>at the department store in town thinks everybody reads your
<v Speaker 1>newspaper and I need to advertise with them to get
<v Speaker 1>in front of buyers. And when that broke down, and
<v Speaker 1>when they're a million cheesy, stupid, flimsy, fucking auction, double
<v Speaker 1>click bullshit ways to pretend to reach people, then the
<v Speaker 1>whole thing fell out.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's you know, that's another thing. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>how you know, the another kind of breakdown in you know,
<v Speaker 2>you made a great point, and I really never thought
<v Speaker 2>about it like this, But I never really I never
<v Speaker 2>really thought about how like electronic you know, digital media
<v Speaker 2>and digital everything, really is it. It's one of the
<v Speaker 2>I guess I probably knew it, but I just never
<v Speaker 2>really thought of it this like this, like, but digital media,
<v Speaker 2>digital whatever killed like the middle class. Like what you're
<v Speaker 2>talking about, how people could actually earn a living driving
<v Speaker 2>and delivering newspapers or driving and delivering film stock, right exactly,
<v Speaker 2>you know what I mean, you can't do that anymore
<v Speaker 2>because you know, everyone reads it, and so the people's
<v Speaker 2>jobs are eliminated. It just you know, it didn't kills
<v Speaker 2>the middle class large of course, but what it did
<v Speaker 2>was break the connection with this industry in the middle class.
<v Speaker 2>So you didn't you know when you if you insulted
<v Speaker 2>like the newspaper, there was a chance you were insulting
<v Speaker 2>someone you knew who relied on it to make a living.
<v Speaker 2>That's not the case anymore. No, that's not the case anymore,
<v Speaker 2>you know, unless you somehow grew up in a media
<v Speaker 2>family or people work in media. No way, And there
<v Speaker 2>are still people the cause I'm saying, But it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's a cost symptomatic. You know, it's one of them, right,
<v Speaker 2>It's like it's one of the just because it eliminated jobs.
<v Speaker 2>It eliminated so many jobs over the course of time.
<v Speaker 1>It did in a in a business that it turns out,
<v Speaker 1>really needed that kind of connection, you know, that kind
<v Speaker 1>of connection to thrive. It's it's it's it's a hell
<v Speaker 1>of a thing to think about what the digital age
<v Speaker 1>did to a structure that I think we assume was
<v Speaker 1>a little more resilient than it actually was. It was
<v Speaker 1>actually a little more fragile. The balance, the delicate balance
<v Speaker 1>we had achieved pre pre digital And you know what,
<v Speaker 1>I put my hand up to go back, probably not,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I understand why things I.
<v Speaker 2>Would listen, we wouldn't. I wouldn't be doing this show.
<v Speaker 2>If I had to go into a fucking.
<v Speaker 1>I would choose to do this. And the conditions that
<v Speaker 1>allowed me to do this any day of the week
<v Speaker 1>doesn't mean, however, that you can't look clear eyed and
<v Speaker 1>assess the difference in the consequence of those conditions. I
<v Speaker 1>mean just things that happened all the time now.
<v Speaker 2>Papers is is is what is not for me. It's
<v Speaker 2>a total it's a total game changer, and I would
<v Speaker 2>never want to go back in terms of that.
<v Speaker 1>And guess what if you wanted to look at those
<v Speaker 1>archives forty years ago, there would be a library, right
<v Speaker 1>and they were in the newspaper itself in the bigger
<v Speaker 1>ones yep, or you know, downtown, and there would be
<v Speaker 1>a librarian and she he or she would be paid
<v Speaker 1>to help you into archive and they would pay and
<v Speaker 1>they would they would get paid and they would feed
<v Speaker 1>their family with that money and they probably would have
<v Speaker 1>gotten a pension with that money. Yep. You know what
<v Speaker 1>I mean? Like, yep, No, it's not all good in
<v Speaker 1>the hood.
<v Speaker 2>Nope, it's all gone right. Just remember that.
<v Speaker 10>L L.
<v Speaker 1>Whatever Baum doesn't come come up the same way. If
<v Speaker 1>he's got if he's got Dickens on a fucking kindle.
<v Speaker 1>I can tell you that much.
<v Speaker 2>Listen. Listen, he's not daydreaming, and there's no Wizard of
<v Speaker 2>Oz if he's. If he's reading off a kindle, i'll
<v Speaker 2>tell you that, agreed. So also, the theater burnt down.
<v Speaker 2>Let's not forget that his theater burned down.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm sorry to wonder if this guy's self sabotaging,
<v Speaker 1>but we'll see she.
<v Speaker 2>Really is, honestly, and in some ways he really is.
<v Speaker 2>So you know, they said. He went on tour a
<v Speaker 2>lot with his shows, with his plays, and during a
<v Speaker 2>break from touring, it was Christmas of eighteen eighty one,
<v Speaker 2>Frank was at a holiday gathering and he was introduced
<v Speaker 2>to a woman named Maud Gauge Mad Gauge, who was
<v Speaker 2>the daughter of Matilda Jocelyn Gage, who was a apparently
<v Speaker 2>a prominent figure in the in women's suffrage, in the
<v Speaker 2>women's suffrage movement, And they and they got married, not
<v Speaker 2>Frank and Maud, for I got married November ninth, nine
<v Speaker 2>eighth November ninth, eighteen eighty two. Matilda not very happy
<v Speaker 2>about this marriage at first at first, because she's like,
<v Speaker 2>why are you marrying a fucking you know, a fucking actor.
<v Speaker 2>Why are you marrying the fucking creative person? But eventually
<v Speaker 2>they you know, she came around and they became really tight.
<v Speaker 2>Frank and Matilda became really tight. But between eighteen eighty
<v Speaker 2>two and eighteen eighty eight, Frank and Maud they had
<v Speaker 2>a couple of kids and then they would move to
<v Speaker 2>what would become at the time, what would become Aberdeen Aberdeen,
<v Speaker 2>South Dakota Aberdeen Aberdeen, I think it is Aberdeen which
<v Speaker 2>would have been at the time the Aberdeen in the
<v Speaker 2>Dakota Territories back then, which before they even split the
<v Speaker 2>state there what split them in two states.
<v Speaker 1>Also known as the Verne Territories exactly too.
<v Speaker 2>And he started his own paper again. Eventually he was
<v Speaker 2>the editor. I'm not even started the paper, but he
<v Speaker 2>was the king, the editor of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer.
<v Speaker 2>And during his time as the editor of the Pioneer,
<v Speaker 2>he he wrote an editorial which we want to read
<v Speaker 2>to you after the death of Sitting Bull. It's like,
<v Speaker 2>let's he's we're talking about, you know, the Sitting Bull.
<v Speaker 2>And in this editorial it calls he calls for the
<v Speaker 2>death of all Native Americans. Now who calls for the
<v Speaker 2>death of all Native Americans again Frankie Baum.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I guess we're off to see the wizards, aren't we.
<v Speaker 2>So this is December twelfth, eighteen ninety The Aberdeen Saturday
<v Speaker 2>Pioneer Sitting Bull, most renowned sieux of modern history, is dead.
<v Speaker 2>He was not a chief, but without kingly lineage, he
<v Speaker 2>arose from a lowly position to the greatest medicine man
<v Speaker 2>of his time by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.
<v Speaker 2>He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of
<v Speaker 2>hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and
<v Speaker 2>his In his day, he saw his son and his
<v Speaker 2>tribe gradually driven from their possessions, forced to give up
<v Speaker 2>their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and
<v Speaker 2>uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these his conquerors, were
<v Speaker 2>marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood,
<v Speaker 2>and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by
<v Speaker 2>years of subjection, should still revolt. What wonder that a
<v Speaker 2>fiery rage still burned within his breast, and that he
<v Speaker 2>should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.
<v Speaker 2>The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies,
<v Speaker 2>inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession,
<v Speaker 2>lingered last in the bosom of sitting bull. With his fall,
<v Speaker 2>the nobility of the Red skin is extinguished, and what
<v Speaker 2>few are left are a pack of whining curs who
<v Speaker 2>lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law
<v Speaker 2>of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the
<v Speaker 2>American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements
<v Speaker 2>will be secured by the total annihilation of the a
<v Speaker 2>few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation Their glorio is fled,
<v Speaker 2>their spirit broken, their manhood effaced face better that than
<v Speaker 2>better that they die than live, the miserable wretches that
<v Speaker 2>they are. History would forget these latter, despicable beings and
<v Speaker 2>speak in later ages of the glory of these grand
<v Speaker 2>kings of forest and playing and playing that Cooper loved
<v Speaker 2>to heroism. We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we
<v Speaker 2>at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed according
<v Speaker 2>to their lights and education by the early Redskins of America.
<v Speaker 2>Now some have suggested and that that editorial and the
<v Speaker 2>next one I'm going to read to you were written
<v Speaker 2>as sarcasm or there was satire.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, because.
<v Speaker 2>If you look at his relationship with his mother in law,
<v Speaker 2>he's tight with with with with Matilda, and Matilda was
<v Speaker 2>also a not only uh, you know, on the front
<v Speaker 2>line of women's suffrage, but also on the front line
<v Speaker 2>of you know, Native a mayor rights and equality. And
<v Speaker 2>she was made an honorary member of the Wolf Clan
<v Speaker 2>of the Mohawk Nation. So it seems kind of weird
<v Speaker 2>to me. I'm not listen, I'm not making any judgment call,
<v Speaker 2>but just it seems weird to me that if you're
<v Speaker 2>close with this person and you're with them, that why
<v Speaker 2>you would write something in a factual bait like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>a legitimate opinion that calls for the extermination of a
<v Speaker 2>whole people and expect to survive the next day without
<v Speaker 2>your mother in law killing you.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, yeah, I'm glad you said that. I mean, because
<v Speaker 1>it reads like it reads like someone mocking the whole
<v Speaker 1>pretense for taking territory from the Native Americans in the
<v Speaker 1>first place. You know, you sort of like, yeah, there, there, there,
<v Speaker 1>I agree that there is some stuff in there. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's just it's to me, it's kind of a ballsy move, like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, because you have to you're expecting or you're
<v Speaker 1>presuming people will read your emotional subtext, you know, on
<v Speaker 1>the on the written page.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's like it's like a text, you know,
<v Speaker 2>same thing. You know, you text somebody You're like, fuck you,
<v Speaker 2>and it's like you are they taking are you literally
<v Speaker 2>saying fuck you? Or are you saying fuck you in
<v Speaker 2>a funny way?
<v Speaker 1>Right right?
<v Speaker 2>You know, And but yeah, I tend to go but
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. I mean a lot of people, a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people at least today if you kind of
<v Speaker 2>look up any kind of you know, I was looking
<v Speaker 2>up some biographies of him, and you know, they were
<v Speaker 2>all celebratory. The one that I was that I was
<v Speaker 2>reading the most didn't even mention this, which I thought
<v Speaker 2>was bizarre. I thought it was bizarre that they didn't
<v Speaker 2>mention this editorial. They talked about him being the editor
<v Speaker 2>of the of the newspaper, but they didn't talk about
<v Speaker 2>this editorial. But the next month, so it's a January third,
<v Speaker 2>eighteen ninety one, he followed up the peculiar policy of
<v Speaker 2>the government in employing so weak and facilitating a person
<v Speaker 2>as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians has
<v Speaker 2>resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers
<v Speaker 2>and a battle which at its best is a disgrace
<v Speaker 2>to the War department. There has been plenty of time
<v Speaker 2>for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which have
<v Speaker 2>would have been prevented, would have prevented this disaster. The
<v Speaker 2>Pioneer has before declared that only that our only safety
<v Speaker 2>depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged
<v Speaker 2>them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect
<v Speaker 2>our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and
<v Speaker 2>wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of
<v Speaker 2>the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers
<v Speaker 2>and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise we
<v Speaker 2>may expect future years to be as full of trouble
<v Speaker 2>with the Redskins as those have been in the past.
<v Speaker 2>An Eastern cont temporary with a grain of wisdom and
<v Speaker 2>his wit, says that quote, when the Whites want a fight,
<v Speaker 2>it is a victory, and when the Indians win it
<v Speaker 2>it is a massacre.
<v Speaker 1>Bingo, Yeah, yeah, that that that's kind of why I
<v Speaker 1>believe that the sarcasm thing or the satire thing.
<v Speaker 2>I think so too. I mean, there are there are
<v Speaker 2>choice words in there that kind of make it that
<v Speaker 2>that that really I think, take it to that point
<v Speaker 2>where like saying, you know, talking about the safety of
<v Speaker 2>our future settlers and soldiers. The in this lies future
<v Speaker 2>safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under
<v Speaker 2>incompetent commands. I mean, he's he's taken shots at the
<v Speaker 2>fucking you know, American army right there. But yeah, so,
<v Speaker 2>I mean I I tend to go with that myself.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, especially reading it out loud, it definitely feels
<v Speaker 2>like that. But I'll tell you a lot of people
<v Speaker 2>are like, this guy's a fucking racist.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, people, there's like a
<v Speaker 1>whole industry of finding shit about anyone who celebrated of course,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like that's like that, so I can understand
<v Speaker 1>why that would surface. It's yeah, it's it's it just
<v Speaker 1>it smacks me as something you'd write to smoke people
<v Speaker 1>out of their holes, Like you write that so that
<v Speaker 1>you can you can figure out who would come right
<v Speaker 1>up and agree with it, you know, and expose themselves
<v Speaker 1>as opposed to like, yeah, you know, a true expression
<v Speaker 1>of your of your opinion, because man, when you want
<v Speaker 1>somebody's land, you know, especially uh you know, pre industrial
<v Speaker 1>Revolution and even post I mean you you can you
<v Speaker 1>can convince yourself of anything about the people that are
<v Speaker 1>on that land, right and and why they they are
<v Speaker 1>lesser deserving, and you can do the genteel sort of
<v Speaker 1>colonization way of like, oh, they just don't know any better.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's not their fault that they don't understand, uh,
<v Speaker 1>the the treasure trove they're sitting on, and you know.
<v Speaker 2>That you provo telling them, know.
<v Speaker 1>You know, come up with a fake contract and a
<v Speaker 1>fake reason they violated it, even though they have no
<v Speaker 1>notion of written contracts with the language barrier that's insurmountable. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's just all these pretense ways to to say like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we've tried to make peace, but they just
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't have it, and so well take the land, thank
<v Speaker 1>you very much. You have failed in this sweep stake.
<v Speaker 2>And I get yeah, I agree, I agree. I mean
<v Speaker 2>it's I mean also too, if you if you, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I have another thing here, so he if you if
<v Speaker 2>you look at his earlier editorials, again very progressive when
<v Speaker 2>it came to women's rights and equality. You know, it was,
<v Speaker 2>it was, it's it's kind of fascinating specifically, this is
<v Speaker 2>this one. I just I thought because it really triggered
<v Speaker 2>something in my mind. So there's this woman who wrote,
<v Speaker 2>she wrote to the paper, and she proclaimed that she
<v Speaker 2>didn't want the right to vote. I don't want the
<v Speaker 2>right to vote. And he replied to her in the
<v Speaker 2>February eighth, eighteen ninety edition of the paper he said
<v Speaker 2>that this woman has His response that perhaps this woman
<v Speaker 2>has quote all the quote rights at present that her
<v Speaker 2>shoulders will bear. But there are women whose education, intelligence
<v Speaker 2>and ambition have prompted them to aspire to a higher
<v Speaker 2>condition than that to which the arrogance and injustice of
<v Speaker 2>men has heretofore relegated them. They are capable not only
<v Speaker 2>of becoming politicians, but upright, moral and conscientious politicians as well.
<v Speaker 2>And from the moment a woman's hand is felt at
<v Speaker 2>the reins of government, and from the moment woman's hand
<v Speaker 2>is felt that the reins of government will date an
<v Speaker 2>era of unexampled prosperity for our country. An able, intelligent
<v Speaker 2>woman will make a better politician than most men for
<v Speaker 2>in a much higher degree.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's not somebody that's going to write in editorial
<v Speaker 1>about how all Native Americans be extinguished. Just just a thought.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I love that.
<v Speaker 2>I I love you know, because it triggered me because
<v Speaker 2>I have a friend, well, my wife's friend. She says,
<v Speaker 2>you know, she's against kind of she's against kind of
<v Speaker 2>like this woman she's she's against like what do you
<v Speaker 2>call it, Like, I mean equality, women, a female equality,
<v Speaker 2>you know, women equality. She's against it. She's like because
<v Speaker 2>she doesn't want to work. She says, I don't want
<v Speaker 2>to get a job. And it's like, well that's not
<v Speaker 2>but it's about it's not about making you go to work.
<v Speaker 2>It's about giving people the option to go to work
<v Speaker 2>or to earn a living, to be a you know,
<v Speaker 2>the breadwinner in a family or something like that. You know,
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to go to work. Tell your father's
<v Speaker 2>boss to pay them a good wage. Yeah, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I mean you're your husband's boss. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I mean the only reason you know that you can't
<v Speaker 1>choose that like used to be able to, is because
<v Speaker 1>companies don't want to pay one person enough to support
<v Speaker 1>a family. Right, it's that simple.
<v Speaker 2>But it's like, you know this idea that well, I
<v Speaker 2>don't want the right to vote, so nobody should. So
<v Speaker 2>I don't want this to you know, I don't want
<v Speaker 2>to fight for this, and it's like, it's not about you,
<v Speaker 2>it's about giving the choice to everybody.
<v Speaker 1>Right now, That's not how most people look at things.
<v Speaker 2>I know, and that's what I find to be. So
<v Speaker 2>it's I mean, okay, I don't want to get too
<v Speaker 2>crazy into this, but it's an abortion. It's abortion.
<v Speaker 1>It's like just.
<v Speaker 2>Because just because you know someone, I'm pro choice, all right,
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't mean I want everyone out there to have
<v Speaker 2>have an abortion, but I want.
<v Speaker 1>You to have the choice.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's some But people don't think
<v Speaker 2>it like that. They think if it is, no, you
<v Speaker 2>want everyone to have a fucking abortion, they do. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I don't.
<v Speaker 1>That has the whole complication of like a human life thing,
<v Speaker 1>whereas you know, voting rights. I mean, you can say,
<v Speaker 1>you know that human life in some ways is on
<v Speaker 1>the line of voting rights, but that one abortion, I
<v Speaker 1>get exactly why you would draw the comparison, but that
<v Speaker 1>I know.
<v Speaker 2>But in turn, but it's just like it's just really
<v Speaker 2>the mentality. It's this mentality of of like this weird
<v Speaker 2>fear that if this does happen, I'm going to have
<v Speaker 2>to do it.
<v Speaker 1>It's like no, that's or even greater delusion that if
<v Speaker 1>this doesn't happen, no one will have an abortion, which
<v Speaker 1>of course is completely rights exactly exactly. You know, if
<v Speaker 1>you don't give women the vote, that somehow something else
<v Speaker 1>will be preserved. And it's like no, I mean nothing,
<v Speaker 1>and any woman who would you know, revolt at the will.
<v Speaker 1>We'll find another way to revolt. But that you know,
<v Speaker 1>even if suffrage doesn't doesn't take shape, better to better
<v Speaker 1>to structure a system where people have sort of lanes
<v Speaker 1>that they can get into to express themselves, then like
<v Speaker 1>have this hard stop so that they have to, you know,
<v Speaker 1>take circuitous means to achieve the same thing that that
<v Speaker 1>that lies in their in their heart. But yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>it's attention seeking behavior, that's what it is. Attention seeking
<v Speaker 1>behavior damns you every time it does. It's the downfall
<v Speaker 1>of almost anyone. Ah Okay, so h.
<v Speaker 2>Age ninety one paper fails, goes completely under. It's blamed
<v Speaker 2>because I mean, I don't know, maybe maybe because they
<v Speaker 2>couldn't create the paper, I suppose. But there was a
<v Speaker 2>drought that happened in South Dakota during this time, and
<v Speaker 2>that's considered the that's what I've read, is the blame
<v Speaker 2>for this paper failing. Okay, can you explain to me
<v Speaker 2>how that would work.
<v Speaker 1>A drought causing a newspaper from for foul and probably
<v Speaker 1>probably killed a lot of crops. Farmers aren't able to
<v Speaker 1>sell crops and therefore unable to buy newspapers a right, fine,
<v Speaker 1>if you're in a community that yeah, I mean, if
<v Speaker 1>you're in a community that's like one single source of
<v Speaker 1>main income, Like it's not like Bill Watts kind of
<v Speaker 1>cited a huge depression in the oil industry in and
<v Speaker 1>around Louisiana in his territory which has a lot of
<v Speaker 1>oil rich states as like a key contributor to Mid
<v Speaker 1>South closing, and no one calls bullshit on that because
<v Speaker 1>a lot of his a lot of his customer you know,
<v Speaker 1>relied on that industry to have the disposable income to
<v Speaker 1>come to the matches.
<v Speaker 2>So, yeah, that makes sense. I'll take that one, I guess.
<v Speaker 2>So he's just he he is a he's a poor
<v Speaker 2>businessman in practice, but apparently he. The irony is is
<v Speaker 2>that the guy, this guy who failed at pretty much
<v Speaker 2>every business that he ever created, would later in life
<v Speaker 2>he would actually publish a trade journal called The Show Window,
<v Speaker 2>which was about how to succeed in business as a
<v Speaker 2>merchant or department store by using window trimming, which I
<v Speaker 2>think is hilarious. I love how this guy who cannot
<v Speaker 2>keep a business afloat is writing a trade journal about
<v Speaker 2>how to succeed in business.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but he did, and it worked, And I think
<v Speaker 1>that's as American as it gets, right exactly. That's the
<v Speaker 1>American dream, is being able to flim flam your way
<v Speaker 1>into being taken seriously.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep, I mean, and he I mean specifically. It's
<v Speaker 2>not like he was writing about how to keep newspaper
<v Speaker 2>alive or you know, something like that, and he's talking
<v Speaker 2>about you know, merchants and actually in stores and stuff
<v Speaker 2>and you know, in marketing and whatever. He wrote this.
<v Speaker 2>This is a quote he wrote in his journal that
<v Speaker 2>the merchant who held out improbable and often impossible inducements
<v Speaker 2>drew the crowds, proving that the people prefer a glaring
<v Speaker 2>uncertainty to a homely and modest surety correct, Yep, that's
<v Speaker 2>it right there. People people would rather see. People would
<v Speaker 2>rather risk being scammed so that they can detect the
<v Speaker 2>scam than to live in a world without scams. People
<v Speaker 2>would choose the thrill they get out of being able
<v Speaker 2>to say, you're not.
<v Speaker 1>Going to put one over on me, buddy, over a
<v Speaker 1>world in which no one tries to put something over
<v Speaker 1>exactly exactly. Well, he realized, you know, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>an Aberdeen might not be where we need to be,
<v Speaker 1>And this failure of the newspaper, indirectly, I would say,
<v Speaker 1>actually led to his creation of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 1>This is another clip from The Man Behind the Curtain,
<v Speaker 1>the documentary.
<v Speaker 7>After the failure of all of his enterprises in Aberdeen,
<v Speaker 7>South Dakota, he realized this was not the town to
<v Speaker 7>stay in, nor could he keep his now four boys
<v Speaker 7>and Maud there. So he looked around, and he decided
<v Speaker 7>that Chicago was probably the best bet.
<v Speaker 6>Frank set out for Chicago, full of optimism for what
<v Speaker 6>opportunities lay ahead in America's second largest city, but he
<v Speaker 6>soon found the going no easier than it had been
<v Speaker 6>in South Dakota. After some time, he finally managed to
<v Speaker 6>secure a job as a traveling salesman for Pitkin and Brooks,
<v Speaker 6>sold fine china and glassware throughout the Midwest.
<v Speaker 7>Travel in those days had to be very tough, train buggy,
<v Speaker 7>whatever it was, and of course you had to carry
<v Speaker 7>all of your stuff with you.
<v Speaker 1>But I think it also.
<v Speaker 7>Gave him time when he wasn't selling or sitting in
<v Speaker 7>that hotel room, to think about his stories and to
<v Speaker 7>write things down and explore his own imagination.
<v Speaker 10>Hi Offred Baum spent a lot of his time on
<v Speaker 10>the road when his children were growing up, and whenever
<v Speaker 10>he came home, he would spend his evenings with them,
<v Speaker 10>and he loved telling them stories.
<v Speaker 7>The local children would find out and the next thing
<v Speaker 7>you know, he'd be on the steps on that nice
<v Speaker 7>evening in Chicago, a little breeze off the lake or something,
<v Speaker 7>telling all these wonderful stories to the children, making and
<v Speaker 7>obviously watching their response until the local constable would have
<v Speaker 7>to come by and say, Susie, your parents are looking
<v Speaker 7>for you.
<v Speaker 2>Excuse me right, comfortable, I keep going here.
<v Speaker 7>Because they always knew where the local kids would be.
<v Speaker 11>Frank Baum was essentially an entertainer, and in those days
<v Speaker 11>that was a great, great gift.
<v Speaker 1>It always is.
<v Speaker 11>But in those days there was no radio, there were
<v Speaker 11>no phonographs, there were no movies. A lot of people
<v Speaker 11>couldn't afford stage shows, and people made their own entertainment.
<v Speaker 10>At the time, his children were learning their mother Goose rhymes,
<v Speaker 10>so he told some stories based upon the rhymes.
<v Speaker 7>So he took the mother Goose tales and basically just
<v Speaker 7>told them as you would tell them the bedtime story,
<v Speaker 7>or you would talk to a child and tell them
<v Speaker 7>the story instead of reading it to them in either
<v Speaker 7>rhyme or imagery that they were not used to, especially
<v Speaker 7>since most of them came from Europe, they were not
<v Speaker 7>necessarily recognizable or all that the places were recognizable to
<v Speaker 7>the children. So he was trying to explain them and
<v Speaker 7>basically kind of americanize it.
<v Speaker 12>I don't think he fully understand how powerful his ability
<v Speaker 12>to write for children was. He always attributed his decision
<v Speaker 12>to try that in his forties to his mother in law.
<v Speaker 11>Matilda is the one who would come to visit the
<v Speaker 11>Bombs as the marriage obviously succeeded, and she would listen
<v Speaker 11>to Frank tell the stories to the children, and it
<v Speaker 11>was she although she died, God bless her two years
<v Speaker 11>before The Wizard of Oz was published. It was she
<v Speaker 11>who again is part of family legend as saying in
<v Speaker 11>so many words, Frank Baum, you're a damn fool if
<v Speaker 11>you don't write those stories down. And of course he did,
<v Speaker 11>and we have Maud and her family.
<v Speaker 1>To thank for that.
<v Speaker 2>Nice It wouldn't be that simple. But yeah, that's kind
<v Speaker 2>of the general idea where it all actually really started.
<v Speaker 2>So in Chicago, Frank and Maud they joined the Ramayana
<v Speaker 2>theosopha society. Do you know what that is?
<v Speaker 13>No?
<v Speaker 2>Do you know what? You don't know what theosophy is? Theosophy?
<v Speaker 2>Maybe no. I never heard of it before myself.
<v Speaker 1>So the.
<v Speaker 2>People who practice it say it's not a religion yet
<v Speaker 2>most like religious experts, say it's definitely a religion. But
<v Speaker 2>I can't really comment on it. I don't know much
<v Speaker 2>about it except I've read the Wikipedia entry. It says
<v Speaker 2>the following quote. The only tenet to which all members
<v Speaker 2>should subscribe was a commitment to form a nucleus of
<v Speaker 2>the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, caste.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's like your position in society, all right or color?
<v Speaker 2>This means that there are members of the Theosophical Society
<v Speaker 2>who are skeptical about many or even all, of the
<v Speaker 2>Theosophical doctrines, while remaining sympathetic to its basic aim of
<v Speaker 2>universal brotherhood. Okay, yeah, and it ties into his writing
<v Speaker 2>because one of the one of the beliefs that would
<v Speaker 2>directly inspire Baum was the basically the belief of a
<v Speaker 2>reality beyond reality, alternate dimensions, universes, whatever, which have their
<v Speaker 2>own laws and such. And within theosophy, I guess there
<v Speaker 2>are six spiritual planes that exist above us or around us.
<v Speaker 2>And honestly, you know, you know what it's like, the
<v Speaker 2>fucking force. It sounds like the force to me, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, from star wars, Like, that's what it sounds like.
<v Speaker 2>But this is what's written.
<v Speaker 1>This is how.
<v Speaker 2>Catherine Rogers, who wrote a biography of L. Frank Baum
<v Speaker 2>called Creator of Oz. She wrote in her book the
<v Speaker 2>lowest spiritual plane, the astral plane, is populated by thoughts,
<v Speaker 2>spirits of the recently dead, and great hosts of natural
<v Speaker 2>elements or nature spirits, the elementals of fire, salamanders, the
<v Speaker 2>air sifts, the water undines, undines, and the earth gnomes.
<v Speaker 2>And she goes on to kind of basically say that
<v Speaker 2>all these elements here are interwoven throughout. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>if you knew this either, but you know that there's
<v Speaker 2>a whole series of OZ books beyond the one of them. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he wrote about I think he wrote fourteen books about OZ,
<v Speaker 2>and so yeah, all of this is kind of you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of what he uses this to kind of
<v Speaker 2>create this world and his other original works as well,
<v Speaker 2>Like you could tell he was using these theosophical theories
<v Speaker 2>and elements and whatever to he's every his earlier works
<v Speaker 2>are all basically attempts at developing what OZ would be,
<v Speaker 2>this kind of funny, nonsensical world of Honus. And there's
<v Speaker 2>there's one story of reference in the biography. It's about
<v Speaker 2>a It's about a king who was upset at a
<v Speaker 2>purple dragon because he raided his The king had a
<v Speaker 2>patch of caramel, of chocolate caramels, and he's pissed at
<v Speaker 2>the dragon because he raided the patch of chocolate caramel.
<v Speaker 2>So the king picks up a sword from the sword tree.
<v Speaker 2>So there's a tree that bears swords, and he picked
<v Speaker 2>a sword from the sword tree to slay the dragon.
<v Speaker 2>But then the dragon during their battle, he bites the
<v Speaker 2>head off the king and the King's like, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I probably should stop fighting since I can't see anymore.
<v Speaker 2>That's the world that he was like, that's Oz. It's
<v Speaker 2>this completely nonsensical, right thing, you know, because there's yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they're They're like, at least I don't know if it's
<v Speaker 2>in one of the books or not, but at least
<v Speaker 2>it's in in in an OZ movie that I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to talk about later. Like there's a lunch pale tree
<v Speaker 2>where you can pick it a lunch pale off of
<v Speaker 2>a tree, and in it is a lunch sounds good
<v Speaker 2>to me, exactly right, but it grows on trees, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, that's Oz. In eighteen ninety seven, Frank was
<v Speaker 2>introduced to William Wallace Denslow, who is he's an artist,
<v Speaker 2>designed posters, book covers and whatnot, and he would become
<v Speaker 2>very close friends and close collaborators. And when Baum was
<v Speaker 2>started jotting down ideas and stories and whatnot for what
<v Speaker 2>would become the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he showed you know,
<v Speaker 2>manuscripts and whatever to Denslow, this artist, and he would
<v Speaker 2>then make sketches of based on the writing and then
<v Speaker 2>the sketches would then inspire more ideas for Baum to write,
<v Speaker 2>and so it just kind of went like all over
<v Speaker 2>the place. Dorothy, the character of Dorothy is is said
<v Speaker 2>to be based on Baum's niece Dorothy, as well as
<v Speaker 2>elements of his mother in law, Matilda Gage.
<v Speaker 1>So is what his niece was, literally Dorothy? Yeah, he
<v Speaker 1>had he had a niece named Dorothy. Yeah.
<v Speaker 9>He's an lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and and
<v Speaker 9>JP Sorrow. It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Is the uncle Henry? You know Dorothy's uncle Henry in
<v Speaker 2>the in the movie, in the book, based on his
<v Speaker 2>father in law, Henry Gage, who apparently he was always
<v Speaker 2>bossed around by Matilda, just like Aunt em always bosses
<v Speaker 2>around Uncle Henry.
<v Speaker 1>Right on the thing there, Now, where does deathmatch legend
<v Speaker 1>Nick Gage fit into this?
<v Speaker 2>That's a that's a good that's a good, good question.
<v Speaker 2>I think he's probably maybe the great grandson, great great
<v Speaker 2>grandson of L.
<v Speaker 1>Frank Baum, first in his family to be incarcerated. There
<v Speaker 1>we go.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, man, the scarecrow, I mean we heard that before that.
<v Speaker 2>You know, he had that scarecrow on his on his
<v Speaker 2>property as a kid. He also had a nightmare where
<v Speaker 2>he's chased by that scarecrow. And you know, you imagine
<v Speaker 2>like you think of like a scarecrow just like chasing
<v Speaker 2>after you.
<v Speaker 1>Trying to kill him, but the kind of a scarecrow
<v Speaker 1>that they don't move.
<v Speaker 2>I know, right, that's the whole point. But not in
<v Speaker 2>this because the scarecrow moves around. We all know that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>But he's running and running and running, chasing, and just
<v Speaker 2>as the scarecrows are about to reach bomb the it
<v Speaker 2>falls apart.
<v Speaker 1>The scarecrow falls apart.
<v Speaker 2>The tin the tin Woodman based on a creation he
<v Speaker 2>made for a show window of one of his early shops.
<v Speaker 2>Like he made it and like put the you know
<v Speaker 2>how he wears the the funnel on his head as
<v Speaker 2>a hat that he did that that was all from
<v Speaker 2>from his little window thing that he did window trimming.
<v Speaker 1>Would he attack it with a gas canis an oil canister?
<v Speaker 1>Every morning? Yes he would, Yes, he would rejoint. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I always thought it was weird in Christmas story when
<v Speaker 1>he goes to see Santa and the mall that there's
<v Speaker 1>characters dressed like Wizard of Oz hopping throughout the department store.
<v Speaker 1>But I guess now I realize their roots were in
<v Speaker 1>a shop store window.
<v Speaker 2>There you go, exactly. And I always thought that was weird,
<v Speaker 2>and that is weird. It still is weird. I haven't
<v Speaker 2>watched it this year yet. That's that's a Christmas morning.
<v Speaker 2>Well I would watch it right now actually, honestly, this
<v Speaker 2>time when you guys are listening to this show. So, uh,
<v Speaker 2>the Emerald City. So this is interesting. So so he
<v Speaker 2>wrote this story, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I think he.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if he wrote it as being if
<v Speaker 2>it was if it was like a fictional story, or
<v Speaker 2>if he actually was writing a news story about this.
<v Speaker 2>So the Emerald City. The idea of the Emerald City
<v Speaker 2>was he wrote this story for The Pioneer about a
<v Speaker 2>farmer who would give his horses green goggles in order
<v Speaker 2>to make them believe they were eating grass instead of
<v Speaker 2>wood chips.
<v Speaker 1>There's some dumb fucking horses. I don't think.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if that's a true thing or if
<v Speaker 2>again he made that up. But in the book, not
<v Speaker 2>in the movie, but in the book, there's one of
<v Speaker 2>the revelations is that the Emerald City is actually not
<v Speaker 2>made of emeralds. It's because the Wizard has all the
<v Speaker 2>residents wearing green goggles right to make them think that
<v Speaker 2>the city's making emeralds. Okay, all right, so but yeah, so,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, honestly, I want to just put I don't
<v Speaker 2>green goggles on my dog and see what the fuck happens.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's gonna start eating the carpet.
<v Speaker 2>Think so, it's gonna be pissing everywhere because he thinks
<v Speaker 2>it's all grass part of the h what No early
<v Speaker 2>titles for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz were The Emerald
<v Speaker 2>City and then this one, which I think would have
<v Speaker 2>totally I mean, you talk about selling books based on
<v Speaker 2>the title alone, how about from Kansas to Fairyland.
<v Speaker 1>From Kansas to Fairyland. I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, that would have totally made tons of money.
<v Speaker 2>On January eighteenth, nineteen hundred, this is the year that
<v Speaker 2>the book was released, the title was The Land of Oz,
<v Speaker 2>but two months later in March, finally settled on The
<v Speaker 2>Wonderful Wizard of Oz. According to now, the actual name
<v Speaker 2>of the geographical region, Oh god, don't start, the geographical
<v Speaker 2>region was it's actually apparently it's like one of those
<v Speaker 2>random it's like missus doubtfire, you know, you know, missus
<v Speaker 2>doubt fire. He's on the phone, he's doing the voice,
<v Speaker 2>but he hasn't picked up a name for his thing.
<v Speaker 2>And and he he looks at the newspaper and he says,
<v Speaker 2>he says, you know, fireman, doubt fire, blah blah blah.
<v Speaker 2>And he says, oh, dou't fire doubt fire, dear, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So it's kind of like that. So Frank Junior says
<v Speaker 2>that his dad was telling telling stories to groups of
<v Speaker 2>children before the constable came and said, hey, you got
<v Speaker 2>to stop hanging around all these kids. It's trying to
<v Speaker 2>look weird. One one kid asked where the whole story
<v Speaker 2>takes place, and uh, you know, Bomb glances over the
<v Speaker 2>filing cabinet and he saw the last drawer was labeled
<v Speaker 2>oh to Z so letters O Diza and he said
<v Speaker 2>oz wow. And that's what the sun says. But Baum
<v Speaker 2>legendary obviously as a storyteller. So some people think it
<v Speaker 2>might be k fade.
<v Speaker 1>Well maybe, but it is your alternative explanation.
<v Speaker 2>I mean some people have said, you know that that
<v Speaker 2>maybe that he liked Australia or wanted to travel to Australia,
<v Speaker 2>so he knew that it was called OZ. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>say that, you know, I don't know there's there. I
<v Speaker 2>like this one to me that works. I like that,
<v Speaker 2>And I wonder if missus outfire took that idea. You know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe they did.
<v Speaker 1>It's a good thing. It wasn't the whole Uh, it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't the whole alphabet. We've had the Wonderful Wizard of
<v Speaker 1>as weird cauld.
<v Speaker 2>You imagine that would have been the Ann and the
<v Speaker 2>Wonderful Wizard of Ann if you'd done a to n.
<v Speaker 1>The Wonderful Wizard of Arizona. What is this thing?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, the Wonderful Wizard of Arizona.
<v Speaker 1>Noah.
<v Speaker 2>Before The Wizard of Oz was released, though, he he
<v Speaker 2>had he had two other books. He had Mother Goose
<v Speaker 2>in prose, Brother, what do you mean? What do you
<v Speaker 2>mean pros?
<v Speaker 1>Pro who he's in the pros already, dude. I thought
<v Speaker 1>he just started shooting Mother Goose. What's going on? Dude?
<v Speaker 1>What was it?
<v Speaker 2>The Wonderful what huh? In prose? It's very Ghanya basically, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's me and Mother Goose pros basically.
<v Speaker 1>In the pro style. Yeah, Mother Goose with a a
<v Speaker 1>white towel around her neck.
<v Speaker 2>In blue trunks. So that that was referencing the clip.
<v Speaker 2>So it was basically Mother Goose rhymes that were rewritten
<v Speaker 2>to kind of americanize them. And it was big. It
<v Speaker 2>was a big book. It sold sold enough he could quit.
<v Speaker 2>Talked about that sales job him traveling around. He said
<v Speaker 2>he could quit that job based on the sales of
<v Speaker 2>of Mother Goose in pros. And then he followed up
<v Speaker 2>with another Goose book, Father Goose, his book, which was
<v Speaker 2>actually this was the first time. Uh Frank and and
<v Speaker 2>w W Denslow w W E Denslow. H.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well I'm still waiting for you to say something
<v Speaker 1>about Frank.
<v Speaker 2>But Frank, yes, Frank, Udy Frank, Udy Baum.
<v Speaker 1>Ah were there Udi boumbs next? Her name is Udi Baum.
<v Speaker 1>My name is Udy Baum, right right right, I've been
<v Speaker 1>doing that a lot. Yeah, right.
<v Speaker 2>Pictures picture ohm issam picture Father Goose. This book considered
<v Speaker 2>a complete game changer in the world of children's literature.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, wow.
<v Speaker 2>Just like the way it was written. Everything like people
<v Speaker 2>when they were viewed it were like, this is this
<v Speaker 2>is money, this is going to this changes everything sold
<v Speaker 2>more than seventy five thousand copies and when and so
<v Speaker 2>now in nineteen hundred is that crazy? Nineteen hundred?
<v Speaker 1>Amazing? Just by the way, I should have held my
<v Speaker 1>fire verne ganya as Father Goose, that's pot Yeah, totally.
<v Speaker 1>I'm actually looking at the original cover and it's a hairstyle,
<v Speaker 1>not unlike verns.
<v Speaker 2>And Mother Goose is probably mulah.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely so.
<v Speaker 2>When The Wizard of Oz Is published in May of
<v Speaker 2>nineteen hundred, their advanced copies made ofailable and the official
<v Speaker 2>release happened in September, and it sold thirty eight thousand
<v Speaker 2>copies and was it was a major critical success as well.
<v Speaker 2>This is the twice a week Courier Journal August twenty fifth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen hundred, when Frank Baum and W. W. Denslow gave
<v Speaker 2>to little and Big children through the George M. Hill Company,
<v Speaker 2>that delightful work Father Goose his book. It was generally
<v Speaker 2>conceded that a new that anew the school little had
<v Speaker 2>been established. A new school had been established to which
<v Speaker 2>the little ones would joyfully flock.
<v Speaker 1>It was also admitted that that was the name of
<v Speaker 1>this publication again, boss.
<v Speaker 2>Or twice a week Courier Journal.
<v Speaker 1>And how often did it come out?
<v Speaker 2>Every month?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, go ahead.
<v Speaker 2>It was also admitted that the top had been reached
<v Speaker 2>for artistic typography by the publishers, and that it would
<v Speaker 2>be a long time before anything so good and enjoyable
<v Speaker 2>in every way would reach the little ones from the bookshelves.
<v Speaker 2>But the clever writer, the grotesque artists, and.
<v Speaker 1>I mean not very nice. I mean what he here's
<v Speaker 1>what he looks like?
<v Speaker 9>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Why are you making fun of this guy's looks? Jesus
<v Speaker 2>Christ grotesque? The growtesque artist? What does that mean in
<v Speaker 2>obviously being complimentary, Well.
<v Speaker 1>They mean that, yeah, that the artwork is grotesque, like
<v Speaker 1>his style is is a grotesque style? So like what
<v Speaker 1>is that? What does that mean? This means the images
<v Speaker 1>are like arresting, They're like haunting. They're like like purposely
<v Speaker 1>kind of like gros to gross to look at, but
<v Speaker 1>like off center, they're not They're not drawn to be
<v Speaker 1>beautiful necessarily.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's that would be very true. The grow tesque
<v Speaker 2>artists and the publishers have outdone themselves, have surpassed their
<v Speaker 2>previous top notch record in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
<v Speaker 2>which will be published September. First, a few advanced copies
<v Speaker 2>have been shown, and they justify all the pleasant things
<v Speaker 2>that can be said of the work. The book is
<v Speaker 2>in every way novel and unique in size. It is
<v Speaker 2>about nine by seven inches with two undred and seventy
<v Speaker 2>five pages. The binding is of cloth of a peculiar
<v Speaker 2>light green. The fucking that's tom Down stamped with a
<v Speaker 2>grotesque design in dark green and red.
<v Speaker 1>I would love to have this job. Let's describe the
<v Speaker 1>fucking color of the book to write.
<v Speaker 2>You can talk about the plot, or you could talk
<v Speaker 2>about the actual design of the book.
<v Speaker 1>The binding sounds like this guy lost the plot, yes,
<v Speaker 1>and everything about the novel is novel. Also novel the coronavirus.
<v Speaker 1>You know, have they with a book Coronavirus a novel? Yes?
<v Speaker 1>I believe. It's written by the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
<v Speaker 1>an association with Anthony Fauci, the Fauci Kids Book. What
<v Speaker 1>it was like, It's like, Anthony Fauci is going to
<v Speaker 1>come out with a kid's book during COVID and everyone's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's going to be about you know, taking precautions and
<v Speaker 1>social distancing. And it comes out and it's it's a
<v Speaker 1>kid's book about nine to eleven.
<v Speaker 2>And they're like, about a butterfly that observed nine to
<v Speaker 2>eleven doesn't happened. Cliff the Butterfly.
<v Speaker 1>He used to love hanging out on like the North Tower,
<v Speaker 1>and now he's on the Empire State Building like sad.
<v Speaker 1>Oh man, that's so weird. Why did I go there?
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes you just got these ideas.
<v Speaker 2>You're like, yes, yes, yes, oh God. The pictures surpass
<v Speaker 2>anything of the kind hitherto attempted. There are twenty four
<v Speaker 2>full page illustrations inserts on enamel paper and many colors,
<v Speaker 2>and had one hundred and fifty text illustrations print in six
<v Speaker 2>different colors.
<v Speaker 1>Plants sent forth, one hundred and fifty What is this?
<v Speaker 1>Like the can of Vienna scale? That's a lot, isn't it?
<v Speaker 14>No?
<v Speaker 2>I have the fucking idea one hundred and fifty illustration. Well,
<v Speaker 2>what's a text illustration as opposed to a flag?
<v Speaker 9>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>I guess, okay, so we're talking about I guess full page?
<v Speaker 2>Obviously full page, and so one hundred text is half
<v Speaker 2>image basically because you have text. I imagine that's what
<v Speaker 2>they're talking about. Whatever, and accordings with the color plan
<v Speaker 2>set forth. In the story, mister and Slow is shown
<v Speaker 2>surprising fertility of invention and his pictures and decorations set
<v Speaker 2>a pace which will embarrass other artists to follow. Some
<v Speaker 2>of the effects are decidedly original, and the color scheme
<v Speaker 2>adds great adds greatly to the book. This guy is
<v Speaker 2>saying that other artists will fucking be embarrassed to work
<v Speaker 2>because of this guy. Damn, I want to see this book.
<v Speaker 2>New York Times, September eight, nineteen hundred.
<v Speaker 1>They said this.
<v Speaker 2>It is impossible to conceive of a greater contrast than
<v Speaker 2>exists between the children's books, children's books of antiquity that
<v Speaker 2>were new publications during the sixteenth century, and modern children's books,
<v Speaker 2>of which The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is typical. The
<v Speaker 2>crudeness that was characteristic of the old time publications that
<v Speaker 2>were intended for the delectation and amusement of ancestral children,
<v Speaker 2>would now be enough to cause the modern child to
<v Speaker 2>yell with rage and vigor and to instantly reject the
<v Speaker 2>offending volume, if not to throw it out the window.
<v Speaker 1>It's the toping kids, man, Huh, these fucking kids.
<v Speaker 2>Seriously, Well, you're talking about the books. He's saying, fuck these,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they like they should do that. The time
<v Speaker 2>when anything was considered good enough for children has long
<v Speaker 2>since passed, and the volumes devoted to our youth are
<v Speaker 2>based upon the fact that they are the future citizens,
<v Speaker 2>that they are the country's hope, and are thus worthy
<v Speaker 2>of the best, not the worst, that art can give.
<v Speaker 1>That is really interesting, right, it's facts idea that the
<v Speaker 1>idea that children's books are becoming things that instruct you
<v Speaker 1>on how to be decent human beings instead.
<v Speaker 2>Of but also that we're showing kids respect. We're not
<v Speaker 2>giving them these old fucking things anymore. We're creating things
<v Speaker 2>for them that are of the highest quality because they
<v Speaker 2>deserve it, you know. And the wonderful Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>the fact is recognize that the young as well as
<v Speaker 2>their elders love novelty. There's that word again. Absolutely are
<v Speaker 2>pleased with dashes of color and something new in the
<v Speaker 2>place of the old, familiar and winged fairies of grim
<v Speaker 2>and Anderson. It is, of course an extravaganza, but will
<v Speaker 2>surely be found to appeal strongly to child readers as
<v Speaker 2>well as to the younger children to whom it will
<v Speaker 2>be read by mothers, mothers or or those having charge
<v Speaker 2>of the entertaining of children. I would love to have
<v Speaker 2>charge of the entertaining of chilm.
<v Speaker 1>You could say mothers and fathers.
<v Speaker 2>You can say that, Yes, there seems to be an
<v Speaker 2>inborn love of stories and child minds, and one of
<v Speaker 2>the most familiar and pleading requests of children is to
<v Speaker 2>be told another story. The book has a bright and
<v Speaker 2>joyous atmosphere and does not dwell upon killing and deeds
<v Speaker 2>of violence. Enough stirring adventure enters into it, however, to
<v Speaker 2>flavor it with zest, and it will indeed be strange
<v Speaker 2>if there be a normal child who will not enjoy
<v Speaker 2>this story.
<v Speaker 1>Ouch.
<v Speaker 2>But I do predict that abnormal children might not enjoy
<v Speaker 2>the story.
<v Speaker 1>He definitely has. He definitely has a child in mind
<v Speaker 1>when he says that, I don't want to get more
<v Speaker 1>into it, but yes, my child.
<v Speaker 2>My child is a normal child. Your children are not.
<v Speaker 1>If they don't like the book, they're not.
<v Speaker 2>It's right, So it's huge. It's a it's a it's
<v Speaker 2>a big I mean it wasn't as it wasn't as
<v Speaker 2>big as it would become, all right, It became bigger
<v Speaker 2>over time, but even so, right at the beginning it
<v Speaker 2>was a very very big deal. And a year later,
<v Speaker 2>a year after some nineteen oh one, Baum teamed up.
<v Speaker 2>He had a friend who was a composer, Paul t
<v Speaker 2>Gins t E Gins. I don't know how to say
<v Speaker 2>his name. T I e at t I E t
<v Speaker 2>j e n s.
<v Speaker 1>What do you think? I can't help you? All right, So.
<v Speaker 2>And Denslow as well his artists to they adapt. They
<v Speaker 2>would adapt The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into a stage
<v Speaker 2>musical nineteen oh one. He's adapting it to a musical.
<v Speaker 2>Many changes were made, so they hired a director, and
<v Speaker 2>he was like, what is this shit? This is stupid,
<v Speaker 2>and so he forces bound to like change a lot
<v Speaker 2>of his original ideas to satisfy his needs. So, like,
<v Speaker 2>he made Dorothy a little bit older so she could
<v Speaker 2>have romantic interests, so she could like fuck the scarecrow
<v Speaker 2>or something. Really, yeah, yeah, I made her eighteen so
<v Speaker 2>that she was of legal agent, could and could actually
<v Speaker 2>have possible romantic whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Toto the dog was turned from a dog to
<v Speaker 1>a cow and name named chickens.
<v Speaker 2>And and they hired the person they hired to play
<v Speaker 2>the cow was a clown, a clown. They hired a clown,
<v Speaker 2>little clown to play the cow. The Wizard is basically
<v Speaker 2>turned into a complete goofball like just a loon, and
<v Speaker 2>they so in in Chicago he was Irish. But whenever
<v Speaker 2>they would when the show eventually went on tour, they
<v Speaker 2>would actually change his ethnicity depending on where the depending
<v Speaker 2>on where they were, so like, I don't know, if
<v Speaker 2>they went to.
<v Speaker 1>H I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I guess if you went to like Brooklyn, he's like
<v Speaker 2>a Hasidic Jew, interesting or something like that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>or whatever. You know, that's wild. I mean, that's also
<v Speaker 2>pretty I mean, i'd say for the time, it's kind
<v Speaker 2>of I don't know, it's kind of ingenious in a way,
<v Speaker 2>like it's kind of an interesting thing, like to also
<v Speaker 2>be on your toes all that and kind of like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I imagine they didn't recast it. I imagine
<v Speaker 2>like if they went into a neighborhood that you know,
<v Speaker 2>I imagine that that it was just the same guy
<v Speaker 2>doing stereotypical you know, whatever offensive ship In these days.
<v Speaker 1>It would be pretty interesting to see like what the
<v Speaker 1>cities were and what they thought right played to that city.
<v Speaker 1>I'll tell you about the makeup of that city at
<v Speaker 1>the time, exactly where was it there.
<v Speaker 2>So then then the the director basically at one point
<v Speaker 2>before they opened originally throughout the majority of the songs
<v Speaker 2>that Baum and Teachings had written, and instead he bought
<v Speaker 2>other songs. From what I gathered, he bought other songs
<v Speaker 2>might have been pre written songs that he just got
<v Speaker 2>the rights to use that had nothing to do with
<v Speaker 2>the story. So like Baum and Teachings here had written
<v Speaker 2>songs that progressed the story and were involved with but
<v Speaker 2>this guy's like, now, fuck that, and you know, he
<v Speaker 2>wanted very topical humor and whatever brought it was it
<v Speaker 2>was pretty bad. It was I mean, it sounds bad
<v Speaker 2>and Baum wasn't happy. But at the same time it
<v Speaker 2>opened in nineteen oh two was a huge hit, like
<v Speaker 2>just made tons of fucking money. So Baum was happy
<v Speaker 2>now because he was making a ton of money sure
<v Speaker 2>from it, but you know, creatively it was a disaster.
<v Speaker 2>It went to Broadway and I know three for about
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, like nine months something like that. Then
<v Speaker 2>a return to Chicago and then uh and then I
<v Speaker 2>guess it went to the went on the vaudeville circuit
<v Speaker 2>and yeah, so while all this is happening, Frank is
<v Speaker 2>going back to Oz writing a sequel, which was called
<v Speaker 2>The Marvelous Land of Oz, and like I said, he
<v Speaker 2>would eventually write fourteen books set in his OZ universe,
<v Speaker 2>and then other people have written other books beyond that,
<v Speaker 2>And here we go. Here's a little piece of trivia
<v Speaker 2>for you. I knew this going in, but I don't
<v Speaker 2>know if you knew this going in. Did you know
<v Speaker 2>that then, that the nineteen thirty nine Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>that we're going to watch was not the first live
<v Speaker 2>action film version of the original story.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to hear that. I can't know that.
<v Speaker 1>That doesn't sit well with me at all.
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't the second either, It was the third.
<v Speaker 1>Disgusting What are the first two?
<v Speaker 2>The first one it was? It was made nineteen ten.
<v Speaker 2>It was a fifteen minute short called The Wonderful Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz, which is it was based more on the
<v Speaker 2>musical than it was on which I don't understand how
<v Speaker 2>the fuck you're doing a musical in a silent film,
<v Speaker 2>but whatever, I guess story wise, he was more based
<v Speaker 2>on the musical. Then, in nineteen fourteen, Baum opened the
<v Speaker 2>OZ Film Manufacturing Company. He built a film production company,
<v Speaker 2>the OZ Film Manufacturing Company, and he produced three silent
<v Speaker 2>films based on two of his later Oz books, Patchwork,
<v Speaker 2>Girl of Oz and His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz
<v Speaker 2>and another book he nothing to do with Oz, but
<v Speaker 2>he made the movie to be part of Oz called
<v Speaker 2>the book was called Queen ZIXI of Ix, you know,
<v Speaker 2>good title. But he made that an OZ movie. But
<v Speaker 2>then he closed his company down, soap bizarre, I know.
<v Speaker 2>And there's still another there's still another Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>movie that happened, but it happened after he died. So
<v Speaker 2>he closes the manufacturing company, the film manufacturing company in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifteen, and then in nineteen nineteen L. Frank Baum
<v Speaker 2>would meet his end. This is from the biography creator
<v Speaker 2>of Oz. In early May, Baum's heart heart action became
<v Speaker 2>even more erratic and his breathing more difficult. And quote
<v Speaker 2>on May I don't know why I's in quotes, but
<v Speaker 2>on May fifth he lapsed. He lapsed, Hey, now he
<v Speaker 2>lapsed into unconsciousness. In the evening, he opened his eyes
<v Speaker 2>and smiled at his wife, who was sitting at his bedside.
<v Speaker 2>He told her, quote, I'm going to slip away in
<v Speaker 2>a few hours. I feel this is my last farewell.
<v Speaker 2>For a moment, he struggled for breath and she begged
<v Speaker 2>him not to talk. I'm all right. There is little
<v Speaker 2>pain now, and there is something I want you to
<v Speaker 2>know and remember. All my life, since I first met
<v Speaker 2>you and fell in love with you, I've tried, I've
<v Speaker 2>been true to you. There has never been another woman
<v Speaker 2>in my life or thoughts. His breathing quieted a bit,
<v Speaker 2>and he lay still with eyes closed. Mad thought he
<v Speaker 2>had again lapsed into unconsciousness. But presently he opened his
<v Speaker 2>eyes and said, this is our house, Maud. I would
<v Speaker 2>like to think you are staying here where we have
<v Speaker 2>been so happy. The royalties will last for many years.
<v Speaker 2>You should have plenty to live on without worry. I
<v Speaker 2>shall stay here as long as I live, she replied.
<v Speaker 2>He smiled faintly. He closed his eyes closed. He became
<v Speaker 2>unconscious again, but in the morning on May sixth, his
<v Speaker 2>lips moved. He murmured something indistinct, and then clearly he
<v Speaker 2>spoke his last words, Now we can cross the Shifting Sands,
<v Speaker 2>and he passed away.
<v Speaker 1>Now we can cross the Shifting Sands.
<v Speaker 2>It's also a reference to his book, because there is
<v Speaker 2>the Shifting Sands is the what is called the Deadly Desert,
<v Speaker 2>which is the desert that surrounds Oz. That so he's
<v Speaker 2>now we can cross I guess basically Oz basically crossing
<v Speaker 2>from here over the deadly desert into Oz where he
<v Speaker 2>can be happy.
<v Speaker 1>Is the deadly desert referenced in the movie. No, I
<v Speaker 1>don't think so.
<v Speaker 2>No his, but it is referenced in But that's for
<v Speaker 2>later down the sequel, the sort of like the pseudo
<v Speaker 2>sequel Return to Oz that was made in nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 2>four or eighty five, they do talk about the Deadly Desert.
<v Speaker 2>His final two OZ books were released over the next
<v Speaker 2>two Christmases after he died. But like I said, there
<v Speaker 2>was another movie, and there was a there were The
<v Speaker 2>first feature length film, so a real, real movie movie
<v Speaker 2>of the Wizard of Oz was a silent film released
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen twenty five, directed by Larry directed by Larry Seaman.
<v Speaker 2>That's his name, Larry Semens Fine. It's fine, yeah, totally fine,
<v Speaker 2>totally fine. And this is from the TCM the Turner
<v Speaker 2>Classic Movie website. Nearing her eighteenth birthday, Dorothy learns from
<v Speaker 2>her quote aunt that she is a foundling left on
<v Speaker 2>the doorstep as an infant. Beyond then produces a letter
<v Speaker 2>found with the baby that is to be opened when
<v Speaker 2>she becomes a teen. Before they can read the letter,
<v Speaker 2>a cyclone descends and sweeps Dorothy, her uncle, and two
<v Speaker 2>hired men into the Kingdom of Oz. Dorothy's letter proved
<v Speaker 2>that she she is the Queen of the Realm, and
<v Speaker 2>Prince Kind kined Kind and his followers duly hail her
<v Speaker 2>as such. Prime Minister Cruel I guess kind and Cruel
<v Speaker 2>Cruel asks the Wizard to put a spell on Dorothy's followers,
<v Speaker 2>but the wizard, who has no real magical powers, is
<v Speaker 2>unable to do so. The two hired men obligingly disguise themselves,
<v Speaker 2>changing into a scarecrowman and a tin woodsman. They are
<v Speaker 2>put in jail but managed to escape, only to encounter
<v Speaker 2>a line in his den. The men climb a high
<v Speaker 2>tower and the scarecrow seizes a ladder hanging from an airplane.
<v Speaker 2>The ladder breaks and the scarecrow tumbles, and the whole
<v Speaker 2>adventure turns out to have been a child's dream.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, yes, not a cop out at all.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah seriously, I know, right, Like, come on. It received
<v Speaker 2>mediocre to negative reviews and shortly shortly after was released.
<v Speaker 2>Shortly after it was released, the film studio Chadwick Pictures
<v Speaker 2>went bankrupt and they never like the movie wasn't even
<v Speaker 2>fully distributed. They went bankrupt, and I'm like, fuck it.
<v Speaker 2>So they didn't send out their fucking prints to other theaters.
<v Speaker 2>And besides a short animated film, it seemed like The
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz had to run its course on the
<v Speaker 2>silver screen.
<v Speaker 1>That is, until.
<v Speaker 2>Hollywood December twenty first, nineteen thirty seven, at the Carfa
<v Speaker 2>Circle Theater on sanmon Stone Boulevard, history was being made.
<v Speaker 2>An audience, including an up and coming Judy Garland, were
<v Speaker 2>on their feet applauding the first ever animated feature film.
<v Speaker 2>What Walt Disney's Snow Wide and the Seven Dwarfs. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>So after this premiere, Snow White is basically everyone thinks
<v Speaker 2>Snow White is going to be a huge box office hit.
<v Speaker 1>And so.
<v Speaker 2>No different than Hollywood today of today. When one thing works,
<v Speaker 2>you you know, obviously all of this shit's going to work.
<v Speaker 2>So everyone's going to fucking exploit fantasy and whatever, and
<v Speaker 2>we're going to cash in on this shit. And well,
<v Speaker 2>Samuel Goldwyn actually was the man who owned the film
<v Speaker 2>rights to the Wizard of Oz since nineteen thirty three.
<v Speaker 2>He actually it's funny. He didn't actually seek it out.
<v Speaker 2>So he had a friend who was a playwright named
<v Speaker 2>Sidney Howard, and he said, you know, you know, Sam,
<v Speaker 2>you got to read this book and then you should
<v Speaker 2>make it into a movie. And supposedly Howard checked in
<v Speaker 2>with Goldwyn a few weeks later to see if he
<v Speaker 2>liked it, and gold And said, hey, it was wonderful.
<v Speaker 2>And he said, well did you did you Have you
<v Speaker 2>gotten to the end. He said, no, I'm on page
<v Speaker 2>six favor, which I mean, that's to me, that's typically
<v Speaker 2>that's that's kind of a typical film executive right there.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I read two pages is great, let's fucking
<v Speaker 2>make it. Yeah, And essentially he stopped right out. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I went through a couple you know, there
<v Speaker 2>there are many many editions of the Wizard of Oz,
<v Speaker 2>and so I tried to find one that was the
<v Speaker 2>closest in terms of printing, uh you know, when when
<v Speaker 2>it was originally printed. And basically he stopped after the
<v Speaker 2>tornado took Dorothy's house. So that's when he that's what
<v Speaker 2>he did, Like, you didn't even fucking see, you didn't
<v Speaker 2>even go to Oz. He just fucking the Tornado takes
<v Speaker 2>the house. That's it.
<v Speaker 1>We got it, and.
<v Speaker 2>He paid forty thousand dollars to option the book, and
<v Speaker 2>Variety wrote, actually that year they had an article that
<v Speaker 2>said he was putting together a stars that had cast
<v Speaker 2>for the film, but by December it was put on hold.
<v Speaker 2>Never never came to light. His version of the Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz never came to light. And so we fast
<v Speaker 2>forward nineteen thirty eight. Snow White predicted to make major
<v Speaker 2>waves and stuff, and now every fucking studio wants the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz right, so many they want it from Goldwyn.
<v Speaker 2>This is New York Times, February nineteenth, nineteen thirty eight.
<v Speaker 2>With the industry convinced that snow White will be a
<v Speaker 2>box office success, there is a wild search by producers
<v Speaker 2>for comparable for comparable fantasies. Within the last ten days,
<v Speaker 2>Samuel Goldwyn has received five offers for L. Frank Baum's
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz, the highest being seventy five thousand dollars.
<v Speaker 1>Twentieth Century Fox.
<v Speaker 15>Is reported anxious to purchase the book for Shirley Temple,
<v Speaker 15>but all offers havent rejected. Goldwyn has owned the property
<v Speaker 15>for five years. Well future Oscar winning producer. Arthur Freed was.
<v Speaker 15>He was he was just enough and comer at the time,
<v Speaker 15>he was just a kid. And according to his daughter,
<v Speaker 15>this is on a commentary track of.
<v Speaker 2>The Wizard of Oz. He suggested he was the one
<v Speaker 2>who suggested to Louis B. Mayor of MGM that he
<v Speaker 2>should buy the rights to The Wizard of Oz from
<v Speaker 2>sam Goldwyn.
<v Speaker 16>My father became friendly with Louis Mayor. I don't know
<v Speaker 16>exactly how that friendship began, but he became a protege
<v Speaker 16>of Louis B.
<v Speaker 1>Mayor's and he had an.
<v Speaker 16>Idea for doing a movie a Wizard of Oz as
<v Speaker 16>a musical, and that was something he had he wanted
<v Speaker 16>to do very much. So the property belonged, I believed
<v Speaker 16>to Goldwyn, to Samuel Goldwyn. They bought it from Goldwyn,
<v Speaker 16>and my father had never produced the movie and it
<v Speaker 16>was going to be very expensive for those days, and
<v Speaker 16>so they brought in Mervin Leroy.
<v Speaker 1>To be the producer.
<v Speaker 16>My father was associate producer, although he didn't have screen credit.
<v Speaker 2>For Yeah, Arthur Freed. So, Arthur Freed is he was
<v Speaker 2>a lyricist and he like fucking. He desperately wanted to
<v Speaker 2>produce movies, and according to many people, he was pushy,
<v Speaker 2>he was ruthless, he was ambitious, and he was He
<v Speaker 2>was the kind of guy who would show up to
<v Speaker 2>every whenever a movie, It doesn't matter what movie it is,
<v Speaker 2>whenever a movie was being previewed or premiered, he would
<v Speaker 2>be there, whether or not he had anything to do
<v Speaker 2>with it, or whether or not he even should be
<v Speaker 2>there or not. Yeah, he was that kind of guy,
<v Speaker 2>and he was.
<v Speaker 1>He was.
<v Speaker 2>He was a yes man to Louis B.
<v Speaker 1>Mayor.
<v Speaker 2>They An unnamed executive was quoted in a book saying
<v Speaker 2>that if Louis B. Mayer's ass itched, Freed would scratch it.
<v Speaker 2>That's who Arthur Freed is. On a side note, and
<v Speaker 2>we're going to get into this a little more, Arthur
<v Speaker 2>Freed not a good guy, at least according to Shirley Temple.
<v Speaker 2>This is from an interview that she did with Larry
<v Speaker 2>King in nineteen eighty eight while promoting her Autobiox. This
<v Speaker 2>is Shirley Temple. All right, this is the biggest star
<v Speaker 2>of like the mid thirties.
<v Speaker 1>All right, when I loved Fox.
<v Speaker 14>I went to MGM for one picture, thank goodness, only one.
<v Speaker 14>And when I got there, with my mother. We were separated.
<v Speaker 14>She went into the office of Louis B. Mayor and
<v Speaker 14>I went into the office of Arthur Freed, and he
<v Speaker 14>was going to talk to me about a movie he
<v Speaker 14>wanted to put me in. I'm twelve years old, you know,
<v Speaker 14>and I thought he was a producer. Instead he was
<v Speaker 14>an exhibitor. And I'd never seen anyone naked before except myself,
<v Speaker 14>so I had no clue about what was happening, and.
<v Speaker 1>So it struck me so funny.
<v Speaker 14>I laughed at him, and I laughed uproariously.
<v Speaker 1>I had tears, you know, and.
<v Speaker 14>He got infuriated and he said, out out, out, go shad,
<v Speaker 14>I tell you mother. Well, I went down.
<v Speaker 6>It was very quiet.
<v Speaker 14>I went down and met her in the lobby of
<v Speaker 14>the Administration building. She came up very quietly from Louis B.
<v Speaker 14>Mayor's office and we walked hand in hand silently to
<v Speaker 14>the car, which was unusual. We got in the car
<v Speaker 14>driving home, I said, Mom, you won't believe what happened
<v Speaker 14>to me. And I told her what happened, and she
<v Speaker 14>got kind of quiet and she said, well, you don't know.
<v Speaker 17>What happened to me.
<v Speaker 1>And Louis Louis b.
<v Speaker 14>Mair wasn't as bad as as Freed was to me.
<v Speaker 13>He tried it.
<v Speaker 14>He came on to my mother, and so we both
<v Speaker 14>decided that we didn't like MG much.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it was better at.
<v Speaker 4>The fuck.
<v Speaker 2>Arthur Freed showed twelve year old Shirley Temple his cock?
<v Speaker 1>What do yeah? What episode was that of, Oh my god,
<v Speaker 1>this is like too much man, Oh it gets weird.
<v Speaker 1>It's never a time where it wasn't the case. Huh,
<v Speaker 1>Never a time where it wasn't the case that powerful
<v Speaker 1>people were doing this.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, like, this is a grown man. I mean
<v Speaker 2>beyond beyond the legal parts of this. What the fuck?
<v Speaker 2>What are you doing right? Like it's a twelve year
<v Speaker 2>old kid?
<v Speaker 1>Yikes? What the fuck?
<v Speaker 2>As there's some confirmation of his behavior. Costume This was
<v Speaker 2>a costume designer, Marianne Nyberg. She was quoted saying, quote,
<v Speaker 2>the word was out that.
<v Speaker 1>He was.
<v Speaker 2>Lutuous, but I wanted a job badly. When I walked
<v Speaker 2>into his office, I decided that the best thing was
<v Speaker 2>to let him make a pass at me in a
<v Speaker 2>hurry and quit, because gossip moves fast in this town.
<v Speaker 2>His first words to me were, how do you like sex?
<v Speaker 2>I said, I just love it. But there's one terrible thing.
<v Speaker 2>I really put my passions into my work. So anyone
<v Speaker 2>who fools around with me when I'm working is losing money.
<v Speaker 2>Freed siden said, I would you like to go to
<v Speaker 2>the commissary and have lunch. He was a sweet man.
<v Speaker 2>He never made a pass, but girls used to go
<v Speaker 2>through his office every fifteen minutes.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>If he had that kind of energy, no wonder he
<v Speaker 2>had no energy for conversation. The joke was that when
<v Speaker 2>the Freed unit, that's what he called this like little
<v Speaker 2>production area, when the Freed unit got through with a girl,
<v Speaker 2>she went to the to the Leroy unit, and then
<v Speaker 2>to the Pasternac unit. Arthur Freed. Jeez, all right, Arthur Freed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not sure we have to
<v Speaker 1>say it any other way. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So, regarding Freed being the one who suggested to Louis
<v Speaker 2>VI Mayor about Wizard Laws Mervyn Leroy, who was the
<v Speaker 2>credit producer, he says, it was he who said, we're
<v Speaker 2>going to have all this kind of shit back and forth.
<v Speaker 2>This is what's great about this movie. Everybody fucking it
<v Speaker 2>was my fucking idea. So this is a quote. This
<v Speaker 2>is the last quote and this quote that I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to have. This is a great fucking book. I got
<v Speaker 2>this book from my Originally, I got this book from
<v Speaker 2>my uh from a teacher in high school who's giving
<v Speaker 2>me all of his old film books that he had.
<v Speaker 2>And it's called The Making of the Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>by al Jean Harmatz. It is an incredible an incredible
<v Speaker 2>it's going to be an incredible source for us. But
<v Speaker 2>it is an incredible book about all the goings on
<v Speaker 2>behind the scenes and just how tumultuous it was in
<v Speaker 2>every aspect. Yes, this is Mervin Leroy quote. Mister may
<v Speaker 2>I bought the book for me. No, mister may I
<v Speaker 2>bought the book for me. I wanted to make a
<v Speaker 2>movie out of the Wizard of Oz from the time
<v Speaker 2>I was a kid.
<v Speaker 15>I'm sick of hairing about author.
<v Speaker 2>Freed and the Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 1>Author Free's name isn't on the picture minus.
<v Speaker 15>Mister Mayor asked me to take authors of my assistant
<v Speaker 15>and he helped a lot with the music.
<v Speaker 2>I never took credit for anything that didn't belong to me,
<v Speaker 2>but I produced the.
<v Speaker 1>Picture I did. Mervin Leroy, Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Right, so the deal was finalized on June third, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty eight. Louis by Mayor pays Goldwhen seventy five thousand
<v Speaker 2>dollars for the rights, meaning that over the course of
<v Speaker 2>the whole deal, Goldwyn made a thirty five thousand dollar
<v Speaker 2>profit on his purchase in the book because he paid
<v Speaker 2>forty thousand and also like a decade earlier too, or
<v Speaker 2>I guess half a decade so maybe inflation, yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know now. During Carneizar Forever, we talked about the
<v Speaker 2>chaos involved with writing a bond picture, right, and how
<v Speaker 2>it was these these committees and all these people and
<v Speaker 2>scripts are always being rewritten as filming can. This is
<v Speaker 2>not uncommon, and the Wizard of Oz no different. The
<v Speaker 2>credited writers are Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf. However,
<v Speaker 2>upwards of twenty people, not all writers, contributed to the
<v Speaker 2>screenplay of the Wizard of Oz. And what we're going
<v Speaker 2>to see here is basically the Wizard of Oz is
<v Speaker 2>made up of parts of all of these things, Like
<v Speaker 2>there's not there is a shooting script, but it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's ideas of a lot of different people. So we
<v Speaker 2>turned to the making of The Wizard of Oz. On
<v Speaker 2>February twenty eight, nineteen thirty eight, Hermann J. Mankowitz was
<v Speaker 2>sign that's mank by the way, from who co wrote
<v Speaker 2>Citizen King. Like the Herman Mankowitz was assigned to the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz. He was the first of ten screenwriters
<v Speaker 2>screenwriters because again, twenty people wrote it, but not all
<v Speaker 2>were screenwriters. Of ten screenwriters who tried to turn L.
<v Speaker 2>Frank Baum's fairy tale into a movie, her Menkowitz was
<v Speaker 2>an acknowledged genius at writing fast, irreverent, writing the fast,
<v Speaker 2>irreverent comedies of the early thirties. In nineteen twenty eight,
<v Speaker 2>he had received credit on seventeen movies. In nineteen thirty
<v Speaker 2>he had written or produced seven. By nineteen thirty eight,
<v Speaker 2>he had run out of studios from which to be fired.
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't so much because he was an alcoholic. Excess
<v Speaker 2>of drinking has always been an occupational hazard of screenwriters.
<v Speaker 2>The price many of the good ones pay in self
<v Speaker 2>hatred for taking all that easy money. Of the ten
<v Speaker 2>writers on The Wizard of Oz, two were alcoholics, and
<v Speaker 2>a third was trying to drown a rotten marriage in
<v Speaker 2>a shot class Mankwitz's trouble was more his compulsive gambling
<v Speaker 2>and his pension for getting bored in the middle of
<v Speaker 2>a picture. He wrote Dinner at eight a mgm. In
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirty four. Irving Thalberg threw him off a night
<v Speaker 2>in the opera nineteen thirty five and never used him again.
<v Speaker 2>Lb Mayer hired him back in nineteen thirty eight and
<v Speaker 2>fired him in nineteen thirty nine after advancing him money
<v Speaker 2>to clear up his gambling debts on Mankwitz's solemn vow
<v Speaker 2>never to gamble again, and then finding him betting ten
<v Speaker 2>thousand dollars in a poker game the next day. Wow
<v Speaker 2>After that, he wrote a nineteen forty he wrote Citizen King,
<v Speaker 2>thus winning himself an Academy Award and Hollywood immortality. In
<v Speaker 2>nineteen forty one, on March third, three days after he
<v Speaker 2>was assigned to the Wizard of Oz, Mankowitz handed in
<v Speaker 2>a seventeen page treatment of what was later known as
<v Speaker 2>quote the Kansas Sequence. Baum had wasted less than one
<v Speaker 2>thousand words of his book on Kansas. Dorothy lived in
<v Speaker 2>a gray house on a gray prairie with a gray
<v Speaker 2>aunt em and a gray uncle Henry, and was blown
<v Speaker 2>to Oz page five, But all the scriptwriters, starting with Mankowitz,
<v Speaker 2>focused almost as much of their attention on Kansas as
<v Speaker 2>they did on Oz. They felt it necessary to have
<v Speaker 2>an audience relate to Dorothy in a real world before
<v Speaker 2>transporting her to a magic one. On the first page
<v Speaker 2>of Mankowitz's treatment, there is an underlined paragraph as discussed
<v Speaker 2>this part of the picture until the door is flung
<v Speaker 2>open after Dorothy has arrived, and the Land of the
<v Speaker 2>Munchkins will be shot in black and white, but every
<v Speaker 2>effort should be made through tinting to emphasize the gray
<v Speaker 2>nature of the landscape in Dorothy's daily life. Thus, before
<v Speaker 2>a word of the script was written, it had already
<v Speaker 2>been decided that the Oz sequences would be photographed in color,
<v Speaker 2>and the film would try to capture in pictures what
<v Speaker 2>Baum had captured in words, the gray lifelessness of Kansas,
<v Speaker 2>contrasting with the visual richness of Oz. Now Mervyn Leroy
<v Speaker 2>took credit for that decision, but in nineteen seventy six
<v Speaker 2>he did not remember discussing it with Herman Mankowitz. Now,
<v Speaker 2>all right, we're gonna talk about that a lot later,
<v Speaker 2>but I'm gonna tell you this.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if Mervyn la Roy is taking credit
<v Speaker 2>for having this brilliant idea of like, this is what
<v Speaker 2>we should do it's never been done before, or if
<v Speaker 2>you just took credit for the nineteen thirty nine version.
<v Speaker 2>But Wizard of Oz was not the first feature was
<v Speaker 2>not the first well, first of all, the first feature
<v Speaker 2>film to utilize color.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of people think that. I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>you thought.
<v Speaker 2>That or not, but yeah, I kind of did think that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's not the first movie to utilize color. The color
<v Speaker 2>color As early as nineteen oh eight, color film was available.
<v Speaker 2>There's a documentary called With Our King and Queen through
<v Speaker 2>India that was actually the first in color. It was
<v Speaker 2>just that it was expensive. Wow, it was an expensive process. Huh.
<v Speaker 2>Now here's the kicker. Nor was it the first film
<v Speaker 2>adaptation of The Wizard of Oz to transition from black
<v Speaker 2>and white to color? Okay, not the first to do that.
<v Speaker 2>That's not an original idea.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, you're in my mind right now.
<v Speaker 2>Because the nineteen thirty three animated short that I referenced
<v Speaker 2>very briefly before did it as well. I'm going to
<v Speaker 2>send you a link here, and we're going to watch
<v Speaker 2>this Little Wizard of Oz. Here there it is okay, and.
<v Speaker 1>Ah boy, so.
<v Speaker 2>Click on that and let me know when you're ready,
<v Speaker 2>and then while we'll do a play together.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I is this silent? So I don't need it.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's not silent. I mean you know it doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, here we go, all right, three two one
<v Speaker 2>play we're really hell the word yes, wizard, you.
<v Speaker 1>Got this ado all.
<v Speaker 2>It's so that was more like than I thought. Here
<v Speaker 2>we go, so black and white, we are black and white.
<v Speaker 2>Here in the Kansas sequence.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, Dorothy looks like a lady of the evening.
<v Speaker 2>She She's like, yeah, throwing her panties all over the place.
<v Speaker 1>Every cartoon. Garrett's voice is like Mickey Mouse is back.
<v Speaker 1>Then it comes a twister. There's a it's a twister.
<v Speaker 1>It's a twister. You got it? And color the color wow?
<v Speaker 1>Right in the scarecrow. All right, we can stop there. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>but that's cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so like not an original idea. Sorry to blow
<v Speaker 2>your mind.
<v Speaker 1>Sorry, that's that's really I always, I always we want
<v Speaker 1>to talk about why this film is important, and so
<v Speaker 1>you come up with these shorthand things around tech technique
<v Speaker 1>and it's like, yeah, not really, Nope, that's not it.
<v Speaker 1>That's not it at all. It is I want to
<v Speaker 1>watch whether King and Queen through India. Look at this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't even look at I didn't move it up.
<v Speaker 1>What do you say, Well, I just see like some
<v Speaker 1>some freeze frames of what you're talking about, like it
<v Speaker 1>you know what colorization looked like then? Yeah, and must
<v Speaker 1>have blown the mind of so many. It was such
<v Speaker 1>a harder time to get a window for Americans into
<v Speaker 1>what India was like beyond just still images to see
<v Speaker 1>to see like you know, a bunch of to see
<v Speaker 1>the raj on on elephant back. Absolutely, it's like watching
<v Speaker 1>a different world to almost. So it wasn't this.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I'm sure not that many people saw this
<v Speaker 2>Canadian short film, so I will say that they probably
<v Speaker 2>didn't know it existed, and that what they were doing
<v Speaker 2>was very original in their minds. But it still wasn't
<v Speaker 2>Sorry I Mrvin, but it had been done well. So
<v Speaker 2>back to the making of The Wizard of Oz. In fact,
<v Speaker 2>Leroy did not really recall Menkowitz's being assigned to the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz at all, considering the status of the
<v Speaker 2>screenwriter at MGM in nineteen thirty eight. Larroy's failure to
<v Speaker 2>remember is understandable. The Screenwriters Guild had been formed in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirty seven against the vicious opposition of Mayor and
<v Speaker 2>all the other Hollywood executives, but the Guild was not
<v Speaker 2>able to force the Motion Picture Producers Association to sign
<v Speaker 2>a contract until nineteen forty two, and there was almost
<v Speaker 2>no arbitration of credits until nineteen forty five. So, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's a very weird time, and you're gonna in this
<v Speaker 2>next part, I'm I'm going to read it's actually crazy
<v Speaker 2>how how I don't want to say disrespected, but they're
<v Speaker 2>basically just tossed around like ragged dolls. Writers.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you know, it.
<v Speaker 2>Doesn't really matter. You know, they don't really matter, you know,
<v Speaker 2>just fucking get it on the page.
<v Speaker 1>That's crazy, because you would think that this would be
<v Speaker 1>more of a of a good time for them.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, writers were assigned in relays rather as though
<v Speaker 2>they were pieces of sandpaper to be used up and replaced.
<v Speaker 2>Scripts resembled nothing so much as a seven layer cake,
<v Speaker 2>and it often took an archaeological expedition to discover who
<v Speaker 2>was responsible for which layer Irving Thalberg had not invented
<v Speaker 2>the system of teaming up writers as though they were
<v Speaker 2>matched pairs and a horse show, and bringing in new
<v Speaker 2>teams when he felt the old ones were stale, but
<v Speaker 2>the success of his pictures made the system seem efficient
<v Speaker 2>and reasonable. At MGM, the system continued even more rigorously
<v Speaker 2>after his death. Mankowitz's Dorothy was an unflailingly cheerful and
<v Speaker 2>simple soul, enraptured by the possibility of corn of ma
<v Speaker 2>cob with butter, and sure that everything about her life
<v Speaker 2>was quote the most beautiful in the world.
<v Speaker 1>Yes.
<v Speaker 2>Four days later, on March seventh, Mankowitz turned in an
<v Speaker 2>incomplete fifty six page script. The generation of newspapermen turned
<v Speaker 2>screenwriters to which Mancowitz belonged, wrote scripts at breakneck speed.
<v Speaker 2>The same day that what Mankowitz turned in his incomplete script,
<v Speaker 2>Ogden Nash was assigned to write a treatment for the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz. On March eleventh, a third writer, Noel Langley,
<v Speaker 2>was given the same assignment. Mankowitz did not know that
<v Speaker 2>Ogden Nash and Noel Langley had been set down in
<v Speaker 2>his footsteps, nor did Langley know that Mankawoodz had proceded him.
<v Speaker 2>It was customary for three, four, or even five writers
<v Speaker 2>to be assigned to write for the same film at
<v Speaker 2>the same time. Yes, one treatment or script would be accepted,
<v Speaker 2>the others discarded and their writers sent to write treatments
<v Speaker 2>for some other film.
<v Speaker 1>Quote.
<v Speaker 2>It was part of the affluence of MGM at the time,
<v Speaker 2>said William Ludwig, one of only three writers who stated
<v Speaker 2>at MGM long enough to be able to collect a
<v Speaker 2>bengeon the people were under contract, so the paper was
<v Speaker 2>the cheapest thing, didn't cost much until the film actually
<v Speaker 2>started getting made. Noel Langley was still new enough to
<v Speaker 2>both screenwriting in Hollywood to believe in art and fair play.
<v Speaker 2>MGM screenwriter Alan Rivkin recalls him as a quote tall,
<v Speaker 2>austere man not given to much levity. He didn't sit
<v Speaker 2>at the writer's table at lunch and make jokes with
<v Speaker 2>the rest of us. Langley may not have felt that
<v Speaker 2>he was welcome at the writer's table. March nineteen thirty eight,
<v Speaker 2>Langley was twenty six years old, six foot five inches tall,
<v Speaker 2>and lonely. The loneliness was the result of culture shock.
<v Speaker 2>He had been brought to California in July nineteen thirty six,
<v Speaker 2>when some MGM executive had gone to London seen as
<v Speaker 2>two plays on the London Stage and acquired him. In
<v Speaker 2>October nineteen thirty six, after a brief period of acclimization,
<v Speaker 2>he had been assigned to Maytime and had written an
<v Speaker 2>acceptable script for Nelson Eddie and Jeanette MacDonald in less
<v Speaker 2>than four days. Between Maytime and The Wizard of Oz,
<v Speaker 2>Langley worked on four scripts without getting a screen credit.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen thirty eight, he was assigned to Sweethearts, Babes
<v Speaker 2>and Arms, Northwest Passage and Listened Darling without receiving screen credit.
<v Speaker 2>But despite his lack of credits, he had hardly been idle.
<v Speaker 2>He had put his time to good use by learning
<v Speaker 2>to drink. The drinking coincided with his marriage in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty seven, eleven years of drunken hell. He now says
<v Speaker 2>of the union, if I drank, I was sorry for her,
<v Speaker 2>So I just kept drinking.
<v Speaker 1>That's pretty funny.
<v Speaker 2>He eventually got a divorce and stopped drinking in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty eight. However, liquor was probably giving me a great
<v Speaker 2>deal of Dutch courage without affecting my work. On March
<v Speaker 2>twenty second, nineteen thirty eight, Langley turned in a forty
<v Speaker 2>three page treatment of the Wizard of Oz. On March
<v Speaker 2>twenty third, Herman Mankowitz was officially taken off the film.
<v Speaker 2>Ogden Nash stayed assigned to the film until April sixteenth,
<v Speaker 2>but he turned in no written material. Ah, yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>got nothing. I don't know what do you want from me.
<v Speaker 2>It's just I wrote some stuff down, I throw it out.
<v Speaker 2>I ate it as a sandwich, right, Yeah, that's it.
<v Speaker 2>Langley's forty three page treatment included much of what would
<v Speaker 2>be the framework of the finished film. One year later,
<v Speaker 2>he had invented two Kansas farm hands who reappear in Oz,
<v Speaker 2>the Scarecrow and the tin Woodman. Langley may have been
<v Speaker 2>influenced by the nineteen twenty five silent version of The
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz, in which Oliver Hardy played the tin Woodman.
<v Speaker 2>In that dreadful movie, both the Scarecrow and the tin
<v Speaker 2>Woodmen were first seen as Kansas farm hands. He also
<v Speaker 2>invented Miss Gulch, who reappears as the wicked Witch of
<v Speaker 2>the West, even the striking montage of Miss Gulch riding
<v Speaker 2>in midair on her bicycle, which gradually turns into the
<v Speaker 2>wicked witch riding her broomstick was fully developed. While defending
<v Speaker 2>his treatment at the first Script Conference, Langley told Leroy
<v Speaker 2>and Fried quote that you cannot put fantastic people in
<v Speaker 2>strange places but in front of an audience, unless they
<v Speaker 2>have seen them as human beings first, and I quoted
<v Speaker 2>a silent picture of Mary Pickford's called Poor Little Ritzko.
<v Speaker 2>At that time I had a total I had total
<v Speaker 2>recall of all the silent films I had seen South
<v Speaker 2>Africa during the twenties. I was an unhappy schoolboy who
<v Speaker 2>had added a local flea pit rather than slug it
<v Speaker 2>out in a world controlled by my Edward Moulton Barrett father.
<v Speaker 2>I put several silent film devices. I liked himTo the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Ours. The prologue came from Poor Little Rich Girl.
<v Speaker 2>That film had a nightmare sequence in which all the
<v Speaker 2>people who had been the Poor Little Rich Girl's servants
<v Speaker 2>turned up. The two faced Nurse had two faces that
<v Speaker 2>sort of thing, and the Witch and Annette Kellermann's Queen
<v Speaker 2>of the Sea, a silent version of Hans Christian Anderson's
<v Speaker 2>Little Mermaid, had first appeared as a bubble, So I
<v Speaker 2>thought I felt we could do no worse than allowed
<v Speaker 2>Glinda the same mode of transport. Langley's mention of poor
<v Speaker 2>little rich girl was met with blank stairs right Arthur
<v Speaker 2>Fried said, for Christ's sake, what are you talking about?
<v Speaker 2>In those days? In those is everybody was looking down
<v Speaker 2>on silent pictures. But even so, Freed said he wanted
<v Speaker 2>to see the film, and he had a phone call
<v Speaker 2>put through to Mary Pickford and asked her us in
<v Speaker 2>a copy of the picture to us. When we watched
<v Speaker 2>the film, Mervin Leroy died laughing at the old fashioned
<v Speaker 2>acting style. He kept saying how bad the makeup was.
<v Speaker 2>His own suggestion for a prologue was simple. He wanted
<v Speaker 2>Dorothy to be reading The Wizard of Oz in bed.
<v Speaker 2>She would fall asleep, then the book would fall down
<v Speaker 2>from its shelf and hit her on the head, and
<v Speaker 2>she would dream the picture. But Fried's values were sound
<v Speaker 2>and practical. He was a nice, quiet man, but I
<v Speaker 2>never saw him in temper. He understood that it was
<v Speaker 2>important to have a prologue where you see the scarecrow
<v Speaker 2>and the tin woodman as ordinary people. Langley's outline, however,
<v Speaker 2>was still far from the final shooting script of October tenth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirty eight.
<v Speaker 9>He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and carn
<v Speaker 9>Seo and JP Sorrow. It's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast.
<v Speaker 2>In total. Noel Langley wrote four scripts of The Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz and he kind of went He kept adding
<v Speaker 2>into leading back and forth certain parts of the original novel,
<v Speaker 2>and he was adamant to a fault that every character
<v Speaker 2>in Oz have a Kansas counterpoint, which was kind of
<v Speaker 2>funny because he also kind of insisted on creating singular
<v Speaker 2>Oz characters as well. Like it's weird, like he was
<v Speaker 2>very adamant like you got to have a Kansas counterpoint,
<v Speaker 2>but he also created characters that were only Oz, that
<v Speaker 2>were kind of of the traditional fairy tale fantasy characters.
<v Speaker 2>That was bomb was like he didn't want to do that.
<v Speaker 2>He wanted to work. He'd wanted to distance himself from
<v Speaker 2>traditional fairy tales and fantasy stuff, and so it's like
<v Speaker 2>it was kind of weird that Langley's kind of destroying
<v Speaker 2>that in a way. But the biggest error in judgment
<v Speaker 2>in my opinion, that he makes, which makes it into
<v Speaker 2>the final film is that it's it's basically made that
<v Speaker 2>her time in Oz is a dream.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of.
<v Speaker 2>You know that that kind of happens. I mean, I
<v Speaker 2>prefer not to believe it. I prefer to think that
<v Speaker 2>that she did go to there in my mind, because
<v Speaker 2>that's what balm Like Oz was a real place. It
<v Speaker 2>wasn't a dream. Obviously, he wrote fourteen books about the
<v Speaker 2>fucking place. Like, it's not like she had fourteen dreams
<v Speaker 2>about it, and not all the books involve her either,
<v Speaker 2>you know, like Oz is supposed to be a real place.
<v Speaker 2>It's supposed to be a real geographical region, right right, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So I think it's a total cop out because you
<v Speaker 2>know why, Like I don't know. I don't know about you,
<v Speaker 2>but but when when it comes to making everything a dream, like,
<v Speaker 2>I don't. I don't think that I've been swerved or
<v Speaker 2>that you're clever for doing that. Honestly, I just think
<v Speaker 2>you've wasted my time. Yeah, that's what you've done. You've
<v Speaker 2>wasted my time. Like, I don't want the like unless
<v Speaker 2>it's done very very well. Like I think of the
<v Speaker 2>end of New Heart, New Heart, everything being a dream
<v Speaker 2>was really fucking funny. Remember that, did you see that?
<v Speaker 2>I'm talking about the end of it? When he wakes
<v Speaker 2>up in his You know, we had an old show,
<v Speaker 2>the Bob Newhart Show, that was nothing to do with
<v Speaker 2>New Heart, and so that was the whole gimmick, was
<v Speaker 2>that the entire New Heart program was the other Bob
<v Speaker 2>Newhart's dream. And that was funny, that was clever. But
<v Speaker 2>like when you do like this and that we go
<v Speaker 2>through this whole experience of her meeting with these people
<v Speaker 2>and meeting these characters and going to the Emerald City
<v Speaker 2>and killing the Wicked Witch and then you and then
<v Speaker 2>it's a dream. It's fucking stupid.
<v Speaker 1>I would ask why why does the dream have to be?
<v Speaker 1>You know, I have to be a dream at the end.
<v Speaker 1>Difference does it make?
<v Speaker 2>That's why I just prefer to think that they all
<v Speaker 2>think it's a dream, but it's not really a dream.
<v Speaker 2>I know, once you talk to you thinks it's a dream,
<v Speaker 2>but it's not. That's mine the message I choose to
<v Speaker 2>view it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't just think about the person moving forward in
<v Speaker 1>life having learned something from the dream and the movie
<v Speaker 1>go we're supposed to now think, okay, if they go
<v Speaker 1>into the world now you know, all the wiser without
<v Speaker 1>having to actually suffer the the real trauma. They appear
<v Speaker 1>to be suffering, but now they have the benefit of
<v Speaker 1>it and you can envision them going on in life. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But but but the message is the same whether it's
<v Speaker 1>real or not. I would love to hear, like, why
<v Speaker 1>whenever a movie ends like that, I'd love to hear
<v Speaker 1>the person who made the decision explain why they couldn't
<v Speaker 1>just end the movie without it being all a dream?
<v Speaker 1>Like what purpose it serves to have it all have
<v Speaker 1>been a dream? You the same amount of work, It's like, right,
<v Speaker 1>you tell the same story. It's just like, what do
<v Speaker 1>you think it adds at the end?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I would love to know as well, because to me,
<v Speaker 2>it's just like you're you're basically like a you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I don't wanna I don't want to come across like
<v Speaker 2>I fucking like this kind of shit, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know, Yeah, you know that's all it is is. I
<v Speaker 1>don't like writing fantasy. I'm like a thing of mine. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's good. I like that read. There's some truth in there.
<v Speaker 2>It's cowardice, it is what it is. I think you
<v Speaker 2>make everything a dream. It's because you did two things.
<v Speaker 2>You did one of two things. Either you're a coward,
<v Speaker 2>about trying to write it and you're afraid of what
<v Speaker 2>people are going to actually judge you, or.
<v Speaker 1>You are.
<v Speaker 2>Or you realize what you wrote sucked, and so well,
<v Speaker 2>shit if we make it like uh, you know, changing
<v Speaker 2>like if they changed that season of Dallas it was
<v Speaker 2>all a dream or whatever, because well that was because
<v Speaker 2>of a contract thing.
<v Speaker 1>But still like, you know, it's no but that that
<v Speaker 1>that's the story. That's what I'm saying, Like, if there's
<v Speaker 1>a reason, even if it's like behind the scenes legal reasons,
<v Speaker 1>that it had to be a dream, that's that's a
<v Speaker 1>satisfactory answer to me, even if I don't think it's
<v Speaker 1>you know, in service to the story. But if like
<v Speaker 1>someone who has full creative control so to speak, decides
<v Speaker 1>to still make it all a dream in the end,
<v Speaker 1>the reasoning for that is what interests me, Like what, yep,
<v Speaker 1>what could be the enhancement in the mind of the
<v Speaker 1>author that that brings. But I totally I can totally
<v Speaker 1>see that as like a cop out, like you're saying,
<v Speaker 1>because then you can say, you know, anything that was
<v Speaker 1>sort of shoddy or lazy or less than thrilling during
<v Speaker 1>the course of the main story, you can be written
<v Speaker 1>it can be written off as yeah, well well it
<v Speaker 1>was a dream anyway. Of course, that wasn't supposed to
<v Speaker 1>make sense, that wasn't supposed to fit together those kinds
<v Speaker 1>I mean, because you can't.
<v Speaker 2>You know, look, there's no word, there's no world with
<v Speaker 2>a real wicked witch.
<v Speaker 1>You know it is a dream. It's a dreams. Just
<v Speaker 1>like a wrestler saying you're a mark when you critique
<v Speaker 1>their in rank, performance and ability to keep something looking real. Right, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>well if that's where you if that's where you go,
<v Speaker 1>then we know that you can't defend it on its merits.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's fucking fake. It's you know what we're doing,
<v Speaker 1>it'll be a fucking mark. Keep taking that many steps back,
<v Speaker 1>eventually you're going to fall off the cliff you're standing on.
<v Speaker 2>Back to the making of The Wizard of Oz. On
<v Speaker 2>June tenth, nineteen thirty eight, Langley was removed from The
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz. He had written one treatment in four scripts.
<v Speaker 2>His quote do not make changes script of May fourteenth
<v Speaker 2>was he assumed the final script for the picture. He
<v Speaker 2>was pleased with it, and so we're freed. In the film,
<v Speaker 2>songwriters E. Y Harberg and Harold Arlin. The quote do
<v Speaker 2>not make changes script dated May fourteenth was actually a
<v Speaker 2>temporary complete script. Changes were made two or three times
<v Speaker 2>a week by Langley at the direction of freed Leroy
<v Speaker 2>and Harburg between May fourteenth and June fourth, when it
<v Speaker 2>was made untouchable by the black stamp. Do not make changes, huh.
<v Speaker 1>I love that, the temporary complete script. That's like when
<v Speaker 1>Vince was running wild and rewriting raw every Monday. Everyone
<v Speaker 1>would take all this time and put in all these
<v Speaker 1>hours ahead of Monday, trying to get ahead of the game,
<v Speaker 1>and they still no matter inevitably would be running around
<v Speaker 1>like chickens with their heads cut off because Vince would,
<v Speaker 1>at his own leisure and convenience, just take a fucking
<v Speaker 1>scalpel to it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, like we wrote when he wrote stupid, that's not
<v Speaker 2>what we read on what.
<v Speaker 1>A disaster the live thing was every week, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because all of a sudden, Vince had plenty of time
<v Speaker 1>to sit around and stew and triple guests himself. And
<v Speaker 1>by the time it got on TV, it's like it's
<v Speaker 1>sometimes it was barely intelligible because it's like three, four
<v Speaker 1>or five different versions of what they originally proposed, which
<v Speaker 1>had some continuity and flow with what happened the week.
<v Speaker 2>Before and thought and you know, yeah, but no man.
<v Speaker 1>But then he gets his hands on it, and it's like,
<v Speaker 1>just because he has time on his hands, he gets
<v Speaker 1>bored with the first version he's handed so he makes
<v Speaker 1>changes just because he gets bored with something that only
<v Speaker 1>he has seen and the writers have seen and conceived
<v Speaker 1>of no chance to go to the audience and see
<v Speaker 1>what works. Like, he just decides that it's not going
<v Speaker 1>to work and doesn't even try it. I don't like it.
<v Speaker 1>And so you're watching this run you're like, how what,
<v Speaker 1>why do they Why is it going in this direction?
<v Speaker 1>And it's like, well, you have to realize four or
<v Speaker 1>five steps ago before he before he got involved, and
<v Speaker 1>his peccadillos were a consideration. It was a lot closer
<v Speaker 1>to what you would have done if you had the book.
<v Speaker 1>Ye okay, well still sucks.
<v Speaker 2>They were like when they were like starting over every
<v Speaker 2>fucking week. Completely.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Brian Gerwurtz's book is really good at kind of
<v Speaker 1>because he was like the real catbird seat guy for
<v Speaker 1>that because that was like his regime was really when
<v Speaker 1>Vince was just going totally hog wild and shit right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, kind of the days that, like it was hard.
<v Speaker 2>It was my last few years really watching week to week. Yeah, honestly,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure there's a correlation. It was so he's out
<v Speaker 2>there or like he's just deciding based on like a
<v Speaker 2>totally invisible set of criteria in his own mind that
<v Speaker 2>a guy's not getting over and meanwhile, you're just watching
<v Speaker 2>wrestling like you always have, trying to wait for the
<v Speaker 2>fans to decide who's going to be over right, and
<v Speaker 2>let the wrestlers try to influence that by putting on
<v Speaker 2>a performance that's that's believable and engaging and engrossing. Meanwhile,
<v Speaker 2>there's this like litmus test that's going on the whole time,
<v Speaker 2>and Vince has had this three week rule, and these
<v Speaker 2>guys just and women just disappear or just get cycled
<v Speaker 2>out before you even can decide if you like them
<v Speaker 2>or not. It's it was a hell of time to
<v Speaker 2>be in the business, Yeah, with no aw to go to.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's like, this is the only way to
<v Speaker 2>make real money in the business is to find a
<v Speaker 2>way to hack Vince McMahon's brain with what you can do.
<v Speaker 2>It's awful, just an awful, Like I just remember being
<v Speaker 2>just totally it was it was hard to watch, Like
<v Speaker 2>it was very hard to watch nothing. You're right, nothing
<v Speaker 2>made sense.
<v Speaker 1>It made sense, and you it's like they were taking
<v Speaker 1>time to do things that checkboxes that nobody wanted checked,
<v Speaker 1>Like we can write comedy, we can do variety, we
<v Speaker 1>can do and it's like all this stuff, we can do,
<v Speaker 1>this production trick, it's all this stuff they're trying to
<v Speaker 1>do to seek validation from everyone but their own audience,
<v Speaker 1>while the audience is sitting there with their arms folded, like,
<v Speaker 1>can we just get to the stuff I like about
<v Speaker 1>wrestling instead of this fucking masturbatory stuff where you're trying to,
<v Speaker 1>you know, expand the aperture of what raw can be.
<v Speaker 1>It's like stop stop now, I know exactly. You know better.
<v Speaker 1>You were a fan, you know better. It's awful.
<v Speaker 2>How I was I here? Oh yeah, do not that
<v Speaker 2>may change his stamp. Much of what Langley had written, was,
<v Speaker 2>of course, in the October tenth final shooting script. By
<v Speaker 2>the time Langley was removed from The Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>for other writers had already been assigned to the picture Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Herbert Fields worked on the film from April nineteenth April
<v Speaker 2>twenty second, but produced nothing. Samuel Hoffenstein or Hoffenstein worked
<v Speaker 2>on the film from May thirty first the June third,
<v Speaker 2>and produced a two page story outline of the Kansas sequence,
<v Speaker 2>whose main contributions were to rename doctor Pink, doctor Miffel.
<v Speaker 1>Said, doctor Stink, and.
<v Speaker 2>To rationalize Toto's biting Walter by having Walter burned Toto's
<v Speaker 2>ear with a match.
<v Speaker 1>That's great stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Hoffenstein was a poet and a respected writer of light verse,
<v Speaker 2>which may explain why someone decided to toss him into
<v Speaker 2>the line of succession on a fairy story. On June third,
<v Speaker 2>Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allen Wolfe were officially assigned to
<v Speaker 2>the Wizard of Oz. The final screen credits on the
<v Speaker 2>film read screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar
<v Speaker 2>Allen Wolfe adapt adaptation I Knowel Langley, Ryerson and wolf
<v Speaker 2>had been working as a team at MGM since the
<v Speaker 2>early thirties. Wolf lived like a prince. Former MGM story
<v Speaker 2>editor Sam Marx remembers him, remembers him as a quote wild,
<v Speaker 2>redheaded homosexual. Writer Alan Rivkin recalls Quote a superb cook
<v Speaker 2>and a charming man. Whatever levity and foolishness there was
<v Speaker 2>in the Wizard of Oz, Wolf must have furnished. He
<v Speaker 2>was a very funny, witty man. To his friend, silent
<v Speaker 2>screen star Carmel Myers, he was quote a meticulous, meticulous man.
<v Speaker 2>His kitchen was immaculate. I never kept my kitchen that clean.
<v Speaker 2>So it's about food and about cooking. Obviously I could
<v Speaker 2>get a call that Wolf would spend days cooking for
<v Speaker 2>his Saturday night parties. No producers were allowed. Those parties
<v Speaker 2>were limited to the interesting people, writers and directors. On
<v Speaker 2>Sunday mornings, he would drive to LB. Mayor's house at
<v Speaker 2>the beach and cook brunch for the executives and producers
<v Speaker 2>whose presence Mayor had commanded. You imagine I want you
<v Speaker 2>to come coming up. I have him having brunch with
<v Speaker 2>the people. You got to make the brunch. Can you
<v Speaker 2>do somethings Benedict please? As we are eating, Yes, you
<v Speaker 2>know we're going to have Mimosa's eggs, Benedict, and preferably
<v Speaker 2>some scone of sorts. Can you produce a scone?
<v Speaker 1>Get to work if you have to produce a story
<v Speaker 1>to produce the stone a scone?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, please, scone first story later, thank you, Lb Mayor.
<v Speaker 1>Also known as Pound Mayor.
<v Speaker 2>That's good. So there. Ryerson and Wolfe's major suggestions were
<v Speaker 2>focusing the story more on Dorothy trying to get home,
<v Speaker 2>making the Wicked Witch more of a menace, and then
<v Speaker 2>adding a number of characters. So, you know, the guy
<v Speaker 2>who plays the wizard, Frank Morgan, you know, he plays
<v Speaker 2>like like five characters in the movie. You know, he
<v Speaker 2>plays obviously his counterpart Captain Marvel, Professor Marvel in the
<v Speaker 2>Kansas sequences, and then he plays like pretty much every
<v Speaker 2>speaking part in the OZ in the Emerald City sequence.
<v Speaker 2>They also suggested that, you know, since it was a
<v Speaker 2>children's picture, you know, nothing should die, not even the
<v Speaker 2>Wicked Witch of the East shouldn't die, even though she
<v Speaker 2>crushed by Dorothy's house.
<v Speaker 1>I see, she shouldn't die. You know.
<v Speaker 2>Instead, when Dorothy takes the ruby slippers, you know, she
<v Speaker 2>becomes a parrot or a cat or something.
<v Speaker 1>Because that that's a good idea. I'm with it. I
<v Speaker 1>want to know more.
<v Speaker 2>She dies, all right, script that idea is ignored, thank you.
<v Speaker 2>So then, so then keep in mind again Noel Langley
<v Speaker 2>still kind of a newbie of sorts. He had no
<v Speaker 2>idea about Ryerson and Wolfe's involvement until he found out
<v Speaker 2>in mid June nineteen thirty eight, and he was pissed
<v Speaker 2>yes the making of the Wizard of Oz. When Ryerson
<v Speaker 2>and wolf signed off the picture on July twenty seventh
<v Speaker 2>and Langley signed back on, he went through the script.
<v Speaker 2>Langley went through the script, crossing out as much of
<v Speaker 2>their dialogue as he could and replacing his own. That's
<v Speaker 2>I mean, come on, he just goes back and just
<v Speaker 2>fucking fuck all the shit, and he says, quote I
<v Speaker 2>read this script they had. Then I had a terrific
<v Speaker 2>bust up with Leroy. I stole him out of his
<v Speaker 2>office and went to MGM's story to Eddie Knoff and
<v Speaker 2>told him to take my name off the script that
<v Speaker 2>was essentially saying that they could blacklist me or boot
<v Speaker 2>me out of the business. I refused to come to
<v Speaker 2>the studio, and I refused to talk to Leroy, and
<v Speaker 2>when he called me at home, I wouldn't bounce the phone.
<v Speaker 2>Rather surprisingly, Langley's tantrum brought results. He and his script
<v Speaker 2>were the beneficiaries of two lucky accidents. First, songwriter e
<v Speaker 2>Y Yip Harberg yip. Harburg preferred Langley's vision, and Arthur
<v Speaker 2>Freed both respected and trusted Harberg, whom he had personally
<v Speaker 2>picked to write the score for the Wizard of Second.
<v Speaker 2>According to Langley, the anti and Leroy executives were using
<v Speaker 2>the hole fast to show what a rump Laroi was,
<v Speaker 2>even if he couldn't bring even bring a twenty six
<v Speaker 2>year old scriptwriter to heel as. Langley remembers that in
<v Speaker 2>the end, Harburg became so militant that Freed supported him.
<v Speaker 2>If it hadn't been for Harbor going to Freed and
<v Speaker 2>blowing this top, he doesn't complete the sentence, but Harberg
<v Speaker 2>was in Freed's office when Freed picked up the phone
<v Speaker 2>to call Langley.
<v Speaker 1>He said.
<v Speaker 2>He said, I was making it tough on le Roi
<v Speaker 2>but not answering his phone calls. I think, I laughed,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, YP is here at least come over
<v Speaker 2>to the studio to talk to us. You don't have
<v Speaker 2>to see Learoy, you just have to come to us personally.
<v Speaker 2>You know that we have never been against your script,
<v Speaker 2>but on your side. Langley went challenged by Freed to
<v Speaker 2>explain exactly what he considered to be illiterate mush. This
<v Speaker 2>illiterate mush is what it is in the Ryerson Wolf script.
<v Speaker 2>He picked up a copy of the script and took
<v Speaker 2>it apart, page by page.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>He was particularly vitriolic at a sequence in which The Wicked,
<v Speaker 2>which created a magic rainbow with an invisible hole in
<v Speaker 2>the middle for Drothy to fall through. I said, what
<v Speaker 2>the hell does this do? You know it's going to
<v Speaker 2>give you an extra budget cost about one hundred and
<v Speaker 2>twenty thousand dollars just to do that one shot. And
<v Speaker 2>fre You'd picked up the phone on the set to
<v Speaker 2>the set to people and awesome for an estimate, and
<v Speaker 2>it was exactly one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And
<v Speaker 2>I think that impressed him more than anything else. I
<v Speaker 2>could have said that, I guess exactly the extra price
<v Speaker 2>of the rainbow. Ryerson and Wolf had signed off The
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of July thirtieth only on July twenty seventh. On
<v Speaker 2>July thirtieth, Likely was reassigning the picture on August first.
<v Speaker 2>The film's master sheet lists quote additions and changes as
<v Speaker 2>per script of May fourteen thirty eight. We replaced my script. No,
<v Speaker 2>Langley said that is not quite accurate. The clutter of
<v Speaker 2>the wicked witches attempt to conquer the Emerald City never
<v Speaker 2>re enter the script, and although Langley removed every goddamn
<v Speaker 2>thing I could, he was forced to leave in the
<v Speaker 2>Professor Professor Marvel sequence. Everybody thought it was charming. Langley
<v Speaker 2>was also required to keep his hands off one other
<v Speaker 2>Ryerson Wolf concept, le Roy and Freed, both sentimental men,
<v Speaker 2>delighted in the uplifting thought that true happiness can only
<v Speaker 2>be found at home.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, the picture did huh like that?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the picture didn't need that home Sweet Home God,
<v Speaker 2>bless our home tribe.
<v Speaker 1>Oh this is not him.
<v Speaker 2>The picture didn't need that home Sweet Home God bless
<v Speaker 2>our home tripe, says Yip Harburg. Yep. Harberg's only screen
<v Speaker 2>credit on the Wizard of Oz was lyrics E. Y Harburg.
<v Speaker 2>But the final shooting script is actually his blend of
<v Speaker 2>Ryerson Wolf and Langley. So he fucking yeah. I liked
<v Speaker 2>a lot of things Langley had done and threw the
<v Speaker 2>other stuff out. I clarified the story. I edited the
<v Speaker 2>whole thing and brought back langley story, which was simpler,
<v Speaker 2>and I added my own. The major thing Harberg added
<v Speaker 2>was the scene in which the Wizard gives the Scarecrow
<v Speaker 2>a diploma, the tin Woodman a testimonial, and the Cowardly
<v Speaker 2>Lion a medal. There were still three more writers who
<v Speaker 2>would be a signed to the Wizard of Oz. Jack
<v Speaker 2>Mintz worked from October third to September second and turned
<v Speaker 2>in four pages of suggestions. Mintz was not a writer
<v Speaker 2>but a gag writer, and he was called in to
<v Speaker 2>suggest specific jokes for the Scarecrow, tin Woodman, and Cowardly
<v Speaker 2>for the Scarecrow, tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion. Sid Silvers
<v Speaker 2>was assigned to the film from October seventeenth to October
<v Speaker 2>twenty second, the week after it started production. He was
<v Speaker 2>to hang around the set and handle any rough spots
<v Speaker 2>for director Richard Thorpe. The final writer and the one
<v Speaker 2>who spent almost as long a time as did Langley
<v Speaker 2>on the picture, was John Lee Mahan. Mayhan was assigned
<v Speaker 2>to the Wizard of Oz from October twenty seven, thirty
<v Speaker 2>eight to January tenth, nineteen thirty nine. Although there is
<v Speaker 2>ample evidence of scenes that Mayhan polished, and indeed he
<v Speaker 2>is responsible for the opening scene in the picture, he
<v Speaker 2>refused to take any credit. I thought the script was
<v Speaker 2>ninety two percent.
<v Speaker 1>Great.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of the time, my changes weren't even written down,
<v Speaker 2>I told them, and then the script girl simply made notes.
<v Speaker 1>Eh.
<v Speaker 2>Noel Langley's connection with the Wizard of Oz was severed
<v Speaker 2>on October thirty first, nineteen thirty eight, when he was
<v Speaker 2>dismissed from the film for the second time. He could
<v Speaker 2>only wait, perhaps wistfully, for the finished movie to open
<v Speaker 2>in a theater. In the nineteen thirties, writers were never
<v Speaker 2>invited to the previews or premiers of their pictures. Noel
<v Speaker 2>Langley saw The Wizard of Oz in a cinema on
<v Speaker 2>Hollywood Boulevard at noon, and I sat and cried like
<v Speaker 2>a bloody child. I thought, this is a year of
<v Speaker 2>my life. I loathed the picture. I thought it was dead,
<v Speaker 2>that had missed the boat all the way around. I
<v Speaker 2>had to wait for my tears to clear before I
<v Speaker 2>went out of the theater.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, they definitely appreciated the chance to work on
<v Speaker 1>a celebrated all time classic. Yeah yeah, right. I mean mind,
<v Speaker 1>every timeless classic is someone who just wants it to
<v Speaker 1>be over.
<v Speaker 2>That's the thing. You know, a lot of people you
<v Speaker 2>know you don't you don't know you're making a classic.
<v Speaker 2>Time decides that, right, and so you know, you go
<v Speaker 2>you you're working on this movie. All you want to
<v Speaker 2>do is go home. I want to just go home,
<v Speaker 2>like fuck this shit.
<v Speaker 1>You know, honestly, it's so tough because then for the
<v Speaker 1>rest of your life all anyone wants to ask you
<v Speaker 1>about is that movie. And it's like, yeah, well, I
<v Speaker 1>hate to disappoint you, but my mind instantly goes to
<v Speaker 1>stress and.
<v Speaker 2>Executive things exactly. I mean, wait till you hear from
<v Speaker 2>from Jack Haley. Okay, who plays the tin man. Huh,
<v Speaker 2>all right, he hated working on this little scho check.
<v Speaker 2>He wanted nothing to do with this movie. Tremendous, miserable,
<v Speaker 2>absolutely miserable, and he doesn't understand why it's such a
<v Speaker 2>fucking classic from Boston. I'm finding it, yes, yeah, he's
<v Speaker 2>from Boston. Oh god, I love it so much. Jack Haley,
<v Speaker 2>fucking cranky, motherfucker tremendous, you know, mainly because you know
<v Speaker 2>he's he's a guy. You know, I don't understand why,
<v Speaker 2>you know why I've got to you know, what's opponent
<v Speaker 2>doing a picture? If you got to say two hours
<v Speaker 2>in makeup, right, that's what his biggest complaint was that
<v Speaker 2>he had to sit in the makeup for two hours
<v Speaker 2>before he could go to work.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what is this ship? I know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm glad he doesn't fucking work. Now, I'm glad
<v Speaker 2>he's dead because you imagine the makeup is like six
<v Speaker 2>hours nowadays. You know, I'm the fucking process.
<v Speaker 1>Heat wouldn't be in the business, I know exactly he
<v Speaker 1>would have.
<v Speaker 2>He probably would have been I don't know, maybe a
<v Speaker 2>grocery yeah, manager. So you know, you know, there's an
<v Speaker 2>important aspect of the movie, an important part. We need
<v Speaker 2>someone to play Dorothy Gale of Kansas, of course we do.
<v Speaker 2>And you need you need someone who's going to play
<v Speaker 2>who's going to play this role. You need someone who's charismatic,
<v Speaker 2>you need an incredible singing voice. And they found what
<v Speaker 2>they were looking for in Francis Ethel gum Wow, who
<v Speaker 2>was born June tenth, nineteen twenty two, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
<v Speaker 2>She was born into a Grand Rapids, Minnesota or Michigan, Minnesota.
<v Speaker 13>Oh.
<v Speaker 1>I never knew there was a Grand Rapids in Minnesota.
<v Speaker 2>Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was born into a performing family.
<v Speaker 2>Her parents, Ethel and Frank were Vaudevillians who eventually they've
<v Speaker 2>settled in the Grand Rapids to run a movie theater.
<v Speaker 2>And Francis's older sisters, Mary, Jane and Dorothy were also performers,
<v Speaker 2>and in nineteen twenty four, actually during a Christmas show
<v Speaker 2>at the Father's Theater, Francis, age two, was put on
<v Speaker 2>the stage with their sisters to perform jingle bells, and
<v Speaker 2>in fact this was confirmed in a nineteen sixty seven
<v Speaker 2>interview with Barbara Walters.
<v Speaker 17>Thirty months what was it? I was saying?
<v Speaker 1>Were you really knew we z that young?
<v Speaker 5>Did someone push you on a stage?
<v Speaker 17>Grandmother? I signed jingle bells and.
<v Speaker 5>Was at the beginning of the whole career?
<v Speaker 10>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Fill, let's say that again. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So the sisters they began forming as a trio known
<v Speaker 2>as this is according to a letter that Frank Gumm,
<v Speaker 2>the dad, wrote to the Rutherford Courier. Okay he said
<v Speaker 2>that they were known as the Three Gum Sisters, the
<v Speaker 2>Trio Unusual.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that's what their fucking name was, The Trio Unusual.
<v Speaker 2>Ladies and gentlemen, the Three Gum Sisters, the Trio Usual.
<v Speaker 1>Coming to a Luca Libre promotion, there you serious trios unusual.
<v Speaker 1>That's right.
<v Speaker 2>In the uh in the letter he singled out Francis, saying, quote,
<v Speaker 2>the youngest girl, Francis, who is eleven years old, is
<v Speaker 2>a big sensation and a brilliant career is predicted for her,
<v Speaker 2>as she will shortly be featured with many of the
<v Speaker 2>prominent stars of the screen.
<v Speaker 1>That's true.
<v Speaker 2>And they they worked vaudeville at first, there did the
<v Speaker 2>vaudeville circuit. And this is again, this is Francis in
<v Speaker 2>that interview with Barbara Walters talking about vaudeville.
<v Speaker 18>You know, I wasn't always a movie star. I was
<v Speaker 18>on the stage for ten years and there that was
<v Speaker 18>kind of fun, you know, because Mickey Rooney was in
<v Speaker 18>vaudeval to Donald O'Connor, and we we didn't have the
<v Speaker 18>pressures that later we had when we got into the movies.
<v Speaker 17>And we used to play, you know what, a tag
<v Speaker 17>or a backstage.
<v Speaker 18>Sometimes we'd run into the wings because it was always dark,
<v Speaker 18>because we were in kind of rotten vaudeval where they
<v Speaker 18>ran movies and then threw five acts of vaudevalon in
<v Speaker 18>between the movie, and then they'd run the movie again
<v Speaker 18>another show. We did nineteen shows a day, but I
<v Speaker 18>liked that better.
<v Speaker 17>I didn't want to be again in the movies at all.
<v Speaker 2>Eventually they hit Chicago. They worked with an actor and
<v Speaker 2>a comedian and producer named George Jessel. He's a big,
<v Speaker 2>vital guy and uh. Jessel told the sisters, Hey, you
<v Speaker 2>know what, I think your girls need a more appealing
<v Speaker 2>last name.
<v Speaker 1>Oh god, I just love that.
<v Speaker 2>We need a better name. Huh, Chicago, we need a
<v Speaker 2>better name. You know, you know you work in Chicago.
<v Speaker 2>Now you need a better name than gum called the
<v Speaker 2>dumb gums. Fuck you don't what the fuck you want
<v Speaker 2>to be known as the fucking dumb gums double mint?
<v Speaker 1>What do you want? Well?
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's it's fucking it's a fucking stupid name.
<v Speaker 1>How about this Dorothy Berlascone.
<v Speaker 19>Or about about you know, uh Francis, uh fuck you
<v Speaker 19>the better fuck Youama?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Or how about Claire? Uh Claire not for nothing?
<v Speaker 1>Like like, I love the you know it's funny to like,
<v Speaker 1>I get it.
<v Speaker 2>I get how you know in show business, you know
<v Speaker 2>you want to have a name that that can essentially
<v Speaker 2>sell tickets. But it's such a weird concept in my
<v Speaker 2>mind to be able to say you know you should
<v Speaker 2>change your name. I don't know about that name. Are
<v Speaker 2>you man like someone everyone ever come to you and say, oh,
<v Speaker 2>surprisingly you know, I don't. I think you should change
<v Speaker 2>your name. The names is not working.
<v Speaker 1>Do you remember? You know there were some kids and
<v Speaker 1>like them were some broadcast journalism program that would change
<v Speaker 1>their names because they knew it would help them get
<v Speaker 1>jobs in television news.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I don't remember that at all.
<v Speaker 1>Who did that? Jeez, I don't remember his name now.
<v Speaker 1>He used to come in a lot and he was
<v Speaker 1>talking about it, and it was a thing. You know,
<v Speaker 1>some are just born with TV sounding names, just they're
<v Speaker 1>fortunate to not have a sure to have, like an
<v Speaker 1>anodyne last name that doesn't tilt one way or another
<v Speaker 1>the other. That's what you want to want, a boring name,
<v Speaker 1>you know, Like it's easier to become a it's easier
<v Speaker 1>to become someone whose name is in a byeline or
<v Speaker 1>in lights if it's simple and clean and easy to
<v Speaker 1>pronounce and all that. But yeah, that's just thing. Vince
<v Speaker 1>does the same thing. I mean, geez, that was like
<v Speaker 1>his main hang up was he wouldn't rest until he
<v Speaker 1>gave you a name that a he felt like he
<v Speaker 1>could own and b he felt like he could see
<v Speaker 1>in you. You know, very rarely would he go with
<v Speaker 1>your real name. I mean, I think the worst is
<v Speaker 1>Daniel Brian. Yeah, that's an ultimate you know, mind, fuck,
<v Speaker 1>isn't it? My name's Brian Danielson. How boring is that?
<v Speaker 1>We'll call you Daniel Bryan? Okay, much better, don't I
<v Speaker 1>can identify with a Daniel like an unidentify with a Brian. Whatever.
<v Speaker 2>So they changed their last name to Garland. Now there
<v Speaker 2>are there's no real there's no hard story as to
<v Speaker 2>how it came about. Some people say it was it
<v Speaker 2>was it was Jessel who suggested it, and then there's like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, there's a thing like I don't know. They
<v Speaker 2>read a name the Guard the Garland hung beautifully on
<v Speaker 2>Judith's house on a newspaper article, you know, something like that,
<v Speaker 2>like shit like that. Either way, they were now known
<v Speaker 2>as the Garland sisters, and.
<v Speaker 1>And they were married.
<v Speaker 2>They were managed to buy their mother. So the father died.
<v Speaker 2>When the fuck did he die? I don't remember, I
<v Speaker 2>remember he died.
<v Speaker 1>Now.
<v Speaker 2>The dad was kind of a the mother and father
<v Speaker 2>relationship in that family was he was very much suspected
<v Speaker 2>to be gay, the dad, and they had to move
<v Speaker 2>out of at least one town because of like his
<v Speaker 2>trying to get with guys who weren't gay, and so
<v Speaker 2>people knew he was gay, and now they're like, shit,
<v Speaker 2>we got to get out of here, so they have
<v Speaker 2>to move. And that was kind of it, And you know,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't go too far into it because I was like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, that's a whole that's a whole other fuck.
<v Speaker 2>Can of worms is kind of talking about the you know,
<v Speaker 2>Judy Garland's parents' relationship. But I do get the vibe
<v Speaker 2>that she just was not a fan of all this stuff,
<v Speaker 2>and she not necessarily that he was gay in a
<v Speaker 2>weird way, but more that you know, what are you doing?
<v Speaker 2>You know, you're you're you're embarrassing us, Yeah, by giving
<v Speaker 2>the ships, you know, by by you know, trying to
<v Speaker 2>sleep with men every fucking wear every town.
<v Speaker 1>We moved to slipping that loafer under the the bathroom
<v Speaker 1>stall door. Exactly. Come on, dad, youna have to grab
<v Speaker 1>another cock today, Jesus Christ. But we're gonna move to now,
<v Speaker 1>Dad again't dad, Dad? Here's a true daddy? Yeah, Daddy,
<v Speaker 1>did you blow two guys today, kids, pack up quick,
<v Speaker 1>we're moving. What happened, Dad, I sucked another dick, just
<v Speaker 1>another cock family, And afterwards he told me he wasn't gay,
<v Speaker 1>so we're really in.
<v Speaker 2>Trouble, said he was gonna call the newspapers.
<v Speaker 1>We gotta go. It's like the Exorcist article, like a
<v Speaker 1>man sucked a dick this week. And according to the church,
<v Speaker 1>it's like you don't even have any the principles are
<v Speaker 1>on the record. You're taking like some third parties word
<v Speaker 1>for it exactly. Oh my god, let me see.
<v Speaker 2>I gotta find him when he died, because that kind
<v Speaker 2>of I think when he died.
<v Speaker 1>Is when.
<v Speaker 2>She when Uh, that's kind of funny. Actually, you know
<v Speaker 2>Francis her dad's name was Francis as well, so like, yep,
<v Speaker 2>she's named after her dad, and she was close with
<v Speaker 2>her dad. He died nineteen thirty five, Okay, so that
<v Speaker 2>that actually that makes a lot of sense. So he
<v Speaker 2>died nineteen thirty five, Hold on, what are you? How
<v Speaker 2>do you die? Spinal meningitis? Out spinal meningitis And he
<v Speaker 2>was forty nine years old and they'd moved to la
<v Speaker 2>by that point, and so the mom ethel ethel Now
<v Speaker 2>Garland was the manager of Judy and her sisters, and
<v Speaker 2>Judy recalled her relationship with her stage mother in that
<v Speaker 2>interview with Barbara Walters.
<v Speaker 17>My mother was truly a stage mother, but a mean one,
<v Speaker 17>wasn't she. Well, you didn't know. I couldn't, but she
<v Speaker 17>used to. She was very jealous because she had absolutely
<v Speaker 17>no talent. Now she's gonna knock my earring.
<v Speaker 3>My mother was.
<v Speaker 18>You know, my mother died and she whenever I talk
<v Speaker 18>about her, and I should because she was so wicked,
<v Speaker 18>But whenever I started talking about it, she inevitably knocks
<v Speaker 18>one ear ring off. So she's still around, said the mother,
<v Speaker 18>You behave yourself. She would sort of standing in the
<v Speaker 18>wings when I was a little girl, and if I
<v Speaker 18>didn't feel good, if I was sick, to much time me,
<v Speaker 18>she'd say, you get out and sing her I'll wrap
<v Speaker 18>you around the bedpost and break you off short.
<v Speaker 17>So I'd go on and sing.
<v Speaker 1>That sounds nice, yeah, right, sounds like a normal family.
<v Speaker 10>Now.
<v Speaker 1>Things were done back then. You know, you can't appreciate
<v Speaker 1>today how important it was to wrap a kid around
<v Speaker 1>a bedpost and fucking snap him.
<v Speaker 2>In half, make him short, make it out short. You
<v Speaker 2>get out there, or I'll put you in a figure
<v Speaker 2>four around the post. I think Brett ever threatened Blade
<v Speaker 2>with that.
<v Speaker 1>No, but I know Brett threatened to Blade because of that, you.
<v Speaker 2>Know, if you know, you know, I used to think
<v Speaker 2>that that Brett named Blade because he was such like
<v Speaker 2>you know, he was so into like hard rock and
<v Speaker 2>ship like that. But it probably was because of times
<v Speaker 2>he sliced his fucking forehead. It's hockey blade.
<v Speaker 1>No, it's the it's the it's the gigging blade. Well,
<v Speaker 1>it's a good thing that Brett wasn't into American football
<v Speaker 1>like he was hockey. You have, he'd have a kid
<v Speaker 1>named grid I or something.
<v Speaker 2>So the Garland sisters were performing in LA and supposedly
<v Speaker 2>Louis B. Mayer's assistant Ida Koverman summoned Judy and her father,
<v Speaker 2>and Judy sang for Mayor and Arthur Freed and other executives.
<v Speaker 2>And again there's no straight account as to how she
<v Speaker 2>was signed to an MGM contract. In one account, Arthur
<v Speaker 2>Freed and others had to convinced LB mayor to sign Judy,
<v Speaker 2>and then in another account, Mayor saw Garland in a
<v Speaker 2>nightclub and then immediately wanted to sign her, so who
<v Speaker 2>the fuck knows. But they did love her voice, and
<v Speaker 2>the whole studio loved her voice. But you know what,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I'm not a fan of her face.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, you're not personally Huh are you speaking in someone
<v Speaker 1>else's voice?
<v Speaker 2>Someone else's voice? They're like, MGM. So they loved her voice.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know about that face, and you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know about that body either.
<v Speaker 1>No, you change your name. Just a couple more changes
<v Speaker 1>and we should be good.
<v Speaker 2>Could we? Let me tell you what first? Listen, I
<v Speaker 2>get it, okay, but oh that's always a good start. Look,
<v Speaker 2>you're at MGM, now, all right. You're not doing vaudeville,
<v Speaker 2>all right, you're not going around town to town.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you're MGM.
<v Speaker 2>So there is a you know, there is there a
<v Speaker 2>certain look, a look in a star.
<v Speaker 1>All right. So what we're going to have you do? First?
<v Speaker 2>You get a cap those teeth, all right, listen, I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna tell you. Listen, and then I get it right.
<v Speaker 2>I don't meaning disrespect by this, but you could drive
<v Speaker 2>a fucking truck through the spaces in your tea. So
<v Speaker 2>number one and teeth, those motherfucker cap those motherfuckers. You
<v Speaker 2>can say, we need to be in better alignment. And
<v Speaker 2>number two, Judy, what's with the nose?
<v Speaker 4>Right?
<v Speaker 1>Just with the nose. No one's ever talked about the nose.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, listen, I can't hear you sing because I'm
<v Speaker 1>too busy steering at your fucking nose. It's a pretty girl,
<v Speaker 1>but for God's sakes, listen, you're not that attractive. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I forget it all right, you're not that attractive, but
<v Speaker 1>you could be a little more attractive if you fucking
<v Speaker 1>take care of your nose. So can you do that?
<v Speaker 1>And for God's sake, that waste? Where the fuck is
<v Speaker 1>your waist? You're like a box? Wow, you get it.
<v Speaker 2>Listen, have you ever heard of corsets? Wear a corset
<v Speaker 2>and I'll tell you what what we do sometimes. Number one,
<v Speaker 2>you gotta trim down too. I mean, honey, you're fucking gigantic.
<v Speaker 2>You're like five pounds overweight. You're a fucking whale. So
<v Speaker 2>you should diet. Number one, diet. And number two, what
<v Speaker 2>we're gonna do is we're gonna reshape your body through massage. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>we're gonna reshape your body.
<v Speaker 1>I don't like where this is going, sir.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, so now and the thing and so so
<v Speaker 2>from the beginning, from the very beginning before she signed
<v Speaker 2>with MJM, Judy is like her mental her mentality is
<v Speaker 2>my all I am is a house for my voice.
<v Speaker 2>That's all that fucking matters is my voice. Right, And
<v Speaker 2>so she's already I mean, she's got like anybody, physical flaws,
<v Speaker 2>like every fucking human being, but she's because of everyone
<v Speaker 2>celebrating her voice and not how she looks. She's just
<v Speaker 2>got this incredible insecurity about her about her physicality, and
<v Speaker 2>not only that, but how about her sexual attractiveness, like
<v Speaker 2>she just doesn't and and this.
<v Speaker 1>Like it it.
<v Speaker 2>Right from here, it's like you're seeing where the problems
<v Speaker 2>are beginning. Now, this is the problems probably begin way
<v Speaker 2>before you know, her mom being her mom or.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's.
<v Speaker 2>It's just it's so sad when you can actually pinpoint
<v Speaker 2>where the tragedy begins because here, this is this is
<v Speaker 2>an interview. This is again, this is now that Barbara
<v Speaker 2>Walter's interview is from nineteen sixty seven, so we're talking
<v Speaker 2>thirty years over thirty years from when she first signed
<v Speaker 2>with MGM, and all this shit started happening. But here
<v Speaker 2>this is her.
<v Speaker 1>This is Barbara Walters talking about her size.
<v Speaker 5>We used to read that you were dieting, and you were.
<v Speaker 5>I've said several times in this interview, you are so
<v Speaker 5>tiny and you look to me about ooh.
<v Speaker 17>I'd say, seventeen.
<v Speaker 1>Do you still have to diet?
<v Speaker 17>No, don't have to find it. I don't have to
<v Speaker 17>I without uh what was it? U?
<v Speaker 18>Two years ago, I went on a thirty day fast.
<v Speaker 18>I fasted, uh, without vitamins or anything. I just had
<v Speaker 18>a cup of tea in the daytime and a cup
<v Speaker 18>of tea in the evening, and uh uh that seemed
<v Speaker 18>to sort of balance my metabolism. So I don't think
<v Speaker 18>I'll ever have a problem with gaining weight anymore.
<v Speaker 5>You know, I'd never realized that you were so tiny.
<v Speaker 5>Movies and television are very deceiving. And when I saw
<v Speaker 5>you come out of the room, which is why I
<v Speaker 5>keep talking about how what a little girl you look like.
<v Speaker 5>Could I ask you to stand up next to Laurna
<v Speaker 5>so we know that the world can see that you're
<v Speaker 5>a very small young lady and you're not where you
<v Speaker 5>took your shoes off.
<v Speaker 18>I noticed, you know what I I wear those four
<v Speaker 18>and a half in fields so I c can look
<v Speaker 18>like I have some some uh some status and while
<v Speaker 18>I stand up and becounted showy if we were the
<v Speaker 18>real Laura loves it and that this is ridiculous. You
<v Speaker 18>know when I try to say, lies, Laura, you shouldn't
<v Speaker 18>stay out so late.
<v Speaker 1>How can you brawl in my one?
<v Speaker 13>There?
<v Speaker 5>An inches so taller than you are?
<v Speaker 18>Well, I'm only four ft eleven. You know I'm glad
<v Speaker 18>that my daughters are taller.
<v Speaker 5>Lovely daughter, I just wanted everyone to see how tiny.
<v Speaker 1>There we go?
<v Speaker 20>Can we?
<v Speaker 3>Yes?
<v Speaker 5>Yes, you can sit down? Should we point out I'm
<v Speaker 5>about to that you're wearing your daughter Lorna's clothes today, Yes,
<v Speaker 5>a very pretty little dress and cod how do you
<v Speaker 5>feel about that?
<v Speaker 9>Laura?
<v Speaker 17>But we wear the same size clothes.
<v Speaker 18>But I can't fit into mama's clothes, but you can
<v Speaker 18>fit into mine. And when I get a dress, I
<v Speaker 18>usually get two.
<v Speaker 1>All right, this is weird now. And you know what's
<v Speaker 1>nice is Judy doesn't sound like she's on barbituates. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean also, if you watch that interview it's on
<v Speaker 2>it's on there. You can join it on YouTube. Obviously.
<v Speaker 2>When she stands up. They they just they get a
<v Speaker 2>shot of her legs, like her her calves, they're like twigs,
<v Speaker 2>like sticks. It's awful.
<v Speaker 1>It just you know, you you you just you.
<v Speaker 2>Feel for her and and all this shit like thirty
<v Speaker 2>day fast and that's like, I'm sorry, that's not balancing
<v Speaker 2>your metabolism, right, okay, And.
<v Speaker 1>That's before you had Instagram ads to tell you how
<v Speaker 1>to do it right.
<v Speaker 2>Right exactly. I mean, it's just it is just so
<v Speaker 2>it's so sad that that's what she became, you know,
<v Speaker 2>that's how she ended up, you know, because of all
<v Speaker 2>this shit. I mean, listen, she certainly could have taken
<v Speaker 2>probably a little more responsibility and taking care of herself
<v Speaker 2>and like gone and seeing I don't know, I don't
<v Speaker 2>know what she'd it for her own mental health or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>But it's just it's it's so it's awful that she
<v Speaker 2>became so obsessed with all this physical appearance because people
<v Speaker 2>just couldn't accept her from who she was.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she had such a great voice that like was
<v Speaker 1>a constant thing. It wasn't like right, you know, all right,
<v Speaker 1>I don't have the look, so I'm not getting opportunities.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, no everyone's telling me. The only reason I'm
<v Speaker 1>not getting the full opportunity are these things right that
<v Speaker 1>I didn't choose about myself. But because my voice is
<v Speaker 1>so lovely, they're constantly coming back to me about this ship.
<v Speaker 1>I can't just leave well enough alone and perhaps, you know,
<v Speaker 1>maybe they move on to somebody else, which I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>she wouldn't want anyway, But you get my point, and
<v Speaker 1>it's yeah, it's the sickness, man, it's it's it is
<v Speaker 1>it is.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's like, honestly in the opposite way. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's like par wrestling too. You know, these like you Sid,
<v Speaker 2>like Sid who you know, unless he's got this particular
<v Speaker 2>you know body. Look, he's not going to go out,
<v Speaker 2>he's not going to work, you know. Yes, it's like, fuck, like,
<v Speaker 2>what do you do to these people?
<v Speaker 21>Like?
<v Speaker 2>You know, I understand that there is a certain you know,
<v Speaker 2>to a certain extended is your your body is a
<v Speaker 2>cosmetic business? Yep, right, you know I get that. But
<v Speaker 2>at the same time, you know, like, what the fuck?
<v Speaker 1>Well, at a point, you're doing it in the service
<v Speaker 1>to everyone but yourself, you know, that's right. Thing, right,
<v Speaker 1>You're not doing it because you're trying to chase something
<v Speaker 1>and these are the rules of the road. You're doing
<v Speaker 1>it because it'll make other people more money, and it'll
<v Speaker 1>make you money too, but it'll make a whole lot
<v Speaker 1>of other people money, and you're suffering to this degree
<v Speaker 1>and your sort of psychological tail spin. Oh yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>not worth it to enrich people who you know will
<v Speaker 1>never give a shit about you once the direct deposit hits,
<v Speaker 1>so to speak, exactly, and it's like, exactly how much
<v Speaker 1>am I going to give over to them? Everything?
<v Speaker 2>That's what you're going to give over to them? Everything exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Everything you don't deserve to have. Listen, you don't.
<v Speaker 1>Deserve what you have, right, I deserve to have what
<v Speaker 1>you have. That's right. So you have to do what
<v Speaker 1>I fucking say, pretty much. And that was the thing
<v Speaker 1>about like, you know, wrestlers when they come up trickly
<v Speaker 1>under the Vince regime, less so today, but it's still there.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you rode up to get noticed, right, you
<v Speaker 1>ride up in OVW right, and you ride up until
<v Speaker 1>you get pushed and established upper card position in WWE,
<v Speaker 1>and then you could afford to come off that stuff
<v Speaker 1>and kind of go with a body that's closer to natural.
<v Speaker 1>Once your name and characters establish such the crowds can
<v Speaker 1>respond strongly to you. Your merch sales are moving. People
<v Speaker 1>are gonna bite your t shirts less because you, you know,
<v Speaker 1>lose twenty pounds of muscle, or at least they shouldn't.
<v Speaker 1>And so we've seen that with a lot of guys,
<v Speaker 1>and that always to me was kind of like fair play.
<v Speaker 1>You know, like you're young, it helps you heal from
<v Speaker 1>injuries faster, to get yourself out there more and and
<v Speaker 1>therefore in creature opportunities to get over into secure a spot.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, you're taking extreme physical risk by you know,
<v Speaker 1>bloating your fucking organs and bloating the the load you're
<v Speaker 1>asking your your muscles and skeletons and tendons to carry.
<v Speaker 1>But on the other side, maybe you can come off
<v Speaker 1>at I mean, look at Batista, Look what he's walking
<v Speaker 1>around like right now. But we all know in this
<v Speaker 1>fucking world he would not be standing on that red
<v Speaker 1>carpet then as a green bean if he hadn't roided
<v Speaker 1>to the fucking gills yep, twenty years ago, because no
<v Speaker 1>one gives a fuck about him unless he looks like
<v Speaker 1>a fucking science fiction monster.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean listen, And that's how he made his
<v Speaker 2>career at first, his movie career was. Don't forget that.
<v Speaker 2>That's how we you know, the fucking Guardian. I mean listen.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know what they're gonna fuck do if they do,
<v Speaker 2>if they haven't in other Guardians of the Galaxy movie,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know fucking do.
<v Speaker 1>Like, yeah, they'll probably just be like, well, dude, you
<v Speaker 1>gotta do. We're gonna the other way, David, get those
<v Speaker 1>guys from a bigger, faster, stronger on the phone exactly. Ah,
<v Speaker 1>what's good? What's fucking good about it? I want to
<v Speaker 1>get the Bell brothers on the phone. I wonder who
<v Speaker 1>they got on the text. Yeah, i'ller at you boy on.
<v Speaker 2>They have fucking you know, direct direct lines, a certain
<v Speaker 2>way fucking go, all right, all right? So she also
<v Speaker 2>also here, This is her describing what it was like
<v Speaker 2>working at the studios when she was a kid.
<v Speaker 17>We worked nine and day. We didn't I've never been
<v Speaker 17>to a prom. I've never you know. We went to
<v Speaker 17>school on a lot and in those days you worked.
<v Speaker 18>Six days a week, and Mickey Rooney and I, for instance,
<v Speaker 18>would work sometimes seventy two hours at a time.
<v Speaker 5>Do you still see Mickey Rooney at all?
<v Speaker 17>I see him whenever I can.
<v Speaker 18>He's the most marvelous gentleman and the most well I
<v Speaker 18>think he's the world's greatest talent and the loveliest person too.
<v Speaker 17>But we never went out together.
<v Speaker 18>He liked he liked other girls, which kind of miffed
<v Speaker 18>me for a while. No, I know, I'd grown up
<v Speaker 18>with them in Vaudville. Anyway, we didn't. Neither one of
<v Speaker 18>us screw very tall. I worked it so hard, which
<v Speaker 18>became munskins.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, there's Barbara Walters in her trumpid journalism, breezing
<v Speaker 1>right past the fucking child labor exploitation. I know, right,
<v Speaker 1>did you ever see do you see Mickey Rooney at
<v Speaker 1>all anymore?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Do you guys have rro lately? It's like did you
<v Speaker 1>miss the seventy two hours at a Time part? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>And they are miners for sure. At that point, I
<v Speaker 2>hate Mickey Rooney.
<v Speaker 1>I hate Mickey Rooney. Wow, I think he is the.
<v Speaker 2>Such a fucking I don't know, I mean, listen, maybe
<v Speaker 2>he's a nice guy. I don't know, but like I
<v Speaker 2>cannot stand watching his movies, except I do like him
<v Speaker 2>In the night at the museum. He's fucking hilarious as that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>because he's he's angry, angry Mickey Rooney. I can get
<v Speaker 2>behind angry old Mickey Rooney. I can get behind, but
<v Speaker 2>like you know, the stupid like look at go to
<v Speaker 2>the look at his fucking idiot face.
<v Speaker 1>Would you tolerate someone like that in your personal life?
<v Speaker 2>Never ever that smile. All I want to do is
<v Speaker 2>fucking bash those teeth in.
<v Speaker 1>Apparently apparently you know, I mean, if I can read
<v Speaker 1>between the lines there, Judy wanted him to want her.
<v Speaker 2>So yes, I do believe that there was that there
<v Speaker 2>was desire, and that there was a need and wants
<v Speaker 2>that were not satisfied on the end.
<v Speaker 1>Of Yeah, I believe the quote one time from Garland
<v Speaker 1>was I want his tongue. I think said.
<v Speaker 2>I believe that, and I believe she also said I
<v Speaker 2>want his semen like could have been wrong about that one.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they were known.
<v Speaker 1>Man, all right, they did uh you know what do
<v Speaker 1>they call it?
<v Speaker 13>Uh?
<v Speaker 2>Basically they were known for doing those kind of like, uh, hey,
<v Speaker 2>let's put on a show, right, movies you know back
<v Speaker 2>in the day, you know, if if you know, if
<v Speaker 2>their movies together would always have a red barn, and
<v Speaker 2>then even if it was black and white, and then
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna put the show on in the barn.
<v Speaker 1>That's a riot, you know, that's their fucking ya. We
<v Speaker 1>just ended up in a scenario where there's like one
<v Speaker 1>hundred spectators, you know, ranking at us. Right.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know the listen, you know what the uh,
<v Speaker 2>the oh, the old doctor's office is going on in
<v Speaker 2>the business because you know they don't have enough patience. Well,
<v Speaker 2>I'll tell you what we do.
<v Speaker 1>Let's put on a show for him. It's that kind
<v Speaker 1>of ship. That's terrific. I didn't realize that was a
<v Speaker 1>thing until you put it that way. Is is there
<v Speaker 1>a thing that's what they that's kind of what they did,
<v Speaker 1>Like that was their white Christmas right there, it's white Christmas.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, right exactly. Yeah, it's a whole it's a whole
<v Speaker 2>weird a pretendu genre of movies. It's like a whole
<v Speaker 2>pretense for like a song and dance routine at the end,
<v Speaker 2>right right, I mean, yeah exactly. You know there's even
<v Speaker 2>a musical, a kid's music. I can't remember the name
<v Speaker 2>of it, but there's a kid's musical that's kind of.
<v Speaker 5>It.
<v Speaker 2>Kind of lampoons that whole the whole genre by also
<v Speaker 2>doing the same exact thing.
<v Speaker 13>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's what they that's what they were known for.
<v Speaker 22>Now.
<v Speaker 2>She also went on to describe in the atmosphere and
<v Speaker 2>the culture at at MGM during this period, but not
<v Speaker 2>in that interview. Instead, she wrote it down in a
<v Speaker 2>sixty eight page unfinished manuscript of a memoir that she
<v Speaker 2>had started but never finished. And for a long time
<v Speaker 2>no one knew about this fucking thing, or at least
<v Speaker 2>it had been forgotten. But it was found by an
<v Speaker 2>author and reporter named Gerald Clark when he had sent
<v Speaker 2>a research assistant to the you know, Columbia University holds
<v Speaker 2>the Random House Archives, And she happened like her publisher
<v Speaker 2>was Random House, and so this assistant when she was
<v Speaker 2>he was trying to write a book about Judy Garland
<v Speaker 2>and he and so he was trying to get information
<v Speaker 2>about about certain things that he'd heard about, certain things
<v Speaker 2>that he'd heard about that he didn't have, he didn't have,
<v Speaker 2>you know, he needed more verification.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and he got it.
<v Speaker 2>He got let me see exactly, I won't see what
<v Speaker 2>exactly what it was, So I know what he was
<v Speaker 2>writing on, Oh, I see because he stumbled on an
<v Speaker 2>old gossip column, okay, and that she was working on
<v Speaker 2>a memoir for Random House. But he was excited, but
<v Speaker 2>he never.
<v Speaker 1>You know, there were.
<v Speaker 2>To see and so held. What he did was he
<v Speaker 2>had the assistant go to the Random to Columbia University
<v Speaker 2>Library to search in the Random House archives if there
<v Speaker 2>were letters the correspondence between Random House and Judy Garland.
<v Speaker 2>And there were thirty. And there was also this sixty
<v Speaker 2>eight pages of an incomplete memoir that nobody ever seen. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>that nobody had seen, at least not seen in forty
<v Speaker 2>forty years.
<v Speaker 1>And in it was some rough shit. Wow.
<v Speaker 2>And here's what it was like working at MGM as
<v Speaker 2>a woman. The book is Get Happy Again by Gerald Clark,
<v Speaker 2>The Life of Judy Garland. Yes, living in Paradise.
<v Speaker 1>Had its price. Oh my god, here we go. I
<v Speaker 1>can fill this one coming on.
<v Speaker 2>Like the original inhabitants of Eden, MGM stars paid for
<v Speaker 2>all this pampering, with the loss of freedom and individuality.
<v Speaker 2>If no other film company gave its players such twenty
<v Speaker 2>four hour a day coddling, neither did any other company
<v Speaker 2>expect them to submit to such smothering twenty four hour
<v Speaker 2>a day supervision. When he signed his actors and actresses
<v Speaker 2>to a contract, Louis B. Mayor maintained.
<v Speaker 1>He bought them.
<v Speaker 2>They were his body and soul. I guess actually this
<v Speaker 2>should be I guess Louis Mayor should actually be voiced
<v Speaker 2>by Vince McMahon.
<v Speaker 1>Sounds like it to me.
<v Speaker 2>It's not your life, he once informed Mickey Rooney. Oh
<v Speaker 2>not as long as you're working for me. Ah, MGM
<v Speaker 2>has made your life. Oh, perfect call there. Ava Gardner
<v Speaker 2>liked to joke that Metro stars were the only kind
<v Speaker 2>of merchandise allowed to leave the store at night, but
<v Speaker 2>she added it was not really a funny situation. It
<v Speaker 2>was in fact a deadly serious ones certain deadly serious one.
<v Speaker 2>Most of the stars, particularly the women, might as just
<v Speaker 2>as well have worn a sign saying proper of MGM.
<v Speaker 2>Having sex with the female help was regarded as a
<v Speaker 2>perk of power, and few women escape the demands of
<v Speaker 2>Mayor and his underlings.
<v Speaker 1>Jesus Christ.
<v Speaker 2>Even the mother of little the Shirley Temple story heard us.
<v Speaker 2>Even the mother of Little Shirley Temple was pod and
<v Speaker 2>proposition by Mayor, who, according to Judy, was one of
<v Speaker 2>the worst of the sexual predators. Wow, Louis B. Mayor,
<v Speaker 2>according to Judy, was one of the worst of the
<v Speaker 2>sexual predators.
<v Speaker 1>Take a look at that face too.
<v Speaker 2>M Oh yeah, oh come on, god, I mean he's
<v Speaker 2>just he's he's you know that there's danger there, right,
<v Speaker 2>all right, you know that there is danger.
<v Speaker 1>Louis be fucking shit, Christy exactly. You just see his
<v Speaker 1>head just lifting at the edge of the bed, you know,
<v Speaker 1>oh god, lifting into view and let's say, fucking sam
<v Speaker 1>much neck is what he looks like. Good morning? Oh fuck,
<v Speaker 1>Louis stop good good morning. Yeah, like like some like
<v Speaker 1>involuntary sleepover, and he comes with breakfast in the morning
<v Speaker 1>when you're like some coffee. Oh my god, Louie kept
<v Speaker 1>me out of here. The worst of the section. He
<v Speaker 1>went after Shirley Temple's mom.
<v Speaker 9>He's the lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and m
<v Speaker 9>JP Sorrow.
<v Speaker 1>He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Between the ages of sixteen and twenty, Judy herself was
<v Speaker 2>to be approached for sex and approached again and again.
<v Speaker 2>Quote quote don't think they all didn't try, she said, huh.
<v Speaker 2>Top of the list was Mayor himself, whenever he complimented
<v Speaker 2>her on her voice. She sang from the heart, he said,
<v Speaker 2>Mayor would invariably place his hand on her left breast
<v Speaker 2>to show just where her heart was right. Quote I
<v Speaker 2>often thought I was lucky, observed Judy that I didn't
<v Speaker 2>sing with another part of my anatomy.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>That scenario, a compliment followed by a grope, was repeated
<v Speaker 2>many times until grown up at last, Judy put a
<v Speaker 2>stop to it. Quote, mister Mayor, don't you ever ever
<v Speaker 2>do that again? She finally had the courage to say,
<v Speaker 2>I just will not stand for it. If you want
<v Speaker 2>to show where I sing from just point. To her surprise,
<v Speaker 2>Mayer reacted not with anger.
<v Speaker 1>But with tears.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, sitting down, putting his head in his hands and crying,
<v Speaker 2>how can.
<v Speaker 1>You say that to me?
<v Speaker 13>To me?
<v Speaker 1>Who boss? Let's go he l f X style.
<v Speaker 2>Fuck this, he asked, looking so miserable that Judy found
<v Speaker 2>herself consoling him.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that's right. Quote. Oh he's so good, ye so manipulative.
<v Speaker 2>Oh it's it's it's incredible. It's it's insane, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like how like these are all it's these are all
<v Speaker 2>just losers.
<v Speaker 1>That's right, Bengo exactly can't get pussy. And you hear
<v Speaker 1>them are their nerdy ass fucking cells. It's exactly what
<v Speaker 1>it is, fucked them. Quote.
<v Speaker 2>It's amazing how these big men, who had been around
<v Speaker 2>so many sophisticated women all their lives, could act like idiots.
<v Speaker 2>She was later to ride. Some of the propositions whose
<v Speaker 2>big men made borrowed. Uh oh, some of the propositions
<v Speaker 2>those big men made borrowed more from screwball comedy than
<v Speaker 2>scenes of seduction.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, they're just like right, totally inept. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>When she was seventeen, Judy and a girlfriend spend a
<v Speaker 2>weekend in Narrowhead Springs and resort east of Los Angeles.
<v Speaker 2>They're in the hotel lobby. They encountered Benny Thaw, one
<v Speaker 2>of Mayer's chief lieutenants, and three or four of other
<v Speaker 2>Metro executives. Thaw had a reputation for dour silence. Quote
<v Speaker 2>when he laughs, dust comes out of his nose, as
<v Speaker 2>one actor put it, and at a cocktail party that night,
<v Speaker 2>Judy was flattered to be singled out for his paternal attention.
<v Speaker 2>The next day, he was less fatherly, however, As he
<v Speaker 2>was leaving the swimming pool, Faw called her off the
<v Speaker 2>nearby tennis court, then met her on the slippery incline
<v Speaker 2>between the court and the path to the hotel. As
<v Speaker 2>she leaned down to hear what he wanted, he grabbed her. Then,
<v Speaker 2>as he tried to plant a kiss on her mouth,
<v Speaker 2>lost his footing and started to slide down the hill.
<v Speaker 2>What a fucking goof, What a stupid fool, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>seriously deserves that deserves everything. That fucking happened right there.
<v Speaker 2>Once again, she came to the aid of one of
<v Speaker 2>Metro's lascivious moguls, holding him up against what might have
<v Speaker 2>been a nasty fall. Not all such attempts were so comical.
<v Speaker 2>Another executive, Judy did not identify him, summoned her to
<v Speaker 2>his office, as he has summoned so many other more
<v Speaker 2>glamorous MetroStars Eskewing any pretensive small talk, he demanded.
<v Speaker 1>He demanded that she too have sex with him. Jesus,
<v Speaker 1>this is Judy Garlands. Judy Garland quote yes or no?
<v Speaker 1>Right now?
<v Speaker 2>That was his style, Judy recalled. When she refused, No, sir,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry, she said, he began screaming, yes, listen to
<v Speaker 2>you before you go. I want to tell you something.
<v Speaker 23>I'll rod you, and I can do it. I'll break
<v Speaker 23>you with the last thing I do. He'll be out
<v Speaker 23>of here before I'm finished with you. This American work seriously.
<v Speaker 23>As Judy later told the story, she simply smiled and
<v Speaker 23>quietly replied, Oh no, he'll be gone before I will.
<v Speaker 1>And she was right.
<v Speaker 2>A few months later, he was out accused of by
<v Speaker 2>Mayor of scheming to take his own job. You know,
<v Speaker 2>damn well, that's not.
<v Speaker 1>Going to happen.
<v Speaker 3>Oh no.
<v Speaker 2>Aspect of its players lives escaped Metro's scrutiny. Stars were
<v Speaker 2>told not only how they should look, but how they
<v Speaker 2>should dress yep, and how they should behave yes, whom
<v Speaker 2>they should date and whom they should marry. Women were
<v Speaker 2>even advised when they should and should not have children.
<v Speaker 2>Many did not mind such gross interference in manipulation. Others,
<v Speaker 2>who found the atmosphere stifling, came to regard themselves as
<v Speaker 2>little more than indentured servants. From Mayor's gaze, there was
<v Speaker 2>no hiding. Like his friend and hero j. Edgar Hoover,
<v Speaker 2>whose photograph was on prominent display in his office, he
<v Speaker 2>insisted on knowing everything about everybody. Wow, young girls don't
<v Speaker 2>need locks if they have nothing to be ashamed of,
<v Speaker 2>Mayer said when his two daughters asked for locks on
<v Speaker 2>their bedroom doors, and he might well have said the
<v Speaker 2>same thing to as many foster children in Culver City.
<v Speaker 2>He granted them, in any event, no privacy at all,
<v Speaker 2>and Metro's network of informants, both inside and outside the lot,
<v Speaker 2>reported their every movement.
<v Speaker 1>Quote.
<v Speaker 2>Mister Mayer had spies everywhere, eyes in the back of
<v Speaker 2>his head, said Anne Rutherford, who played Rooney's girlfriend in
<v Speaker 2>the Andy Hardy films. We never knew quite who the
<v Speaker 2>culprits were, but whatever we did, the word got back.
<v Speaker 2>Hanging over everyone's head was the mortals clause in the
<v Speaker 2>studio contract, which, among many other things, cautioned against doing
<v Speaker 2>anything that would quote tend to shock, insult, or offend
<v Speaker 2>the community. The wording of the clause was so vague
<v Speaker 2>yet so all embracing that almost any action that irritated
<v Speaker 2>the front office was grounds for suspension. The existence of
<v Speaker 2>spies was common knowledge, but few realized was just how
<v Speaker 2>much further Metro's intelligence service would go to keep them
<v Speaker 2>in line. At the end of every day. For example,
<v Speaker 2>Mayor's chief henchman Eddie Mannix was handed copies of all
<v Speaker 2>the telegrams, personal as well as official, that had passed
<v Speaker 2>through Western Unions Union's MGM branch. Since telegrams were used
<v Speaker 2>for all kinds of communications the way long distance telephone
<v Speaker 2>calls and email messages are today, Mannix and Mayor were
<v Speaker 2>aware of who was cheating on a spouse, who was
<v Speaker 2>in financial or legal trouble, and who was worrying about
<v Speaker 2>a sick friend or relative. They missed nothing. Like all dictators,
<v Speaker 2>Mayer had an unshakable belief in his own rectitude and
<v Speaker 2>my own rectum.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, we're going down that road.
<v Speaker 2>Whatever he did, he was convinced was for the benefit
<v Speaker 2>of the studio in particular and the movie industry in general.
<v Speaker 1>Quote.
<v Speaker 2>His relationship with God was intimate and confidential. The playwright S. N.
<v Speaker 2>Berman observed with a touch of amusement. He spoke for
<v Speaker 2>him capital h as well as for himself. They thought
<v Speaker 2>along the same lines. Unable to admit error, Mayor found
<v Speaker 2>it impossible to respect an opposing view. Those who held one,
<v Speaker 2>or who otherwise rebel learned that while their boss could
<v Speaker 2>be excessively indulgent to those who obeyed, he could also
<v Speaker 2>be mean spirited and vengeful to those who did not. Yep,
<v Speaker 2>I hate disloyalty, he exclaimed, and he expanded the words
<v Speaker 2>meaning to include disagreement of any kind.
<v Speaker 1>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>When Lena Horn aroused his ire by refusing a roll,
<v Speaker 2>Joan Crawford offered her the counsel of a battlewise veteran.
<v Speaker 2>You're perfectly right in what you feel, Crawford told her,
<v Speaker 2>But you can't get away with being proud. You must
<v Speaker 2>go and cry and beg mister Mayer to forgive you.
<v Speaker 2>I've done it, I've had to. They were going to
<v Speaker 2>can me a couple of times with children to feed.
<v Speaker 2>Horn wearily agreed, and her tears sent tears cous Quss
<v Speaker 2>skating down Mayor's cheek as well. I always knew that
<v Speaker 2>you were the humble, good girl that you seemed at
<v Speaker 2>the beginning. You've been a bad girl, but we'll forgive you.
<v Speaker 2>Men who defied him quickly discovered that Mayer's anger could
<v Speaker 2>be as terrible as Jehovah's quote. A man of temperament
<v Speaker 2>unquote was how he euphemistically described himself, but he sometimes
<v Speaker 2>behaved more like a disturbed adolescent, striking out with his fists.
<v Speaker 2>The way he had when as a boy in Canada
<v Speaker 2>he was up against the jew baiting bullies of Saint
<v Speaker 2>John new Brunswick, the fishing port where he grew up.
<v Speaker 2>The list of those assaults had actually sent sprawling. The
<v Speaker 2>list of those assaults that actually sent sprawling included important
<v Speaker 2>producers in box office stars. Charlie Chaplin was one sensing
<v Speaker 2>the menace in his small but muscular physique. The British
<v Speaker 2>director Michael Powell directed To Black Narcissus likened him to
<v Speaker 2>a raging bull. Yeah, but a lion like the commanding
<v Speaker 2>beast that roared three times at the beginning of every
<v Speaker 2>Metro movie would have been a better comparison. And it
<v Speaker 2>was to this man, this conjuries of opposites that Judy
<v Speaker 2>looked for support and approval at the end of nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty five, Yes, that need for approval, and for many
<v Speaker 2>years after quote when dad died, she later said, mgm
<v Speaker 2>took over as my father.
<v Speaker 1>In our house.
<v Speaker 2>The word of Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio,
<v Speaker 2>became the law. When mother wanted to discipline me, all
<v Speaker 2>she had to say was, I'll tell mister Mayor. When
<v Speaker 2>he first heard Judy sing mayor had set Sony faced,
<v Speaker 2>walking out without a word after she had finished. To
<v Speaker 2>have shown enthusiasm, after all, might have raised her price
<v Speaker 2>once he had signed her to a contract. However, he
<v Speaker 2>wanted all Hollywood to know about his discovery. Quote. We
<v Speaker 2>have just signed a baby nor a bass, he exclaimed,
<v Speaker 2>which in nineteen thirty five was praise at the highest
<v Speaker 2>order and endowed with a voice that soared past the
<v Speaker 2>second balcony. Bays had been one of Vaudeville's biggest draws.
<v Speaker 2>Given their cue by the Boss, Metro's starmakers immediately went
<v Speaker 2>to work on Judy. Thenceforth she belonged to the studio,
<v Speaker 2>which controlled nearly her every waking hour. Her midday morning,
<v Speaker 2>her weekday mornings were spent in Miss McDonald's schoolhouse. California
<v Speaker 2>law mandated a minimum of three hours of study a
<v Speaker 2>day for child actors, but her afternoons were the studios.
<v Speaker 2>Not only did she attend the usual beginner's classes, but
<v Speaker 2>she also spent two hours a day with Roger Edens,
<v Speaker 2>who had displaced Ethel her mother as a vocal coach.
<v Speaker 2>Their sessions achieved a modest renown within the studio walls,
<v Speaker 2>dependable as a clock. A small audience gathered around Eden's
<v Speaker 2>office windows every afternoon to hear the results of their collaboration.
<v Speaker 2>On a lot of crowded face and a lot crowded
<v Speaker 2>with famous faces. Judy had quickly managed to make a
<v Speaker 2>distinct impression, and as her reputation spread, she was recruited
<v Speaker 2>to entertain at the homes of metro's top stars and executives.
<v Speaker 2>Everyone at MGM had heard about the Garland Girl.
<v Speaker 1>She's huh, I don't know what to say. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I kind of knew it was dark, but.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't even know it was that dark.
<v Speaker 1>No, I didn't really realize it was like direct.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I didn't realize that it was like.
<v Speaker 9>That.
<v Speaker 2>It was almost like it's it's like almost written in
<v Speaker 2>the by laws of the organization systemic, exactly, systemic, exactly
<v Speaker 2>the word. So nineteen thirty eight, when MGM is looking
<v Speaker 2>for an actor to play Dorothy, the top choice was
<v Speaker 2>Shirley Temple. Like I said, Temple thirty five, thirty six,
<v Speaker 2>thirty seven, biggest draw, the biggest draw for the whole
<v Speaker 2>movie industry, not just like at Fox or whatever. Like
<v Speaker 2>she was the top draw, but she was under contracted.
<v Speaker 2>Fox and Darryl Zanek, who was studiohead at the time,
<v Speaker 2>would not loan her out to MGM. And which is
<v Speaker 2>funny because the year after The Wizard of Oz came out,
<v Speaker 2>Zank put Shirley Temple in like Fox's own fantasy picture,
<v Speaker 2>and it was so dismal and performed so poorly that
<v Speaker 2>it's considered responsible or at least the considered to be
<v Speaker 2>the beginning of the end of Shirley Temple's career. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>so Garland's given the spot now both Arthur Freed and
<v Speaker 2>Mervyn le Roy again, here we go again. They're the
<v Speaker 2>ones say you know, I'm you know, we're the ones
<v Speaker 2>I did it. No, I fucking did it, No, I
<v Speaker 2>did it. You know they argue again as who's who
<v Speaker 2>was the person who chose Judy Garland to play you know,
<v Speaker 2>choose Garland to play Dorothy. But the kicker is she
<v Speaker 2>didn't know that yet. She didn't even know because MGM,
<v Speaker 2>Actually this I found to be pretty interesting. So MGM
<v Speaker 2>they kind of have a similar way, uh they when
<v Speaker 2>they want to build up a star, they have a
<v Speaker 2>method that I think is comparable to wrestling with a
<v Speaker 2>wrestling push. So she had just finished a movie called
<v Speaker 2>Everybody Sing, and what they were doing to kind of
<v Speaker 2>again get her name out there and get her face
<v Speaker 2>out there. They're sending Garland out to do stage appearances
<v Speaker 2>in various cities when the movie opens, which I compare
<v Speaker 2>I think is similar to doing squash matches to show
<v Speaker 2>off a new wrestler. Oh yeah, you know, it's that
<v Speaker 2>the same thing. Like she's going town to town doing
<v Speaker 2>you know, these quick little things and funny enough while
<v Speaker 2>she's on tour is when she finds out about the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz. She read an article or heard about
<v Speaker 2>an article in Variety, which was February twenty fourth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty eight. Metro has ac chui the rights for the
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz from Samuel Goldwyn and has assigned Judy
<v Speaker 2>Golland the role of Dorothy Reverend le Roy will produce
<v Speaker 2>the Frank Baum Childhood Fantasy. So she didn't fucking no
<v Speaker 2>one called her. She read it in the paper.
<v Speaker 1>Well, well, is solid of a way to find out
<v Speaker 1>about something as any better?
<v Speaker 2>Then you're right, you're right, you're right, And so the
<v Speaker 2>push intensifies. Now she's given prominent roles in and stars
<v Speaker 2>in uh to B films. You know, the second on
<v Speaker 2>the on the double bill, so the Love finds Andy
<v Speaker 2>Hardy and listen Darling. Which I think of this as
<v Speaker 2>like she's getting the bigger roles, the biggest role she's
<v Speaker 2>had so far now, so it's like winning the icy title, right,
<v Speaker 2>and then the Wizard of Oz, along with her performance
<v Speaker 2>in Babes with Arms, which came out the same year,
<v Speaker 2>basically her first world title win, got it, you know,
<v Speaker 2>that's that's I was like, that's it fits right there.
<v Speaker 1>I'm with the analogy, and we'll talk.
<v Speaker 2>About the whole Wizard of Oz obviously later on. But
<v Speaker 2>now that she's a movie star, obviously you he needs
<v Speaker 2>a movie star house, right. Oh no, So she gets
<v Speaker 2>a house in bel Air, and you know, and then
<v Speaker 2>of course she has to have her mother and grandmother
<v Speaker 2>and sister to live with her. And like I said before,
<v Speaker 2>the relationship between Judy and her mom was rough. An
<v Speaker 2>example of this is so after she finished filming The
<v Speaker 2>Wizard of Oz, Judy had a party in her dressing
<v Speaker 2>room and invite her mother, and somehow, by the end
<v Speaker 2>of the of the of the this celebration, this little shindig,
<v Speaker 2>Judy is on the floor wrapping her arms around her
<v Speaker 2>mother's legs, crying and wondering why it couldn't be like
<v Speaker 2>the old days.
<v Speaker 14>And.
<v Speaker 2>She just kind of like stares, and I didn't do
<v Speaker 2>anything about it, like her mother. Her mother did nothing,
<v Speaker 2>it seems like, to comfort Judy or make her feel safe.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, in reading the stuff that I read,
<v Speaker 2>it almost seemed like she did everything could to not
<v Speaker 2>make her feel safe.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
<v Speaker 2>You know, It's just it's I don't know. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you know, Judy was close with her dad, and I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if like there was just this this angst
<v Speaker 2>about it. But now so Ethel the widowed mother here,
<v Speaker 2>she started seeing a widower named will Gilmore.
<v Speaker 24>And they.
<v Speaker 2>Would choose, according to Judy, the worst date possible to
<v Speaker 2>get married, which was November seventeenth of nineteen thirty nine. Now,
<v Speaker 2>the date of November seventeenth is the anniversary of her
<v Speaker 2>father's death. So her mom is marrying a new guy
<v Speaker 2>on the anniversary of her late husband's death.
<v Speaker 1>Doesn't mean I died, sweetheart, was she? Damn right? I
<v Speaker 1>didn't tend to swing from the fucking bedposts.
<v Speaker 2>And so, as you can imagine, that caused a lot
<v Speaker 2>of pain and a lot of anger and sadness and
<v Speaker 2>broken heartedness. And then they decide. And she's seventeen, by
<v Speaker 2>the way, Okay, she's seventeen years old. This girl, she
<v Speaker 2>just made two big movies and she just bought a
<v Speaker 2>house and now she's got this fucking trauma of her mom.
<v Speaker 2>And then they decide to move into her house with her.
<v Speaker 2>Now she's a miner.
<v Speaker 1>I get it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, she's not eighteen, and but I looked it
<v Speaker 2>up just for the sake of it. A minor can't
<v Speaker 2>own property. They just can't sign away, Like, they can't
<v Speaker 2>sell the property, they can't sign the papers.
<v Speaker 1>Right transfer it.
<v Speaker 2>But they can actually own the property. They just be
<v Speaker 2>in their own things. So like they didn't need to
<v Speaker 2>live there with her. I mean, again, she's a kid,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, but like, come on, she moved in
<v Speaker 2>because he has kids too. This Gilmour guy has got
<v Speaker 2>kids as well. So he comes in and then and
<v Speaker 2>then his true intentions emerge. Once he's in the house.
<v Speaker 2>I declared that I will take over man through the.
<v Speaker 1>Money of this household. Oh here we go.
<v Speaker 2>So he's going to manage Judy Garland's money. Now, fucking
<v Speaker 2>way not even her mom is a fan of that.
<v Speaker 2>No think so like you know, like no, fuck you.
<v Speaker 2>Although she did end up spending money to buy one
<v Speaker 2>of his sons a car. So she used Judy Garland's
<v Speaker 2>money to pay for this kid's car, who she couldn't like.
<v Speaker 2>Just absolutely awful. So Judy, yeah, she's forced to fucking
<v Speaker 2>support her stepdad and his kids. Unfortunately, the marriage really
<v Speaker 2>lasted three and a half years. But again I highlight
<v Speaker 2>this as to show circumstances surrounding this poor woman, and honestly,
<v Speaker 2>how I begin to see how it's affected it affected
<v Speaker 2>her adult life and her future relationship in marriages. I
<v Speaker 2>would like to sew together a Judy Garland journey someday
<v Speaker 2>because this is like her thing is just take weeks
<v Speaker 2>to get together. It's like a sid story.
<v Speaker 1>Honestly, yeah, I didn't realize that there was this much
<v Speaker 1>to it.
<v Speaker 2>Oh she got I mean financial issues or man, I
<v Speaker 2>guess she's substance abuse issues.
<v Speaker 1>Just hearing hearing her voice with Barbara Walters, you can
<v Speaker 1>tell there's a story there, Oh there is.
<v Speaker 2>So she married five times, to a British musician David Rose,
<v Speaker 2>then to stage director Vincent Manelli. She had Liza Minelli
<v Speaker 2>with him. Then she was married to Sydney Luft, with
<v Speaker 2>whom she had two other children, Laurna and Joey Luft.
<v Speaker 2>Then she married Mark Herron, followed by Mickey Dean's now
<v Speaker 2>the Loff relationship. Holy shit, is that, Neil.
<v Speaker 1>That's a chapter. It's a fucking chapter.
<v Speaker 2>And so in the mid sixties she started tape recording
<v Speaker 2>for that attention, that potential autobiography, right and in the
<v Speaker 2>midst of like, she sounds like she's intoxicated in these recordings.
<v Speaker 2>They're on YouTube. I can't confirm that she is or
<v Speaker 2>she isn't. But unfortunately, because she wouldn't allow me to
<v Speaker 2>partake in the recordings that was I asked her and
<v Speaker 2>I said, can I help you with it? And she's like, no,
<v Speaker 2>that's it fine. But this is her ranting and raving
<v Speaker 2>about Sydney Loft.
<v Speaker 13>Okay, being Judy gone is quite a chore, not only
<v Speaker 13>for me, but for Mark, for Joe, for Lorna and Liza.
<v Speaker 13>But it's not too much of a chore for Sid Luft.
<v Speaker 13>And it wasn't too much of a chore for Vincent
<v Speaker 13>Manelli to just overlook the fact that he had a
<v Speaker 13>magnificent daughter being Judy Garne. Sure, I've been loved by
<v Speaker 13>the public. I can't take the public home with me.
<v Speaker 13>And I've been ripped to pieces to pieces by the
<v Speaker 13>public and the critics and the newspapers and people who
<v Speaker 13>don't know what they're talking about.
<v Speaker 2>And I demand, I demand to be heard.
<v Speaker 1>I will be heard now.
<v Speaker 13>I'll keep talking for the rest of my life because
<v Speaker 13>now I can talk now.
<v Speaker 3>I'm happy.
<v Speaker 14>Now.
<v Speaker 12>I know.
<v Speaker 13>That there is no gas light in my life, and
<v Speaker 13>the people who try to present it are the criminals.
<v Speaker 13>And it all comes down to the unholy dollar. I'll
<v Speaker 13>always be able to make money, but I'll keep it.
<v Speaker 13>I'll keep it from my children, myself, and I won't
<v Speaker 13>pay twenty five thousand dollars a year to a bum
<v Speaker 13>to sid loved Who's a bum?
<v Speaker 1>A tramp? Some of the most compelling audio you've ever played.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean that's just her, that's her raw. I
<v Speaker 2>love that and her whole just her whole professional life
<v Speaker 2>was overshadowed by her personal demons and headlines left and
<v Speaker 2>right and left and right, and you said it. She
<v Speaker 2>would take barbituate pills, sleeping pills, drink heavily obviously affect
<v Speaker 2>her to work and she I mean, listen, she's got
<v Speaker 2>an incredible tragic story. She doesn't want to be seen
<v Speaker 2>as a tragedy, that no one wants to see her
<v Speaker 2>as a tragedy. But her end is tragic. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>the story is tragic. Maybe she's not a tragedy if
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't want to be. But her story is pretty tragic,
<v Speaker 2>and it's pretty sad because she should have been She
<v Speaker 2>should have been better than this. You should have been
<v Speaker 2>in a better situation. Right, And she another quick clip
<v Speaker 2>here she she without revenge on those who exposed her.
<v Speaker 2>I want you to hear this because I think it
<v Speaker 2>is important to hear kind of where.
<v Speaker 1>She was at.
<v Speaker 13>I've been exposed since I was a little girl, Wrongly exposed.
<v Speaker 1>News was made.
<v Speaker 4>Bad news.
<v Speaker 13>I know exactly who did it, how it was done,
<v Speaker 13>why it was done. I'm not a stupid woman. Now
<v Speaker 13>those people are going to be exposed and it's going
<v Speaker 13>to be fun. I've waited a long time for this,
<v Speaker 13>and revenge can be very sweet eat when it is
<v Speaker 13>proper and write I'm a very revengeful person. Now I
<v Speaker 13>don't want anymore lies printed about me. My children read
<v Speaker 13>the newspapers. They have to put up with their schoolmates
<v Speaker 13>and what their mate say.
<v Speaker 1>About me.
<v Speaker 13>They do the best they can. They don't pay any
<v Speaker 13>attention to it. They've learned better and they're smarter. But
<v Speaker 13>I don't want somebody who is retarded writing columns or
<v Speaker 13>saying things.
<v Speaker 1>What do you make of that?
<v Speaker 5>I am?
<v Speaker 1>I'm electrified, Yeah, you know, I mean, God, Judy Garland, right,
<v Speaker 1>how all American is that? And you know how she
<v Speaker 1>should be the picture of happiness and contentment in Hollywood, right,
<v Speaker 1>and her reality is the only reality when you step
<v Speaker 1>out of the world she stepped into. It turns out
<v Speaker 1>that she probably should have stayed in Oz.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you damn right, your damn ranch, you should have.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that is that's some dark shit there. I
<v Speaker 2>am a revengeful person, she says.
<v Speaker 1>Jesus, well, we got the title for this episode, or rather,
<v Speaker 1>the Judy Garland Journey. You're damn right. I am a
<v Speaker 1>revengeful person. And just it's not that she said it,
<v Speaker 1>it's that she took the time to record herself saying it.
<v Speaker 4>Right.
<v Speaker 1>That's that extra little bit of psychosis that I think
<v Speaker 1>really draws you in. Whoa She's a man of festo type.
<v Speaker 1>It's not like just some reporter caught her in a
<v Speaker 1>bad mood and she sped this out. You know, she
<v Speaker 1>she pressed record on this. She wanted you to know
<v Speaker 1>that this is how she felt. She wanted to leave
<v Speaker 1>behind a document of what it all came down to
<v Speaker 1>for Dorothy.
<v Speaker 2>And what makes it so, what makes it so kind
<v Speaker 2>of incredible is this. So I've listened to the it's
<v Speaker 2>an hour and a half tape recording, at least, it's
<v Speaker 2>on YouTube, and I listened to the whole thing, and like,
<v Speaker 2>I started listening to it saying, hey, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>this might be kind of a neat insight into some
<v Speaker 2>biographical information, and all I mean it is, actually in
<v Speaker 2>a weird way, it is some insight in a on
<v Speaker 2>her biographically, but all it is is this anger. The
<v Speaker 2>whole thing is like there's so much venom, that's right,
<v Speaker 2>And I listen, I'm I don't think she's wrong in
<v Speaker 2>saying that. I mean this this woman was so abused. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but man, just some dark shit and so.
<v Speaker 1>Sadly.
<v Speaker 2>She died on June twenty second, nineteen sixty nine. She
<v Speaker 2>was forty seven years old. Forty seven years old of
<v Speaker 2>an accidental overdose of barbituates. So you're totally on point there.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if you knew that and you were
<v Speaker 2>just I did. I did see that, yeah, but yeah, totally.
<v Speaker 1>Like I found myself when I heard her voice wondering
<v Speaker 1>how did she die anyway? Oh boy? Yeah, oh I
<v Speaker 1>read is barbituates. I'm like, all right, but let the
<v Speaker 1>boss take it from here.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yep, that's it, and then this is the killer
<v Speaker 2>here for me. In that Barbara Walters interview, Walters asked
<v Speaker 2>Judy Garland and what she would have wanted to do
<v Speaker 2>if she wasn't an actress.
<v Speaker 1>And this is listen to this.
<v Speaker 5>If you hadn't been an actress, if you can imagine
<v Speaker 5>being anything else but an actress, what do you think
<v Speaker 5>you might want to have?
<v Speaker 17>Wanted to be happily married and and just a nice lady.
<v Speaker 5>Do you think it's possible to be an actress and
<v Speaker 5>be happily married?
<v Speaker 17>Well, I don't think any anybody who married me thought.
<v Speaker 2>So, but I think it's possible, She asked her, if basically,
<v Speaker 2>what will you do as a career? All she wants
<v Speaker 2>to be is happily married. Well, so we have other
<v Speaker 2>characters in the Wizard of Oz that need to be filled.
<v Speaker 2>There's there's the Wizard himself, who was eventually played by
<v Speaker 2>Frank Morgan, another a former vaudevillian, and he was a
<v Speaker 2>he was a lifer MGM contractor. And the funny thing is, like,
<v Speaker 2>you can't really see anybody else as the Wizard in
<v Speaker 2>this movie. But he wasn't even on the short list
<v Speaker 2>to play it. And according to Noel Langley, he begged
<v Speaker 2>for it. He said, let me go onto a stage
<v Speaker 2>and do an ad lib test. He did all the
<v Speaker 2>scenes as they were in the script. He knew the
<v Speaker 2>script backward. He did it all by himself, with nobody
<v Speaker 2>there but himself and an assistant director Habug and Olin
<v Speaker 2>and Fried and I watched the test afterward and it
<v Speaker 2>was marvelous, as fun as funny as Busta Keaton. So
<v Speaker 2>that's how we got it. Fucking like said, let me
<v Speaker 2>fucking do this. And if you watch his movies and
<v Speaker 2>you know anything about Frank Morgan's career, this what he
<v Speaker 2>did is in Wizard of Oz is basically what he
<v Speaker 2>did his entire career. He plays that kind of you know,
<v Speaker 2>kind of aloof humbug character just kind of you know,
<v Speaker 2>afraid and weak and whatever. That's what he did his
<v Speaker 2>whole you know, film career. And then we have a
<v Speaker 2>scarecrow who was played by Ray Don't call me Whitey Bulger.
<v Speaker 13>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>He was cast as Dorothy's number one.
<v Speaker 1>Though.
<v Speaker 2>You want to know something, he was originally cast as
<v Speaker 2>the tin man. Can you see the guy playing the scarecrow,
<v Speaker 2>Ray Bulger as the tin man?
<v Speaker 1>Oh no?
<v Speaker 13>Uh?
<v Speaker 2>Well Bulger, by the way, you know what you talked about, Uh,
<v Speaker 2>Jack Haley being from from Boston, Ray Boulger rais.
<v Speaker 1>And Dorchester bro are you serious?
<v Speaker 2>Yep? In Dorchester so wild?
<v Speaker 1>And you know you can you can.
<v Speaker 2>You can tell when you hear a movie place and
<v Speaker 2>I have some interview clips of him. You can hear
<v Speaker 2>him and it's really kind of funny. And yeah, he
<v Speaker 2>also Vaudeville Vett and he fucking wanted the scarecrow.
<v Speaker 1>Wow. So one of his.
<v Speaker 2>Heroes, whose name is fred Stone, he was the guy
<v Speaker 2>who played the scarecrow in the nineteen o two stage
<v Speaker 2>production that we talked about of the Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 2>So he's like, you know, he's connected in his mind,
<v Speaker 2>like this is what I want. My hero is doing
<v Speaker 2>this this is what I want to do, and here
<v Speaker 2>I got this. This is a vintage so the commentary
<v Speaker 2>track of The Wizard of Oz on the on the
<v Speaker 2>Blu ray or on iTunes or whatever. It's incredible because
<v Speaker 2>not only do they have this guy, John freaka John Freaka.
<v Speaker 1>Who's f R I c J. I know Freak. I
<v Speaker 1>could tell when you were inspired. That's how it was felled.
<v Speaker 2>He's a he's an Oz historian, and so they have he.
<v Speaker 2>You know, he kind of is the overall It's weird.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, the show is only an HBO for like
<v Speaker 1>five seasons, all right, it's weird to have a historian
<v Speaker 1>so true.
<v Speaker 21>I know.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry. We couldn't do a profile in JK. Simmons sometime.
<v Speaker 1>Oh and by the way, just quickly, I just thought
<v Speaker 1>of another connection that qualifies the movie. From what I understand,
<v Speaker 1>Ray Bulger and you might even get to this, was
<v Speaker 1>really inspired to go for the Scarecrow when he ran
<v Speaker 1>into his buddy on the streets of Dochester. I think
<v Speaker 1>his name was jim Hall, and Jim Hall said you
<v Speaker 1>should be the Scarecrow, Mary. That's right, Jimmy Hall. Jimmy Hall.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if he went on to have famous
<v Speaker 1>you know, offspring or anything. But so I can tell
<v Speaker 1>you what I what I've learned thus far. I fucking
<v Speaker 1>love that.
<v Speaker 2>But these, uh so, these these the commentary you know
<v Speaker 2>what's cut in Like it's it's kind of like the
<v Speaker 2>James Bond commentaries that you know, I I I clipped from.
<v Speaker 2>But these are all vintage interviews from like because by
<v Speaker 2>the time they were doing commentaries, everyone was dead. So
<v Speaker 2>these are actually vintage interviews from I don't even know
<v Speaker 2>what it is. It's it's a live audience thing that
<v Speaker 2>a lot of them are in and it's it's fascinating.
<v Speaker 2>It's absolutely fascinating.
<v Speaker 1>Did you get the sense this was sort of like
<v Speaker 1>a a talk along while someone while people watch the
<v Speaker 1>movie in the theater.
<v Speaker 2>Or I know, this was like a panel. It was
<v Speaker 2>like a Q and a session with a number of
<v Speaker 2>the cast and crew. I would think that would be
<v Speaker 2>kind of tough to match up with kind of like
<v Speaker 2>a watch along format. Well, I mean it's it's basically
<v Speaker 2>what he did, you know what? Because these this kind
<v Speaker 2>of documentary and I'm getting the vibe that, MGM, this
<v Speaker 2>is kind of what they were doing with commentaries is
<v Speaker 2>it's really like an audio documentary of it, and you've
<v Speaker 2>got the lead person narrating, and then they introduce different
<v Speaker 2>voices as it comes along, and it's like it's wild.
<v Speaker 2>It's absolutely wild. But here this is Ray Bulger. This
<v Speaker 2>is explaining him talking about his journey to be the
<v Speaker 2>Scarecrow in the.
<v Speaker 25>Beginning of this fabulous contract with great money. At that period,
<v Speaker 25>one of the things we had discussed was the Jack
<v Speaker 25>Donahue roles in the musical comedy Jack Dunny, who being
<v Speaker 25>at that time America's greatest dancing comedian, and I was
<v Speaker 25>to play all of the Donahue roles. And then I
<v Speaker 25>discussed if the Wizard of Ours. They talked about the
<v Speaker 25>Wizard of Oz at that time, and I said, oh,
<v Speaker 25>that's wonderful, and then I can play the Scarecrow. And
<v Speaker 25>so I went along also the this suh career at
<v Speaker 25>Metro's older mayor for two years, thinking that I was
<v Speaker 25>going to be the Scarecrow. So when they said announced
<v Speaker 25>that Buddy Ebsen was to become the Scarecrow and I
<v Speaker 25>I I That's when I fought. Then I got my
<v Speaker 25>wife and I went up to mister Mayor's office and
<v Speaker 25>mister LeRoy's office, and we fought and fought and fought,
<v Speaker 25>and I finally went out. The thing was that I
<v Speaker 25>loved the thought of being the scarecrow of Vain, having
<v Speaker 25>no no, no, no, no body, and no brains, and
<v Speaker 25>being able to do things that I do like I.
<v Speaker 4>Did on the stage.
<v Speaker 25>And I could not imagine anybody else playing the part.
<v Speaker 25>I had nothing against mister Ebsom at all. I admired
<v Speaker 25>him very much. He had a great wonderful way with
<v Speaker 25>his hands, just flopped up and down, and he danced
<v Speaker 25>and he did wonderful, wonderful things. But I thought of
<v Speaker 25>the skick through as a man without a brain, and
<v Speaker 25>it so fitted me.
<v Speaker 1>That I could.
<v Speaker 25>I mean, I could do all anything that I wanted
<v Speaker 25>to do, fall down and it didn't hurt, and and
<v Speaker 25>I could do all the kinds of steps that I
<v Speaker 25>wanted to do and it it didn't make any difference
<v Speaker 25>whether they did him good or bad, or or I
<v Speaker 25>would know Fred Astaire or gene Kelly. I could do
<v Speaker 25>anything I wanted and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
<v Speaker 25>And it was something else I didn't know. I had
<v Speaker 25>a feeling about the part, about something that being such
<v Speaker 25>a a sympathetic kind of role, and that if I
<v Speaker 25>could play this pot, that it would make a star
<v Speaker 25>out of me. It may be something that I could
<v Speaker 25>do in the movies instead of the things they had
<v Speaker 25>offered me, the things that I had done, which were
<v Speaker 25>not what I had done on Broadway. So I fought
<v Speaker 25>for the scare quote.
<v Speaker 1>You got it. He sounds like my grandmother. Well, I
<v Speaker 1>was gonna say, you didn't have to tell me ahead
<v Speaker 1>of time that he's from Boston, because that became very clear,
<v Speaker 1>and said, ye is, But you know I'm the pot. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's all there. He fought for it. Look at that.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep, fought for it. They didn't want him as
<v Speaker 2>a scarecrow, but he fucking went for it.
<v Speaker 1>He only had a brain. He probably would have landed
<v Speaker 1>it in the first place.
<v Speaker 2>I know, he admits he doesn't have a brain. It's fascinating.
<v Speaker 2>Ray Boulger, the man without a brain.
<v Speaker 1>A Bulger without a brain. Hey, Ray, you should be
<v Speaker 1>a scarecrow man. Ray Trailer is like, but stings already
<v Speaker 1>the crowd. But is there any is there any more
<v Speaker 1>Scott hall Way to say something than is there any
<v Speaker 1>more Scott hall name than Hey Ray. I mean, you
<v Speaker 1>don't even have to do a Scott Hall evitation to
<v Speaker 1>sound like when you say hey Ray, almost like hey Rang.
<v Speaker 1>Roman's like what you don't pronounce the g Scott.
<v Speaker 13>H.
<v Speaker 2>So so like you said, Buddy Ebsen was originally set
<v Speaker 2>to play the Scarecrow, and he'd gone as far. He
<v Speaker 2>didn't say this in the in the clip there Bulger,
<v Speaker 2>but Abstin had gone as he had done wardrobe fittings
<v Speaker 2>and he'd done dance rehearsals, so he was like already
<v Speaker 2>in the game. But then they just they switched parts.
<v Speaker 2>So Ebsen became the tin man, Bulger became the Scarecrow.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, Ebsin would admit he didn't give a
<v Speaker 2>shit what role he had. He just he was like,
<v Speaker 2>this is going to be a big fucking movie. I
<v Speaker 2>want to be in it. I don't care where I am.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, I think it.
<v Speaker 2>I think in a weird way, maybe not on purpose,
<v Speaker 2>but I think Bulger might have rolled up Buddy Ebsen
<v Speaker 2>from behind on this one.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, when he says fought that could cover a
<v Speaker 1>lot of ground in more ways to fight.
<v Speaker 2>Did you fight dirty? Is the question, right, exactly did
<v Speaker 2>you fight dirty? Well, because I'll tell you why. I
<v Speaker 2>think he rolled him up, because two weeks into the
<v Speaker 2>actual filming of the movie, there was a problem with
<v Speaker 2>Buddy Ebsen's makeup. And here's another slipt from this commentary.
<v Speaker 2>This is the art director William Tuttle and Buddy Ebshom
<v Speaker 2>himself talking about what happened.
<v Speaker 26>Buddy Ebsom had been set for the part of the
<v Speaker 26>Tin Man, and at that time the best thing we
<v Speaker 26>could come up with for makeup for him was aluminum powder,
<v Speaker 26>which is a product that sold in paint stores, and
<v Speaker 26>so that's what we used on him.
<v Speaker 1>But he was allergic to it and he just could
<v Speaker 1>not tolerate it.
<v Speaker 4>There was in those days a great deal of pressure
<v Speaker 4>still is, but they just didn't believe that actors cat
<v Speaker 4>sick or you know, legitimately.
<v Speaker 1>Were casualties.
<v Speaker 4>I think they suspected that I was unhappy because originally
<v Speaker 4>I had been promised a part of the Scarecrow, and
<v Speaker 4>they switched me to the Tin Man, and he thought
<v Speaker 4>A bore a grudge and now I was going to get.
<v Speaker 1>Even with him.
<v Speaker 4>They thought I was malingering, and so Mervyn called the
<v Speaker 4>hospital and I can still remember the nurse and the
<v Speaker 4>conversation with him. I was under an oxygen ten at
<v Speaker 4>the time, and she said, mister Hu, she says, mister Leroy,
<v Speaker 4>why isn't mister Repson on the set? And she says,
<v Speaker 4>listen to you. She says, mister EPs is a very
<v Speaker 4>sick man. And uh, we're going to keep me here
<v Speaker 4>Untilie as well. And so they did, and they got
<v Speaker 4>somebody else to play the part. But they never quite
<v Speaker 4>believed that I was really sick. They never quite believed
<v Speaker 4>he was really sick.
<v Speaker 1>Wow. That, Yeah, I mean this fucking cafe, right, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>that's what it is, ye that that that's so pro
<v Speaker 1>We just did Sid, right, Sid just at a certain
<v Speaker 1>point just could not earn the trust of anybody that
<v Speaker 1>he actually was hurt. Even if he was. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>if he hadn't snapped his leg in half in the
<v Speaker 1>on vaypriview, no one wild believe he had a broken leg.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I don't. I still don't believe him. That'd
<v Speaker 1>be amazing, all these years later you find out was
<v Speaker 1>he wasn't actually if he went in there like a pruss.
<v Speaker 2>Like like like Frank finds a fucking journal in his desk,
<v Speaker 2>and it's like how it explains, you know, moment for
<v Speaker 2>a moment, how he faked the leg injury.
<v Speaker 1>Right, how he like hooked up like a stunt guy
<v Speaker 1>to make it look like his bone was protruding. I
<v Speaker 1>never saw those X rays, sid.
<v Speaker 2>I know right, who saw the X rays? That's what
<v Speaker 2>I want to know, you know, doctor, I know who
<v Speaker 2>the surgeon was.
<v Speaker 1>I love there being sabotage and tensions between the fucking
<v Speaker 1>scarecrow and the tin man.
<v Speaker 2>Like seriously, there's just like you know, there's there's the
<v Speaker 2>tension and and then and I also I just love
<v Speaker 2>the idea that that that that they don't really care
<v Speaker 2>if you're sick. You know, the production doesn't care. Like
<v Speaker 2>this guy had an allergic, legitimate allergic reaction to this
<v Speaker 2>fucking makeup because it's it's not supposed to be on
<v Speaker 2>your face. They're using aluminum pussy exactly, lying pussy. Oh
<v Speaker 2>you can imagine they'lb mayor just fucking oh furious.
<v Speaker 1>Look, I have all the sympathy in the world for
<v Speaker 1>someone in your position, but the problem is you're a
<v Speaker 1>pussy and you're lying.
<v Speaker 2>Well, he's getting head from a fifteen year old contract player.
<v Speaker 1>Come on, wrath, get in a contract player? Is the
<v Speaker 1>is it the munchkin that hung himself? Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Urban legend? Urban legend.
<v Speaker 1>I've even looked for it, and I can I can
<v Speaker 1>confirm it's also a suburban legend.
<v Speaker 2>It's very true. It's an all around legend. You look
<v Speaker 2>for it like on the film, or you look for it.
<v Speaker 2>I remember, like I when I first like heard about it,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you go looking for it, and it's like
<v Speaker 2>what they think it is. It's a bird or something
<v Speaker 2>like that. It's just an animal and it's a legit animal,
<v Speaker 2>like they had real animals on set.
<v Speaker 1>See, those things aren't fun anymore. Because when I first
<v Speaker 1>heard of that, I had to watch the tape. There
<v Speaker 1>was no YouTube, there was no video I could access,
<v Speaker 1>So what I mean, I had to watch the actual
<v Speaker 1>fucking tape. I could slow it down and show me
<v Speaker 1>and circle. Like now, it's like if it happened, someone
<v Speaker 1>made a video circling it, and if there's no video exists,
<v Speaker 1>then it was bullshit.
<v Speaker 2>And not only that, but someone also took a fucking
<v Speaker 2>phone cam footage of it while they were shooting it too,
<v Speaker 2>So like, you know, nothing sacred anymore. Urban legends are
<v Speaker 2>dead because of that.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, that the death of urban legends.
<v Speaker 2>That's kind of funny, the uh, because you know when
<v Speaker 2>you had it on, when you had it on VHS,
<v Speaker 2>you try to pause it, and you know, it's so
<v Speaker 2>fucking blurry.
<v Speaker 1>It is so blurry that you're not even convinced that
<v Speaker 1>you've stopped on what everybody's talking about, even if it's
<v Speaker 1>an exact scene you heard described like, no, it's somewhere else.
<v Speaker 1>I gotta keep watching obsessed, obsessed, so crazy. Did you
<v Speaker 1>ever watch like the Disney ones for like like the
<v Speaker 1>boner on the Guy and Little Mermaid?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Yeah, yeah I did. I mean it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so like I don't even know it could be anything.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Do they admit that that they did give the guy
<v Speaker 2>a fucking boner?
<v Speaker 1>I have no idea. There's like a phallic symbol on
<v Speaker 1>the cover of the VHS jacket as.
<v Speaker 2>Well, right and whatever, and then you see sex written
<v Speaker 2>in I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>What it is about these people that they see cocks everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>I know, always been curious to me. I mean, of
<v Speaker 1>all the things to see everywhere, why is it Cox?
<v Speaker 2>I know, why is there always Cox?
<v Speaker 1>Big throbbing Veiny Cox.
<v Speaker 2>The one I really tried to do was the Roger
<v Speaker 2>Rabbit one where I guess you see up you see
<v Speaker 2>up Jessica rabbit skirt or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>But I took a picture and put it in a frame,
<v Speaker 1>and my dad came home to, who frame run? That's
<v Speaker 1>a good that dad joke right there. I knew. I
<v Speaker 1>knew that one too. I never went looking for that
<v Speaker 1>one though, Uh into friend Roger Rabbit. I didn't have
<v Speaker 1>that on TV. I didn't have that on VHS.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, so the absence out and Jack Hayley is
<v Speaker 2>brought in on loan from Fox. Now you mentioned, like
<v Speaker 2>we said, we talked about it, Boston native, also a
<v Speaker 2>vaudeville veteran, and uh, he wasn't you know.
<v Speaker 1>He wasn't excited about the film. I'm not excited about it.
<v Speaker 2>Just work for him. He is a quote he said,
<v Speaker 2>it was a job. We were getting paid. It was
<v Speaker 2>a lot of weeks, a steady work, that's all it was.
<v Speaker 2>This is uh, this is him. This is Jack Haley
<v Speaker 2>in an interview with Chuck Shaden whoever he is. But
<v Speaker 2>this is him talking about it just being a job.
<v Speaker 27>And then you went to MGM for the Wizard of Us.
<v Speaker 27>You know, they bought me up, re leased me rather
<v Speaker 27>for the twentieth Century, and I went over. There was
<v Speaker 27>a horrendous job, horrible I think eight months altogether, and
<v Speaker 27>I was on radio at the same time and staying
<v Speaker 27>up late with the writers trying to get a show together.
<v Speaker 27>And each day you worked, did you work a whole day,
<v Speaker 27>did you work for two hours at a time or
<v Speaker 27>was it in and hour? We worked all day and
<v Speaker 27>the union had just come to exist screen Actors' guill
<v Speaker 27>so we only worked eight hours. Otherwise they could the
<v Speaker 27>old days, they could work you beyond that, finish up
<v Speaker 27>a set, to get off. And the only respite we
<v Speaker 27>had was when Judy went to school. Because the state
<v Speaker 27>law in California, they children have to go to school,
<v Speaker 27>and they put a teacher on the set. The studio
<v Speaker 27>pays for it. That's a California School District teacher. And
<v Speaker 27>when it's time for her to go to school, everything stopped.
<v Speaker 27>They tried sometimes to get shots without her, but by
<v Speaker 27>in Lodge we would hang around for now. It was
<v Speaker 27>always a welcome sound when we hear this teacher's voice.
<v Speaker 2>Judy School, Judy School, so he it's important to know
<v Speaker 2>he was not asked by Fox if he wanted to
<v Speaker 2>play the tin Man or even be in the movie.
<v Speaker 2>He was ordered to be in it because he was
<v Speaker 2>under contract from Fox, and they said, Jack, you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>be in the Wizard of Oz. Yep, I don't want
<v Speaker 2>to be Fuck you get over there.
<v Speaker 1>That turns out to be his most important role.
<v Speaker 2>And still a guy who never really he never embraced it,
<v Speaker 2>at least not as much as everybody else did. He
<v Speaker 2>never embraced it. He's the guy who would wonders why
<v Speaker 2>it was such a fucking classic, how to turn into that?
<v Speaker 2>Like I love the I just love the idea that
<v Speaker 2>there's somebody, there's someone in the cast who just didn't
<v Speaker 2>care who played that prominent a role.
<v Speaker 1>You know, Oh, it's yeah, it's so satisfying, it's so,
<v Speaker 1>it's so it so reinforces something that, like your kind
<v Speaker 1>of sense about life as you get older, that like
<v Speaker 1>the thing that you're going to be most well known for,
<v Speaker 1>or the thing that you're going to do best, or
<v Speaker 1>the thing that you're going to get the opportunity to
<v Speaker 1>prove that you can do is going to be an
<v Speaker 1>arbitrary opportunity, like, it's going to not be the thing
<v Speaker 1>that if you sat down right now and plotted, you
<v Speaker 1>would plot towards. It won't be that. Nope, it might
<v Speaker 1>be adjacent to it, but the path is never going
<v Speaker 1>to be what you expect. And in fact, you may
<v Speaker 1>come to you may come to a thing where it's
<v Speaker 1>like everyone thinks you're good at something yep, and you
<v Speaker 1>started on that path through no choice of your own.
<v Speaker 1>It's like it's a it's like a, Okay, I guess
<v Speaker 1>this is my thing, even though the reason it became
<v Speaker 1>my thing is just totally arbitrary and was not my
<v Speaker 1>intention whatsoever. Exactly, yeah, exactly, and here he is and
<v Speaker 1>it's towards Well, that's it, because if you think that,
<v Speaker 1>if you tell yourself that you're in control, that's a
<v Speaker 1>very offensive notion to you because it's like, no, but
<v Speaker 1>I want to I want to be able to tell
<v Speaker 1>myself that I can strategize, plot, labor to get to
<v Speaker 1>a go And it's like, no, whoever you think of
<v Speaker 1>that's where you want to be, did not get there
<v Speaker 1>by sitting down one day and saying I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>get there. It's just not not how it happened awful.
<v Speaker 1>It's like someone else, someone else has to you know,
<v Speaker 1>how many people's stories is like I think of wrestling announcers,
<v Speaker 1>all of them. It's like one day someone didn't show
<v Speaker 1>up to work, and that's why I'm an announcer. Even
<v Speaker 1>Vince Junior himself has that story with Ray whatever the
<v Speaker 1>fuck's name was, Ray Steele, whatever his name was, All
<v Speaker 1>of them, you know, as an example, wresting announcers, I
<v Speaker 1>pulled out of my ass. But even like Jr. And
<v Speaker 1>like they handed the mic because they were under pressure,
<v Speaker 1>and then you had a home run. Yep. These are
<v Speaker 1>people who would you know, love to be clearly would
<v Speaker 1>love to be wresting announcers. But they didn't take one
<v Speaker 1>step in that direction when suddenly the opportunity was thrust
<v Speaker 1>upon them. And if that person that left stayed an
<v Speaker 1>extra year, they may never have even got a chance
<v Speaker 1>to touch the microphone.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, look at two when you think about it,
<v Speaker 2>Look at all the times that Look at when when
<v Speaker 2>the wwe would force someone down our throat versus the
<v Speaker 2>time when somebody just got.
<v Speaker 1>Over naturally exactly, you know, right, because the force down
<v Speaker 1>the throat is what I'm talking about where you sit
<v Speaker 1>down with an intentionality and say, these are the things
<v Speaker 1>that one does to do this job well, these are
<v Speaker 1>the things that one needs to do this job well.
<v Speaker 1>And here is someone with all those qualities and they
<v Speaker 1>fucking suck at it. Yep. And here's someone who I
<v Speaker 1>think has none of those qualities and has a thirty
<v Speaker 1>year career in it at it yep. That's the reality
<v Speaker 1>right there. And you you lay out the tin man
<v Speaker 1>to this guy and he thinks it's the stupidest fucking
<v Speaker 1>role he's ever heard of, and no one will ever
<v Speaker 1>do it better. Grapple with that reality, yes, So.
<v Speaker 2>So they they they changed his makeup so like they said,
<v Speaker 2>uh in the clip, the clip with the with ebbs
<v Speaker 2>and they were using a an aluminum powder make up
<v Speaker 2>right all right, So now they changed Jack Haley's makeup
<v Speaker 2>to an aluminum an aluminum.
<v Speaker 1>Paste with a layer.
<v Speaker 2>Of clown.
<v Speaker 1>You're a clown, A layer of clown.
<v Speaker 2>Clown clown white grease paint. So just great stuff, obviously,
<v Speaker 2>just the kind of ship you want on your skin.
<v Speaker 1>Highly recommended.
<v Speaker 2>This is uh, this is this is him. This is
<v Speaker 2>Jack Haley from the commentary track. This is him talking
<v Speaker 2>about the makeup.
<v Speaker 24>The first thing they put over your head all your
<v Speaker 24>hair was some kind of a skin, like a fish skin,
<v Speaker 24>that was put all over your hair. And then the
<v Speaker 24>clown makeup white was put on.
<v Speaker 1>That was to protect your.
<v Speaker 24>Skin from anything that was added. A silver particular. That
<v Speaker 24>was what they were worried about. Then they painted your
<v Speaker 24>face silver and put all the nuts and bolts, and
<v Speaker 24>this made of rubber looked like a STEELOK. See, I'd
<v Speaker 24>rather do something else. It's not it's quite so hot.
<v Speaker 24>I was making pictures. Is hard enough about sitting in
<v Speaker 24>that uniform or getting made up for two hours before
<v Speaker 24>you He went.
<v Speaker 1>On, guy's amazing. I think what's his name again? Sorry,
<v Speaker 1>that's Jack Haley. I'm getting it ready. I'm not gonna
<v Speaker 1>say it yet, but he's he's very close, cranky old man.
<v Speaker 1>I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Then then there was Bert lar as the Cowardly Lion.
<v Speaker 2>He was an actual he was a he'd worked with
<v Speaker 2>the Yep Harburg, the lyricist for the movie, and in
<v Speaker 2>the past on Broadway and stuff like that. So he
<v Speaker 2>was a recommendation by Harburg. And he was born in
<v Speaker 2>New York. Another vaudeville vett, just fucking loaded with Judy
<v Speaker 2>Garland herself as a vaudeville veteran. You know, just crazy.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I guess it's still close to that time period,
<v Speaker 2>so I shouldn't be that surprised, but it's it's just
<v Speaker 2>I find it fascinating. So Lar's given the script and
<v Speaker 2>the best part of this The Cowardly Lion. Never even
<v Speaker 2>heard of Oz before, never heard of the book, never
<v Speaker 2>heard of nothing.
<v Speaker 1>Another example what I mean. Meanwhile, there's someone who always
<v Speaker 1>wanted to be an actor, who loved Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 1>exactly who thought that, but you know, they had a
<v Speaker 1>unique beat on the character, and he never once got
<v Speaker 1>a call back.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly never once. There wasn't even considered nobody. There's a guy,
<v Speaker 2>there was a guy on the MGM lot who would
<v Speaker 2>talk to all his friends about how he's going to
<v Speaker 2>be the Cowardly Lion. It's perfect. I've always wanted it.
<v Speaker 2>I love the books. Growing up, I am the Cowardly Lion.
<v Speaker 1>And by the time it was over all his buddies
<v Speaker 1>was saying, oh, I misunderstood what he meant by a lion. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>he's a lapsed fan.
<v Speaker 9>Wrestling podcast with Jack and Can and JP Sorow he's
<v Speaker 9>a lapsed fan wrestling podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Burtlar interesting, interesting character because I guess he was. He
<v Speaker 2>was contracted and men released by studios like FO Universal
<v Speaker 2>because this guy again vaudeville stage actor. He had enormous
<v Speaker 2>comic energy, just massive, and it was so big that
<v Speaker 2>these studios.
<v Speaker 1>Can comic energy. What big comic energy. That's not how
<v Speaker 1>it's typically phrased. Okay, not at all, but he was
<v Speaker 1>so whatever it was that they considered it to be.
<v Speaker 1>And this is from the book distasteful. Wow, that's like
<v Speaker 1>something you would call like a wrestler's hair.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's exactly. His hair is offensive. It's distasteful.
<v Speaker 2>It's not okay, exactly, that's what it is. He's so
<v Speaker 2>over the top it's offensive, so fucking crazy. But you know,
<v Speaker 2>this is the this is the role that he could
<v Speaker 2>actually succeed in being on film and get away with
<v Speaker 2>all that shit. And his son, his son, John Lar.
<v Speaker 2>He wrote a letter to al Al Jean Harmon's who
<v Speaker 2>wrote the book Making of the Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 1>This is what the letter said.
<v Speaker 2>Generally he was slated for second banana parts.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, how about that Gorilla Monsoon?
<v Speaker 2>How about you? You always get second, third, fourth, fifth bananas.
<v Speaker 1>No, it's funny. He was always first banana. Trust me, true, true,
<v Speaker 1>trust me on that.
<v Speaker 2>So he's always slated for second banana parts, not handsome
<v Speaker 2>enough for the love interest, and too grotesque in close up.
<v Speaker 2>His energy made him grotesque to work in full form
<v Speaker 2>and films. It's very important to stress that he was
<v Speaker 2>so large a comic figure. I mean, he radiated such
<v Speaker 2>energy and size that the camera could only accept it
<v Speaker 2>as real if he was an animal and not human.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, well, hey son, that's a son, right, yeah. Furthermore, right,
<v Speaker 1>that's kind of like how Brett would describe stew and
<v Speaker 1>Helen would describe to you like that would too. Definitely
<v Speaker 1>more of an animal, that's true. Yeah, And you know
<v Speaker 1>that's also what Ollie Anderson thought when he looked at
<v Speaker 1>Joe Learnidis and Mike Kekstrand here. You know, he looks
<v Speaker 1>more like an animal and the rest was history.
<v Speaker 2>Really, And and that's also what Triple A sawn Batista
<v Speaker 2>more of an animal than Baptist.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, different denomination, man, Hey, Batista, thanks for the time.
<v Speaker 1>So the fact that your name is like a letter
<v Speaker 1>away from Baptista has always been something We've talked for
<v Speaker 1>hours about and I'd like to ask you thirteen questions
<v Speaker 1>about that and then let you go. Did they never
<v Speaker 1>call anyone ever called the Baptist when they made you
<v Speaker 1>the Deacon? Is it because your name sounds like Baptists?
<v Speaker 1>Because I did?
<v Speaker 2>I for for years I called you the Baptist, Batista.
<v Speaker 1>Day, Just one question? How do you feel about the
<v Speaker 1>fact that I called you the Baptist for years? Who
<v Speaker 1>are you?
<v Speaker 2>You're like like one of like twelve reporters on the
<v Speaker 2>Red Carpet, Dave? How do you feel about that? I
<v Speaker 2>between two thousand and two andand and four I called
<v Speaker 2>you the Baptist.
<v Speaker 1>It had to be the James Bond movie with Batista
<v Speaker 1>in it, where they did the thing about asking him
<v Speaker 1>how they feel about calling him the Baptist? Right, No,
<v Speaker 1>it was The Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 25>It was good.
<v Speaker 2>It was because Bert Lar is more of an animal.
<v Speaker 2>Burt Reynolds, Well, I saw a video of Burt Reynolds.
<v Speaker 1>Have you seen this?
<v Speaker 2>He was on the Tonight show with what's the guy
<v Speaker 2>who hosts a double dare? I can't think of his name.
<v Speaker 2>Mark Summers, Yes, Mark Summers, and Mark Summers gave a
<v Speaker 2>like Burt Reynolds was kind of he was sitting on
<v Speaker 2>the couch, he'd already been interviewed Mark Summers was, you know,
<v Speaker 2>in the chair and getting interviewed by Jay Lenno, and
<v Speaker 2>and all of a sudden, Bert was saying something snarky
<v Speaker 2>to Mark Summers. And Mark Summers you know, made a
<v Speaker 2>really you know, kind of a harsh comment about his
<v Speaker 2>Burt Reynolds failing marriage to what's your butt from uh
<v Speaker 2>the Lonnie Anderson, Oh yeah, and uh. And so Burt
<v Speaker 2>Reynolds then takes his water cup and throws it on
<v Speaker 2>Mark Summers and this shots like this whole crazy back
<v Speaker 2>and forth. It was really intense. I got really intense,
<v Speaker 2>you could tell. But Burt Reynolds was fucking pissed wild.
<v Speaker 2>It's happening on TV.
<v Speaker 5>Huh.
<v Speaker 2>Pie like they end up the it culminates and the
<v Speaker 2>two of them, you know, basically the I guess the
<v Speaker 2>writers or whoever. On the tonight show, they had these
<v Speaker 2>cream pies, you know, like to do a pie whatever
<v Speaker 2>contest you smashing the face.
<v Speaker 1>Like a duel.
<v Speaker 2>And if you watch it and you see Burt, Burt
<v Speaker 2>Reynolds fucking just smashed it in his face.
<v Speaker 1>And everyone's like laughing, thinking that it's like they're they're
<v Speaker 1>going the extra month to entertaining us, when really Burt
<v Speaker 1>Reynolds is trying to hurt the man exactly. You know,
<v Speaker 1>the Mark Summer's daughter went Emerson with I do, I do?
<v Speaker 1>I never, I don't know. I don't think I ever
<v Speaker 1>saw her. That's all I know about Mark Summers.
<v Speaker 2>I know there were a couple who else. There was
<v Speaker 2>someone else's Oh yeah, child who went there while we
<v Speaker 2>were there. I wonder to Mark Summers, h William hurt Son.
<v Speaker 2>William hurts Son went there while we were there because
<v Speaker 2>my friend Mikey. Mikey was like roommates with him or
<v Speaker 2>something like that for a while.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow, I didn't know that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I never. I never knew who they were. I
<v Speaker 2>didn't see them. They didn't they weren't there. As long
<v Speaker 2>as as far as I'm.
<v Speaker 1>Concerned, I wonder where Mark Summers, Summers, Kenny bunk Port.
<v Speaker 2>I would imagine now he might he might go to
<v Speaker 2>the vineyard. Okay, yeah, you know he might need to
<v Speaker 2>get away. Oh don't, please, don't go in a little
<v Speaker 2>private little thing there, you know, just do nothing, you know,
<v Speaker 2>Oh by do nothing. Do you mean were like two
<v Speaker 2>thousand dollars worth of vineyard vines and go out to
<v Speaker 2>eat three times a day and bile bottles of wine
<v Speaker 2>and stuff. Perfect boat shoes on fleek, I mean, just
<v Speaker 2>boat shoes like you've never seen. Yeah, yep, no socks
<v Speaker 2>obviously if.
<v Speaker 1>I do nothing, do you mean exhaust yourself trying to
<v Speaker 1>get an Instagram picture?
<v Speaker 2>White white shorts with a pastel colored.
<v Speaker 1>Polo tuck in. Oh, does he go as far as
<v Speaker 1>to tie a sweater around his neck?
<v Speaker 13>Now?
<v Speaker 14>No?
<v Speaker 2>No, maybe in the fall. Maybe in the fall they
<v Speaker 2>go down if they go out there.
<v Speaker 1>This is Mark Summers. This isn't the guy who hires
<v Speaker 1>Rodney Danger to the Bottom. Okay, yeah, exactly. Anyway, back
<v Speaker 1>to the Wizard of Oz. Somehow Burt Reynolds from Bert Law. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's like Burt Reynolds came up. It's just the name
<v Speaker 1>came up, and there we go. That reminds me of
<v Speaker 1>Burt Reynolds. I wonder why.
<v Speaker 22>So?
<v Speaker 2>And then there is the Wicked Witch of the West.
<v Speaker 2>Now there's a period of time in the casting process
<v Speaker 2>Mervin Leroy, is he instead of making the witch the
<v Speaker 2>way that we know the Witch and being kind of
<v Speaker 2>a hideous, ugly green monster. He wanted to make a
<v Speaker 2>glamorous witch who was like a fall and witch, and
<v Speaker 2>he was going to cast this actress, Gail Saunderguard theater
<v Speaker 2>actor and also she was the first recipient of the
<v Speaker 2>Best Supporting Actress Oscar and she but then they were like,
<v Speaker 2>you know what, we kind of need to make the
<v Speaker 2>witch ugly.
<v Speaker 1>We can't have a beautiful witch.
<v Speaker 2>And so she admits this, not interested in making herself
<v Speaker 2>ugly for a part. So she says no, thank you,
<v Speaker 2>which is great because then we get the incomparable Margaret Hamilton. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>Margaret Hamilton. It's Cleveland native. And she actually started out
<v Speaker 2>as a school teacher and opened up her own nursery school,
<v Speaker 2>I think in Cleveland before turning to acting. She was
<v Speaker 2>graduating college or she was going to college or something
<v Speaker 2>like that, and she told mom, I want to be
<v Speaker 2>an actor and instead of being a nurser, instead of
<v Speaker 2>being a school teacher. And her mother said, this is Hamilton.
<v Speaker 2>This is what Hamilton says. Her mother said, quote my
<v Speaker 2>mother never even missed a bite of her toast. She said,
<v Speaker 2>you'll do nothing of the kind, dear, You'll go on
<v Speaker 2>with kindergarten training school the way you've always planned. And
<v Speaker 2>when you learn how to earn your living, then you
<v Speaker 2>can fool around with the theater all you want.
<v Speaker 1>And that is there.
<v Speaker 2>It is, yeah, right, and kind of a neat little
<v Speaker 2>bit of serendipity. She actually played the Wicked Witch twice
<v Speaker 2>in theater productions like growing up in college and I
<v Speaker 2>forget maybe high school or something like that, and it
<v Speaker 2>was pretty pretty wild. And you know, she's she's not
<v Speaker 2>she's not considered very attractive physically, you know, and she
<v Speaker 2>kind of accepted that and she established herself as a
<v Speaker 2>as a character actor. And this is a little quote
<v Speaker 2>from the making of The Wizard of Oz. She says,
<v Speaker 2>when I was six years old, I played sleeping beauty
<v Speaker 2>in a production an older girl concocted to raise some
<v Speaker 2>money for a sewing group so we could all sew
<v Speaker 2>diapers for a children's hospital. That was my first acting
<v Speaker 2>of appearance and the last time, if I may say
<v Speaker 2>that I ever played a beauty of any kind.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, yeah, after you do this, forget it. Yeah right.
<v Speaker 2>So now by the time nineteen thirty eight rolls around,
<v Speaker 2>she's just gotten divorced. She's a single mom, and she's
<v Speaker 2>this is I love her, I absolutely love her. So
<v Speaker 2>she's a single mom, she's got like a three year
<v Speaker 2>old son, and so she's but she needs to she's
<v Speaker 2>an actor, so she's trying to get jobs, and she's
<v Speaker 2>she's not a contract player. She's not one like, she
<v Speaker 2>doesn't want to sign a contract. She does not want
<v Speaker 2>to be tied down because she's afraid of getting kind
<v Speaker 2>of like one off parts being a day player and
<v Speaker 2>not really being able to earn a living, not getting
<v Speaker 2>weeks of work. But at the same time, she wants
<v Speaker 2>to keep her salary not too high, but certainly enough
<v Speaker 2>to cover her life and her son's life. So she
<v Speaker 2>purposely always kept her salary at one thousand dollars per week,
<v Speaker 2>never one above, because she said, if I go too high,
<v Speaker 2>then I won't get as much work. I want to
<v Speaker 2>be working all the time.
<v Speaker 1>This is fair. And so that's where that's that is
<v Speaker 1>highly recommended. I mean, you think about somebody who goes
<v Speaker 1>for the big rays, and guess who it makes the
<v Speaker 1>most sense to cut the next time the budget's tight.
<v Speaker 1>That person who's making a whole lot is so you
<v Speaker 1>average it out, like, Okay, I made less than that guy.
<v Speaker 1>But I was here for twelve years and he was
<v Speaker 1>there for two. Yep. And part of you know, part
<v Speaker 1>of being that person being that, you know, big wage
<v Speaker 1>jump guys, you have to be willing to job hop
<v Speaker 1>like crazy. You know, it's almost like you have to
<v Speaker 1>you have to exit before they realize you're not worth
<v Speaker 1>that money like so, and then you play the next
<v Speaker 1>guy so that that's lined up at the salary you
<v Speaker 1>already have and they think, you know, they think you're
<v Speaker 1>worth it because somebody else is paying you that they're
<v Speaker 1>not going to get you for less. And so by
<v Speaker 1>the time the other guys would put you on the
<v Speaker 1>chopping block to save a big hunk of money, you're
<v Speaker 1>on the other on the other team. And then you
<v Speaker 1>just keep repeating the process. So she didn't want to
<v Speaker 1>do that's that's the long game.
<v Speaker 2>And she's smart, obviously smart. I mean she had a
<v Speaker 2>very long career. I mean, surely had had a long career, honestly,
<v Speaker 2>Like she started in nineteen thirty three in movies, and
<v Speaker 2>by the time The Wizard of Oz came about in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen this it would have been thirty eight when she
<v Speaker 2>would have been cast. Surely been in twenty eight movies,
<v Speaker 2>twenty six movies, twenty six movies by then, like.
<v Speaker 1>Just think a crazy think of Brett Hart. Okay, he
<v Speaker 1>he earns the right to get a two million dollar
<v Speaker 1>a year deal from Vince ninety six. If anyone ever
<v Speaker 1>deserved to be paid that high amount compared to everybody
<v Speaker 1>else on roster, it was Brett. Within a year, he's
<v Speaker 1>gone if he was making, if he stuck to what
<v Speaker 1>he was making throughout the nineties without that contract. And
<v Speaker 1>I'm not blaming him for the contract I get, but
<v Speaker 1>that's what happens. And within and then within what four years,
<v Speaker 1>even without the injury, he's out of the business. I
<v Speaker 1>mean probably yeah, because no one's going to pay him
<v Speaker 1>what WCW had to up the ant to be able
<v Speaker 1>to afford once w's W closes. If he's still active,
<v Speaker 1>that was on nobody. But you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 1>not on a rolling annual basis. So that's what you know,
<v Speaker 1>that's the difference. You want to be Brett who stays
<v Speaker 1>paid from eighty five to ninety six and then gets
<v Speaker 1>the rays of a lifetime and within a year is
<v Speaker 1>just like the biggest problem in the budget. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>something to consider.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally, and then you know, the whole thing with
<v Speaker 2>Sunderguard happens. And I'll let I'll let miss Hamilton take
<v Speaker 2>it away from the from the commentary track, let her
<v Speaker 2>tell her story.
<v Speaker 20>When this came along, I was thrilled to pieces. I
<v Speaker 20>walked in one day with the idea of changing the
<v Speaker 20>agent I had, and lord behold there was Jess Smith,
<v Speaker 20>was my old old friend in New York who'd come
<v Speaker 20>out and it was an agent.
<v Speaker 14>Well.
<v Speaker 20>I was just delighted, and so I went with him,
<v Speaker 20>of course, And as time went along, one day he said,
<v Speaker 20>they're sort of interested in you for a part and
<v Speaker 20>the Wizard of Oz.
<v Speaker 17>And I said, oh gosh, think of that.
<v Speaker 20>I said, I loved that story from the time I.
<v Speaker 1>Was four years old. What is it? And he said, well,
<v Speaker 1>the Witch?
<v Speaker 8>And I said.
<v Speaker 25>The Witch.
<v Speaker 20>And he said then he said the final thing. He said, yes,
<v Speaker 20>what else? Well, I thought, well, of me, that's kind
<v Speaker 20>of kind of exciting part. But jeez, I had my
<v Speaker 20>you know, my eyes on something else. I don't know
<v Speaker 20>what it was exactly, but I didn't think about the Witch.
<v Speaker 20>However I ought to, because I had that nose quite
<v Speaker 20>a long while. And so I went in one day
<v Speaker 20>to see and I was interviewed by the man I
<v Speaker 20>knew very well. I'm shamed to say I can't remember
<v Speaker 20>his name, but I liked him a lot. And he
<v Speaker 20>was the second he was a second in line. And
<v Speaker 20>he said, how do you feel about playing the Witch?
<v Speaker 20>And I said, I feel great if I get it.
<v Speaker 20>And he said, well, we're thinking about it. Christ you know,
<v Speaker 20>weren't decided. And I said, I know that, I understand that,
<v Speaker 20>all right. And he said, well, we'll get in touch
<v Speaker 20>with your agent and I said thanks. And you know
<v Speaker 20>that's the final line. Sometimes that's the death line. You know,
<v Speaker 20>they never get in touch with the Asian or anything else.
<v Speaker 20>And uh so I, uh, one day my agent called
<v Speaker 20>and said, Maggie said, they're really kind of interested in you.
<v Speaker 1>And I said what for.
<v Speaker 20>Well, he said for the Witch and I.
<v Speaker 2>Said, oh, she is lovely, she's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>That's hilarious.
<v Speaker 9>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>And the the deal wasn't done yet, because you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're still negotiating. And there's this another story and it's
<v Speaker 2>it's wild and this is her again commentary track talking
<v Speaker 2>about how the deal was finally closed.
<v Speaker 20>A Jess and his wife and a current Bold mine
<v Speaker 20>at that time, and myself went to a ballgame and
<v Speaker 20>who came in but mister Mayer and his family I think,
<v Speaker 20>and a couple of other people and sat down about
<v Speaker 20>two worlds in front of us, and he turned around
<v Speaker 20>waved to us, and I said, who's that.
<v Speaker 21>And he said.
<v Speaker 20>Jess said, oh, honestly, Maggie, he said that's mister mayor.
<v Speaker 20>And know, I said, what tom.
<v Speaker 1>Doing it?
<v Speaker 20>He is the head of MGM. Well that's settled that,
<v Speaker 20>and I said, oh gosh, and he said glad you're
<v Speaker 20>going to be with us. And I didn't know what
<v Speaker 20>he was talking to, of course, and Jess said, you
<v Speaker 20>hear that? And I said yeah, I said what does
<v Speaker 20>he mean? He said he means that you're you're going
<v Speaker 20>to be in the picture and I said oh. And
<v Speaker 20>Jess said not yet. We're not decided yet. And mister
<v Speaker 20>Barry said what are you talking about? And he said
<v Speaker 20>we haven't talked money yet. He said, meet me out
<v Speaker 20>at the halftime. So, as I remember, they went out
<v Speaker 20>and had a little discussion, and uh, Jess came in
<v Speaker 20>with a look, you know, like the cat that had
<v Speaker 20>caught the mouse, and he said, well, guess what I said?
<v Speaker 20>What he said, you're in. I that I'm in What
<v Speaker 20>he said, Maggie, You're in the Wizard of Oz And
<v Speaker 20>I said, oh, I'm not.
<v Speaker 17>He said, yes, you.
<v Speaker 1>Are, all right, she rules. I'm so glad I didn't
<v Speaker 1>waste it on Jack Haley. I'm not ready to deploy yet.
<v Speaker 1>But she's she just she just inched ahead of him.
<v Speaker 2>She's she's fucking money. She's just fucking money.
<v Speaker 1>Would have thought that the Witch, of all the characters
<v Speaker 1>in the film, is like the most like gregarious person
<v Speaker 1>in real life, and all the happy people in the
<v Speaker 1>movie are fucking miserable. So true, it's so true.
<v Speaker 2>She's such I mean, and just wait too, because holy shit,
<v Speaker 2>does she go through hell? Does she go through hell?
<v Speaker 2>But there are other rules that need to be filled. Specifically,
<v Speaker 2>there are there's the Wicked Witch's Army of the Winkies,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the oh yoh, Well, there's one of them
<v Speaker 2>in there. I don't know where he is, but there's
<v Speaker 2>one of them in there. And he's one of the reasons.
<v Speaker 1>Why we're here today, Are you serious?
<v Speaker 2>And that is Harry Wilson. Harry Wilson, Harry Wilson, Do
<v Speaker 2>you remember him? Harry Wilson because we did see him.
<v Speaker 2>Actually we've seen him before, but we didn't We didn't
<v Speaker 2>know at the time. Remember when we were watching some
<v Speaker 2>like It Hot and you pointed at a guy and said,
<v Speaker 2>are you sure that's not a wrestler, And I looked
<v Speaker 2>him up and yes, he is Harry Wilson. He's just
<v Speaker 2>kind of a a He's an odd journeyman actor who
<v Speaker 2>just whatever. He just went all over the place. He's wild.
<v Speaker 2>He's wild, and unfortunately there's just not a lot out
<v Speaker 2>there about him.
<v Speaker 13>I do know.
<v Speaker 2>I was able to get some stuff, but even like
<v Speaker 2>looking him up on on ancestry, I was like, this
<v Speaker 2>is rough. Like usually I get way more hits when
<v Speaker 2>I get what I have, and I had a lot
<v Speaker 2>of information like base information nothing wow, but he was
<v Speaker 2>I know. He was born November twenty second, eighteen ninety
<v Speaker 2>seven in London, England excuse me England, and he arrived
<v Speaker 2>in the United States in nineteen fifteen, and during World
<v Speaker 2>War One he served in the US Merchant Navy and
<v Speaker 2>after the war he began wrestling. And honestly, I got
<v Speaker 2>some help from that Heritage Wrestling website that I use
<v Speaker 2>a lot during bond for the UK Wrestlers because he's
<v Speaker 2>originally English. But I could only find one result from
<v Speaker 2>the La Times where he lost an eighteen minute match
<v Speaker 2>to Bill Huber. That's all I could find. But it's there,
<v Speaker 2>and so I had some evidence. But he did may
<v Speaker 2>actually make a little There's a book called Hollywood Unknowns
<v Speaker 2>by Anthony Slide and he did about a paragraph on
<v Speaker 2>Harry Wilson in there no wrestling talk. Unfortunately, he did
<v Speaker 2>talk about him, and this is how it goes. One
<v Speaker 2>of the busiest and ugliest of extras was English born
<v Speaker 2>Harry Wilson, who happily billed himself as Hollywood's ugliest Man,
<v Speaker 2>and it appeared in more than four hundred Gangster in
<v Speaker 2>Prison films by the early nineteen fifties. Wilson came to
<v Speaker 2>Hollywood in nineteen twenty four upon leaving the Merchant Navy
<v Speaker 2>while visiting a friend who was an assistant director at Paramount.
<v Speaker 2>The ex Sailor was quickly signed up by the studio.
<v Speaker 2>One of his first major productions, Old Ironsides, in which
<v Speaker 2>he was typecast as a member of the crew of
<v Speaker 2>the USS Constitution, was released in December nineteen twenty six.
<v Speaker 2>Later appearances include one as a caveman in one Million BC,
<v Speaker 2>one as a bodyguard and all the King's Men. One
<v Speaker 2>is a Kansas City Hood and the Enforcer, another as
<v Speaker 2>a prisoner in My Six Convicts, and even as one
<v Speaker 2>even as a bear in the Yearling, All coming soon
<v Speaker 2>under the cinema?
<v Speaker 1>What the Yearling is coming soon?
<v Speaker 2>Not coming soon soon?
<v Speaker 1>But he's all in, he is all in it. He's
<v Speaker 1>in it. Yeah, I guess this question he.
<v Speaker 2>Qualifies all these movies. He has, like one hundred and
<v Speaker 2>fifty two hundred movies. I don't know about this four
<v Speaker 2>hundred shit that this guy's writing about. I mean, maybe
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. His massive hands have been featured in
<v Speaker 2>close ups in many films. In nineteen fifty two, he
<v Speaker 2>reminisced quote, I've been in Alcatraz, Leavenworth, and all the
<v Speaker 2>other federal prisons in pictures and sing sing San Quentin
<v Speaker 2>and most of the state pens and a lot of
<v Speaker 2>foreign jails. Besides, I've been hanged, electrocuted, shot by firing squads,
<v Speaker 2>flogged and forced to walk the plank. I've never had
<v Speaker 2>what you'd call a really sympathetic role. I'll leave all
<v Speaker 2>that romantic stuff to the pretty boys with their cauliflower
<v Speaker 2>ears and frightening features. Those tough guy extras might give
<v Speaker 2>the impression of being criminals.
<v Speaker 1>But they were not.
<v Speaker 2>So that's one guy. Then there's another. You know, we're looking,
<v Speaker 2>you know again, another small part, and this this one
<v Speaker 2>was small, was literally small, because this would be a
<v Speaker 2>little person. Wrestler and actor Jerry Maren.
<v Speaker 3>Jerry Maren Jerry Maren Girard Marangi was born on January
<v Speaker 3>twenty fourth, nineteen twenty in You're Ready for Another Lynn, Massachusetts?
<v Speaker 1>Oh jeez, who thought the Wizard of Oz?
<v Speaker 2>Who'd have known the Wizard of Oz was like a
<v Speaker 2>was like a Boston movie.
<v Speaker 1>He looks like a guy who owns a roast beef
<v Speaker 1>shop in the Lynn.
<v Speaker 2>Marangi beef absolutely, I'd buy.
<v Speaker 1>His parents were going to name him Lemon, but they
<v Speaker 1>just said it against it.
<v Speaker 2>He's the youngest of eleven children, and according to him,
<v Speaker 2>he's the only one under six feet only one?
<v Speaker 1>Why why everybody else is alive? That's good, Thank you.
<v Speaker 2>Reminds me of that Bobby heenan joke, the six feet
<v Speaker 2>and underjoke? Whatever he said?
<v Speaker 1>Sorry, Series ninety two.
<v Speaker 2>They started dancing at the age of thirteen, and this
<v Speaker 2>is a coincidence, but he danced under the same dance
<v Speaker 2>instructor who also used to teach Ray Boulger and High
<v Speaker 2>School Third high School, he toured New England dance teacher
<v Speaker 2>doing their routine and when he graduated high school, he
<v Speaker 2>received a telegram from MGM. He had been spotted by
<v Speaker 2>MGM scouts during one of these shows and they wanted
<v Speaker 2>him to play a member of the Lollipop Guild and
<v Speaker 2>the Wizard of Oz. And this is a clip from
<v Speaker 2>a nineteen seventy nine making of the Wizard of Oz
<v Speaker 2>TV special and it's this is Jerry Maren.
<v Speaker 21>On November twelfth, nineteen thirty eight, twenty four Midgutes went
<v Speaker 21>through the East Gate to report for work as Munchkins.
<v Speaker 21>One of the youngest, seventeen year old Jerry Merin, stood
<v Speaker 21>in that archway and thought, can you imagine it, I'm
<v Speaker 21>a movie star.
<v Speaker 22>They auditioned everybody, you know, for certain segments of the
<v Speaker 22>of the sequence, so to say, we'll put this feller
<v Speaker 22>in here that far and then and then they saw
<v Speaker 22>me dance and they say, okay, you'll be the Lollipop guy.
<v Speaker 22>I will put you in the middle of the big lollipop.
<v Speaker 1>It's so fine.
<v Speaker 17>So we rehearse that, and that was the thing that
<v Speaker 17>we sang.
<v Speaker 2>Wim.
<v Speaker 22>Members are the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild,
<v Speaker 22>and then the name of the Lollipop Guild.
<v Speaker 17>We wish to welcome you too.
<v Speaker 22>Munchkin line. Then I handed Judy Galland the big lollipop.
<v Speaker 22>So I always wrote home and said, Mama, look for
<v Speaker 22>the guy with the lollipop, because that's me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so we'll see him. He's right there. He's the
<v Speaker 2>guy in the middle of the Lollipop guilden he gives
<v Speaker 2>he gives Judy Garland the lollipop.
<v Speaker 1>Nice well, and he was because he's from Lynn, him
<v Speaker 1>and some of the other guys. Only him and the
<v Speaker 1>tin man and the scarecrow. They always thought of munchkin
<v Speaker 1>Land as Duncan, so.
<v Speaker 2>They I know, it was kind of funny, you know
<v Speaker 2>it was. It was weird at first, but when when
<v Speaker 2>all these little people came in onto the set, all
<v Speaker 2>of a sudden, Ray Bulger and Jack hyl are trying
<v Speaker 2>to eat them.
<v Speaker 1>Munkins are here, oh munchkins, yeah, ever buy I don't
<v Speaker 1>know what I don't know what you wanted. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if you want Boston creams. I just got a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of I just got twenty five bunchguins.
<v Speaker 2>It's got one and twenty monkins.
<v Speaker 1>Fuck yeah, bro, who whoever wants the powdered one? So
<v Speaker 1>that's always my question?
<v Speaker 2>I fucking powder, you know, the litt lemon filled ones?
<v Speaker 2>Fuck that ship the lemon Well, I've never got lemon
<v Speaker 2>and the round a lemon one. And then maybe maybe
<v Speaker 2>I'm munchkin. Yeah they know, maybe it's some other donut
<v Speaker 2>whole place powdered fucking like a powdered sugar ones. Fuck
<v Speaker 2>that give those a mah yeah, well I could have
<v Speaker 2>powder on her lip. Maybe I got maybe I got
<v Speaker 2>lemonfield ones that like a demulus or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it did pop me when you said it did.
<v Speaker 2>Um So all right, So this is Maren is one
<v Speaker 2>of those peculiar cases where he had a career and
<v Speaker 2>he was in upwards of twenty movies between the Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz in the nineteen fifties, and he was also
<v Speaker 2>there there was the Brown Shoe Company and they had
<v Speaker 2>their mascot, Buster Brown, this weird looking character and he
<v Speaker 2>was the mascot. He was the mascot of Buster Brown.
<v Speaker 2>He was in print ads and radio, did radio ads,
<v Speaker 2>voicing the character and stuff like that. And then it
<v Speaker 2>was around this time that he segued into a different
<v Speaker 2>career for a short period of time. And and you
<v Speaker 2>know what, He wrote a memoir yes, called Short and Sweet,
<v Speaker 2>The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, they got lollipop. Oh my god, I
<v Speaker 1>can't wait for this.
<v Speaker 2>In the early nineteen fifties, while I was doing Buster Brown,
<v Speaker 2>on weekends in Los Angeles, I'd get on a plane
<v Speaker 2>or drive to some city and take part in midget wrestling.
<v Speaker 1>Let's fucking get it, Jerry with a couple of.
<v Speaker 2>Other little guys. I was in my early thirties then
<v Speaker 2>and in pretty good shape, and most of us little
<v Speaker 2>guys had a membership of the YMCA in Hollywood where
<v Speaker 2>we could work out and swim and exercise and practice
<v Speaker 2>the routines. The routines, he says, he called it a routine.
<v Speaker 2>That's a wrestling routine.
<v Speaker 1>It's the honest.
<v Speaker 2>It was during oh just wait, it was during this
<v Speaker 2>time that I picked up the habit of smoking cigars.
<v Speaker 2>I've enjoyed smoking ever since, and I still will have one,
<v Speaker 2>maybe two cigars a day.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, great, thanks, Yeah, that's more than enjoying it, right.
<v Speaker 2>I've always loved the fights, you know, legitimate boxing. I
<v Speaker 2>was always a fan of big fighters over the years.
<v Speaker 2>I still am so I jumped at the chance to
<v Speaker 2>get into the ring. The wrestling was mostly an act,
<v Speaker 2>although we really did a wrestle in the ring and
<v Speaker 2>sometimes got hurt, but nothing serious. We'd call each other names,
<v Speaker 2>a lot of yelling, and Harry Monty would make his
<v Speaker 2>big finish with a bonzai kaboom, a big jump off
<v Speaker 2>the ropes right on top of one of us. There
<v Speaker 2>were four of us in the act. In the act, me,
<v Speaker 2>Billy Curtis, Harry Monty, and Georgie's spots. I was the
<v Speaker 2>hero a lot because I had the baby face, so
<v Speaker 2>my name was babyface Maren. Harry was usually the heavy
<v Speaker 2>because he was Russian and had that mean looking in
<v Speaker 2>antagonistic face. Sometimes we called him the Mighty Adam. Billy
<v Speaker 2>Curtis was marvelous milty. We had two teams and in
<v Speaker 2>each state that we traveled to we'd change names. I'd
<v Speaker 2>wear red tides and the other guys would wear other colors.
<v Speaker 2>We would do a tag team match in the ring
<v Speaker 2>and actually throw each other around and jump off the ropes.
<v Speaker 2>Since this was an act, would even enter the venue
<v Speaker 2>separately to keep up the image like we were adversaries.
<v Speaker 2>We had well known sponsors and we were booked into
<v Speaker 2>places like the Chicago Stadium, one of our biggest engagements.
<v Speaker 2>We had a huge TV audience as well. I remember
<v Speaker 2>that night at Chicago Stadium. Before the fight, we had
<v Speaker 2>interviews on live TV and we met the referee before
<v Speaker 2>the fight. He was a big, drunken irishman. He took
<v Speaker 2>us aside and told us it's going to be an
<v Speaker 2>honest fight tonight, so it'd better be good. I went
<v Speaker 2>to the manager and said, look, wrestling's werehearsed.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, this guy's incredible.
<v Speaker 2>We rely on our tricks. This guy is saying we
<v Speaker 2>won't be able to do certain things. Sured it was okay.
<v Speaker 2>It was actually a flop and looked terrible in the ring.
<v Speaker 2>We wrestled in New Jersey one time. Because in New
<v Speaker 2>York there was a law that midgets and women could
<v Speaker 2>not wrestle. I had to come back to Los Angeles
<v Speaker 2>for work. So I asked a little friend of mine,
<v Speaker 2>Tommy Cottonao caught the Nauro, to sub for me and
<v Speaker 2>wear my tides and use my California license. It was
<v Speaker 2>on TV and he was awful. He was fat, and
<v Speaker 2>he couldn't do the moves. All of my friends thought
<v Speaker 2>it was taking his fan.
<v Speaker 1>He couldn't do the moves moves.
<v Speaker 2>All of my friends thought it was me taking the beating.
<v Speaker 2>And that's what he wrote.
<v Speaker 1>That is that's one of my favorites ever, because you
<v Speaker 1>know what it is. And I'm realizing this after talking
<v Speaker 1>to Tony Van Silva as well. Yeah, I think we
<v Speaker 1>talked a lot under the cinemat of course, about that
<v Speaker 1>you know, Golden era of Hollywood crossover with wrestling, the
<v Speaker 1>idea that in the Mike Mazurki Award Cauliflower Alley Club
<v Speaker 1>being equal parts wrestlers and stunt people and and and actors.
<v Speaker 1>And I get the feeling that, like you know, the greats,
<v Speaker 1>the people who were full time pro wrestlers in this
<v Speaker 1>era took it hyper seriously and were very protective of
<v Speaker 1>k fabe and wouldn't even catch themselves coming anywhere near
<v Speaker 1>describing wrestling and anything they ever would have written the
<v Speaker 1>way we just heard Jerry Marin talk about it yea,
<v Speaker 1>and the way we hear Tony Van Silva talk about it.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like there are a lot of like fly
<v Speaker 1>by night actors who did wrestling just just for a
<v Speaker 1>quick buck, who never really had to embrace the business
<v Speaker 1>and engross themselves in it, and they maintained a distance
<v Speaker 1>from it. The way he talks about it is so refreshing.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, yeah, just fucking you know, it wasn't a
<v Speaker 1>huge secret society. Like if you you know, if you
<v Speaker 1>were an actor and you had some charisma and you
<v Speaker 1>had some that you were stunt person and you could
<v Speaker 1>bump around a little be you could just do some
<v Speaker 1>wrestling and no one ever you know these people don't.
<v Speaker 1>I remember getting a couple of pieces of feedback to
<v Speaker 1>the Tony Vin Silva like Wow, this guy so like candid,
<v Speaker 1>like you would expect an old time Carney. It's like, No,
<v Speaker 1>that's just the ones who didn't leave the business until
<v Speaker 1>they were ninety that acted like that.
<v Speaker 2>And I think also too, those are the guys, the
<v Speaker 2>guys who took it that seriously, the guys who had
<v Speaker 2>nothing else going on right, you know, like like you
<v Speaker 2>look at the guys who are all about protecting it.
<v Speaker 2>That was their life.
<v Speaker 1>And I thought I always had the impression that the
<v Speaker 1>business was closed off in that era to anybody. But
<v Speaker 1>the kind of people you're talking about. Yeah, you hear
<v Speaker 1>these guys talk about like no, just like whatever, like
<v Speaker 1>you can go out there and make me some money.
<v Speaker 1>It makes people laugh, like I don't give a fuck.
<v Speaker 1>How seriously you take it? Yeah, I mean yeah, these guys,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's the moving amount of team. They're like,
<v Speaker 1>go ahead, sorry, I sorry, like just to call it
<v Speaker 1>like the moves and the routines and just be so flippant.
<v Speaker 1>He's talking about it like a dance. Yeah, and like
<v Speaker 1>a general member of the public could talk about wrestling
<v Speaker 1>who didn't watch it or like it, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>he's in it, and he's he's kind of referring to
<v Speaker 1>it using terms that are usually you know, mocking, right, And.
<v Speaker 2>I mean I love that he says, Look, wrestling is rehearsed,
<v Speaker 2>we rely on our tricks. That's that's a shirt right there.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's absolutely incredible. I mean, all right, I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna say it right now. Jerry Merron for Hall of Fame.
<v Speaker 1>There we go. Yes, I mean, why is he not
<v Speaker 1>in a WW Hall of fame?
<v Speaker 20>Ah?
<v Speaker 1>Even put them in your fucking legacy wing for God's sake.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'm here to just like say this right
<v Speaker 1>now to make sure we're the first to say it. Like,
<v Speaker 1>if they're going to make wings for people who were
<v Speaker 1>celebrities and made a couple of appearances in WWE, if
<v Speaker 1>they're going to make wings for people who you know,
<v Speaker 1>did did good charitable work and had direct or tangential
<v Speaker 1>relationship to the company, if they had legends wings and
<v Speaker 1>they might consider, you know, wrestlers who were a bigger
<v Speaker 1>deal in Hollywood than they ever were in wrestling. But
<v Speaker 1>we have a little love for them too. We have
<v Speaker 1>a wing for those types, a wing for the type
<v Speaker 1>of people that we've been talking about ever since Under
<v Speaker 1>the Cinemat started.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there are these, Yeah, they're these crossover guys.
<v Speaker 2>You know these are because these are like Mike Mazurki
<v Speaker 2>is a great example, because he's a guy, great example.
<v Speaker 2>You know, he didn't just quit wrestling when he started
<v Speaker 2>making movies.
<v Speaker 1>He did both well.
<v Speaker 2>Lenny Montana, Lenny Montana, same thing, Mafia too, but right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but like that's a lot of these guys.
<v Speaker 2>These are guys who were able to float in both
<v Speaker 2>in both arenas and Stanislaus h just toward Johnson, you know,
<v Speaker 2>these are it's a very it's such a much more fluid,
<v Speaker 2>like the occupations were much more fluid. Yeah, I feel
<v Speaker 2>like in like the forties, fifties and sixties, like you
<v Speaker 2>could definitely you weren't. You know, you weren't judged like
<v Speaker 2>you know, if you had you know, when you have
<v Speaker 2>fucking edge in a movie, it's like, are you really
<v Speaker 2>that Okay, he's gonna be exactly put edge in a movie?
<v Speaker 1>Go ahead. I guess you weren't judged at all because
<v Speaker 1>it was just like there was no bright line between
<v Speaker 1>wrestling and acting or just you're on TV, you know, right,
<v Speaker 1>like you were someone who was on TV or around
<v Speaker 1>TV and that was enough. And you know, it was
<v Speaker 1>an era where people, even if they thought wrestling was phony,
<v Speaker 1>didn't have anywhere near the level of disrespect for wrestlers
<v Speaker 1>that they do today.
<v Speaker 2>No, well, I mean, because you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I would say, because they're at least not looking as
<v Speaker 2>cartoony as they do now. They certainly did, right. We've
<v Speaker 2>talked about a few that are definitely more cartoony back then,
<v Speaker 2>but still like not as cartoony as they as they
<v Speaker 2>are now in times.
<v Speaker 1>And in this era we're talking about this era, in
<v Speaker 1>this era we're talking about here too. Even if the
<v Speaker 1>general public didn't think these guys were trying to hurt
<v Speaker 1>each other in the ring, I think it's safe to
<v Speaker 1>say that, generally speaking, the public was much more sold
<v Speaker 1>on the idea that these guys actually were tough guys.
<v Speaker 1>They just did this for a living. But right, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you can't just impinge them as like complete phonies because
<v Speaker 1>if push came to show, they actually knew how to wrestle,
<v Speaker 1>but just for the sake of you know, public spectacle,
<v Speaker 1>they put on a little show, right Whereas now it's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, no one thinks any of these guys can
<v Speaker 1>actually do anything right besides just do a performance. Yeah, essentially, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's why, like a guy in the MMA background walks
<v Speaker 1>into a locker room and everyone starts pissing their pants.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, oh my god, this guy can actually fight.
<v Speaker 1>This is insane. This guy could actually kill me, right,
<v Speaker 1>I could actually like not go up for a soup
<v Speaker 1>lex and fucking pound my head in. You know, i'd
<v Speaker 1>hook him up for a sup plex. He wouldn't go up,
<v Speaker 1>and he choked me out from the same position. This
<v Speaker 1>guy would make me pay for the fact that I'm
<v Speaker 1>carrying so much musculator that if I ever tried to
<v Speaker 1>shoot with anybody, I'd have three torn tendons in fifteen seconds.
<v Speaker 1>Oh shit, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Get two little, two little news pieces about Jerry Marin.
<v Speaker 2>This is LA Daily News. This is dated November two,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifty. Midget tag team Wrestling makes its debut at
<v Speaker 2>the Pasadena Arena next Monday night. Dutch Monty and Georgie
<v Speaker 2>Spots and Battle, Billy Kerr and Jerry maren So. That's
<v Speaker 2>four guys right there. They are eighty pounders and are
<v Speaker 2>four feet tall. They do everything the big fellows do
<v Speaker 2>except faster. There's your selling point. Go see the little
<v Speaker 2>guys in Pasadena Monday night.
<v Speaker 1>And they're always They're always traveling in packs. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>that's to this day the business model for toy guys totally. Yep.
<v Speaker 1>You book like twelve of them, you don't just book
<v Speaker 1>one of them. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>And then this is an Associated Press news piece dated
<v Speaker 2>December first, nineteen fifteen. Some months later, how would you
<v Speaker 2>like a job playing with Christmas toys all day? The
<v Speaker 2>pay is good and the working condition is excellent. The
<v Speaker 2>only requirement you have to be under four feet tall.
<v Speaker 2>No use supplying this year, because three movie midgets already
<v Speaker 2>have signed up. They are Jerry Maren thirty, Billy Curtis
<v Speaker 2>thirty three, and Tony Boris thirty two. Their job consists
<v Speaker 2>of playing with toys six to eight hours a day
<v Speaker 2>in the street window of the Jade W. Robinson department store,
<v Speaker 2>having a good Having stood in the crowd to watch
<v Speaker 2>them perform, I stepped inside to see how they like
<v Speaker 2>the work. Perhaps the job that any child would envy
<v Speaker 2>might pale on an adult, but I heard them seeing
<v Speaker 2>merrily as they tinkered with the toys. Marin, leader of
<v Speaker 2>the group, came out of the window and I asked
<v Speaker 2>if they really enjoy the work. You bet, he replied,
<v Speaker 2>We're having a barrel of fun. There are three of
<v Speaker 2>us on the job, but usually only two in the
<v Speaker 2>window at one time. We can come back here and
<v Speaker 2>rest for fifteen minutes whenever we want. We just relax
<v Speaker 2>and study the racing form. Not that We're big gamblers,
<v Speaker 2>mind you. We like the job so much that sometimes
<v Speaker 2>it's hard to quit when the day's over. If we're
<v Speaker 2>playing to a big crowd, we sometimes work a little longer.
<v Speaker 2>It's just like doing a show. You hate to leave
<v Speaker 2>an audience. The only trouble is we're all getting calluses
<v Speaker 2>on our hands and fingers from winding toys. I must
<v Speaker 2>have wound one of them ten thousand times. The three
<v Speaker 2>men attired in elves costumes spend spend the day working
<v Speaker 2>the mechanical toys, putting on routines, and making faces to
<v Speaker 2>amuse the children. As for the pay, Maren declared, it's
<v Speaker 2>not as much as we get in the movies, but
<v Speaker 2>it's very good. I stipulated that when movie jobs come up,
<v Speaker 2>we can have other guys substitutes for here. Maren, an ernest,
<v Speaker 2>fast talking fellow who speaks in show business jargon, explain
<v Speaker 2>that he and his partners are all about three feet
<v Speaker 2>eleven inches. We say three eleven, so we'll be under
<v Speaker 2>four feet, he added, indicating that it was important in
<v Speaker 2>his business. Yeah, I worked more than most other actors
<v Speaker 2>in pictures, he continued. Asked if he did stand in
<v Speaker 2>work some midges take the place of child stars and
<v Speaker 2>stand in while lights and lenses are being focused. Nah,
<v Speaker 2>he replied, not enough money in it. I do roles
<v Speaker 2>of my own and stunts for kids too. When you
<v Speaker 2>see a kid in a movie taking a slide down
<v Speaker 2>a banister or falling down, it's usually me. I also
<v Speaker 2>have a lot of work on radio and television. I'm
<v Speaker 2>Buster Brown on the air. Then some nights I wrestle. Wrestle, yes,
<v Speaker 2>I inquired, Oh, keeps going?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Sure.
<v Speaker 2>I wrestled with other midgets at various arenas around town.
<v Speaker 2>Me and Billy Curtis often wrestled together as a tag team,
<v Speaker 2>a form of in parentheses okay, listen, Me and Billy
<v Speaker 2>Curtis often wrestled together as a tag team, and then
<v Speaker 2>the reporter in parenthes rights, a form of wrestling endeavor
<v Speaker 2>Maren had to step back into the window to demonstrate
<v Speaker 2>a mechanical airplane and article wrestling comes up and done. Yeah, okay, Well,
<v Speaker 2>it's nice talking to you, buddy, he says. He realizes,
<v Speaker 2>like this guy's like we get Can I not this
<v Speaker 2>guy talk about not?
<v Speaker 1>Please? I don't want to have I don't want to
<v Speaker 1>put this article up.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, we need to see Look, we we
<v Speaker 2>save the space, you get it kind of you get
<v Speaker 2>anything else, and then putting I don't, well, you gotta
<v Speaker 2>put that shit in.
<v Speaker 1>Then turns out he's working more than the wind of toys. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>damn right.
<v Speaker 2>Sadly, Maren died six years ago, age of ninety eight.
<v Speaker 2>He was the last living cast member of the Wizard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz. Was Jerry Maren.
<v Speaker 1>Fortunately we would have gotten him on the air too. Huh.
<v Speaker 1>We would have gotten him for an interview too.
<v Speaker 13>I know.
<v Speaker 1>We would have to, you know, search high and low
<v Speaker 1>to find him.
<v Speaker 2>But he was pretty, he was pretty, he was pretty available.
<v Speaker 1>You see a lot of stuff of Uh, there went that. Huh,
<v Speaker 1>there went that joke. Oh sorry, but what do you
<v Speaker 1>what do you said earlier? You have to search high
<v Speaker 1>and low to find him? Oh shit, yeah, I like
<v Speaker 1>that reaction. Good for you sometimes I deserve that. I
<v Speaker 1>really appreciate that. It's good healthy, damn right.
<v Speaker 5>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>But we get to continue to celebrate him because he
<v Speaker 2>is in a ton of movies. He connects a lot
<v Speaker 2>of movies, does Jerry Maren.
<v Speaker 9>He's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and Carnacio
<v Speaker 9>and j p Sorrow,