LENA HORNE: THE LADY WHO LUNCHED

In one of the few instances I can recall from my youth where everyone in my family was in agreement over what movie to see (and as there were five of us, this was a rare occurrence, indeed), one Friday evening my dad fired up the trusty Oldsmobile and took us all to San Francisco’s Northpoint Theater to see That’s Entertainment in 70mm and Six-Track Stereo.

It was 1974, and I was a 16-year-old, self-styled cineaste in the first blush of a full-tilt, head-over-heels love affair with The Movies. And if my adolescent over-earnestness was made obvious by a myopic preference for the films of the 60s and 70s above all others; I have Ken Russell’s charming 1930s musical pastiche, The Boy Friend (1971) to thank for opening my eyes to the joys of second-hand nostalgia and for awakening the latent classic film fan within.

The UK Quad poster added the "all" to the movie's tagline. Indicating
that the US wasn't the only country that could use a little escapism

That’s Entertainment, a compilation film highlighting 50 years of MGM musicals through clips and misty-eyed reminiscences by Golden-Age stars, was one of the few examples of the real thing to emerge out of the largely revamped/revisionist nods to the past that typified the 70s pop culture nostalgia craze (The Great Gatsby, The Way We Were, Happy Days, The Divine Miss M, et al.)

Released at a time when the public’s appetite in films ran chiefly to disaster movies, Black-themed dramas, irreverent comedies, and kung-fu actioners; That’s Entertainment – part Old Hollywood eulogy, part tribute to the very sort of escapist, purely-for-entertainment, studio-system fare the New Hollywood aimed to discredit – tapped into something in the cultural zeitgeist that sought relief from the tensions of Watergate, Vietnam, inflation, and the oil crisis. Its intentions made explicit by the poster tagline: “Boy. Do we need it now,” That’s Entertainment was originally conceived as G-rated counter-programming for the largely-ignored elder demographic; but the film’s reverent, gently self-mocking tone and invitation to “Forget your troubles, c’mon, get happy!” proved irresistible to young and old alike. The relatively low-budget That’s Entertainment became one of the top-grossing films of 1974.

Stormy Weather - 1943

For a youthful disciple of the auteur theory like me, That’s Entertainment represented an unexpectedly welcome change from all the sturm und drang of post-classical cinema, reminding me what a joy it was just to have FUN at the movies for a change.

I saw That’s Entertainment several more times that summer, standing foremost in my mind being the memory of the unrecognizably young Joan Crawford always drawing the film’s biggest laughs with her “spirited” Charleston; the way the lively “Varsity Drag” number from Good News always put a smile on my face; and how surreal and marvelously loony those Esther Williams water extravaganzas seemed to me.

But in the end, it was one of the non-musical moments of That’s Entertainment that ultimately made the strongest and most lasting impression on me. It's only a few seconds long, but it stood out like a beacon, and the image haunted me for many years after.

Greenbriar Picture Shows

In newsreel footage documenting a massive luncheon thrown by MGM in 1949 to commemorate its 25^th Anniversary, a slew of the studio’s biggest contract stars are lined up and seated … not unlike ducks in a shooting gallery  … at a bank of tiered dining tables. As the camera dollies along the aisles capturing the stars in various states of conviviality (Ava Gardner & Clark Gable), mortification (Errol Flynn), clowning (Buster Keaton), or chowing down heartily (Angela Lansbury); we’re given a fleeting glimpse of Lena Horne, seated between Katherine Hepburn and an actor I believe to be Michael Redgrave.

What burned a hole in my retina and seared a tattoo on my 16-year-old mind was the look on Lena Horne’s face: She’s not having any. Seriously. In stark contrast to That’s Entertainment’s sparse parade of subordinate Black performers (and regrettably, but inevitably, white performers in blackface) wearing beatific smiles, eager to entertain, grateful merely to be allowed to “sit at the table” (in Ms. Horne’s case, a term both literal and figurative); there sat this (very) solitary Black woman, poised, dressed to the nines, and displaying a self-possession and look of utter disdain that, in context with the place and time, looked to me like nothing short of an act of militancy.

Ziegfeld Follies - 1945

It was more than the fact that she wasn’t smiling. It’s that she held herself with this kind of removed, regal aplomb while assuming a wilfully casual posture that communicated to any and all that she wasn't on exhibit and wasn't going to be putting on a show for anybody’s benefit. Her expression: a raised-eyebrows/lowered eyelids combo familiar to anyone who’s ever been sized-up; her jaw: set; her gaze: cool. Lena Horne had flipped the script, folks. The one on display was doing the judging. Miss Lena Horne, to use the vernacular, was a diva throwing shade.

(Horne, whose ongoing battles with MGM have been well-documented in several biographies as well as her as-told-to 1965 autobiography, Lena, was at the end of her seven-year contract with the studio when this footage was shot, so by this point she was fairly fed up with the studio and obviously didn't care who knew it.)

And that’s precisely what struck me most about this sequence. Lena Horne at that table – subtly rebellious in the simple act of daring the camera to capture who she was at that moment, not what the studio wanted her to be – was the first glimpse of a contemporarily recognizable Black reality I had ever seen in the context of classic film.

As a teen, I’d watched many old movies on TV, but I'd never seen a single image of a Black person in any of those films whom I even recognized, let alone could relate to. The shuffling, smiling, obsequious Blacks that appeared on The Late, Late Show bore no resemblance to me or anyone I’d ever met or known. They seemed strange and alien to me, the blatant disrespect and caricature inherent in their depiction and representation in no way nullified by their frequently being imbued with near-superhuman levels of kindness and compassion. These images were lies, and my resistance to them inhibited my exposure to classic film (pre-1950s films) for many years.

Till The Clouds Roll By - 1946

So while I wasn't sure then, I now understand why Lena Horne in that brief bit of black & white newsreel footage from That’s Entertainment stayed with me over the years. I was responding to the "truth” she presented. In place of the fetishized ebony goddess segregated to stand-alone cabaret sequences in all-white musicals (all the better to be excised from prints screened in the South) or the ornamental siren in well-intentioned but patronizing all-Black epics, I saw a glimpse of a real Black woman reacting authentically and appropriately to her circumstances and surroundings: 

“I disconnected myself to shield myself from people who would sway to my songs in the club and call me ‘nigger’ in the street. They were too busy seeing their own preconceived image of a Negro woman. The image that I chose to give them was of a woman who they could not reach and therefore can’t hurt.” - Lena Horne

I would come to learn that such candor was a hallmark of Lena Horne, a pioneering actress/singer of astounding fearlessness whose battles with racism, sexism, and institutionalized ignorance have earned her the labels "embittered" and "hard" in many a biography, but which qualify her as a warrior and hero in my book. (Similar behavior attributed to an actress like Bette Davis is called being a "fighter" and a "survivor.")

"The only time I ever said a word (onscreen) to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of 'Show Boat' included in the film, 'Till the Clouds Roll By' "

This production still is proof that such a scene was shot, but in my copy of the film it appears to have been excised. Horne sings "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" (Lena was not about to use the offensive Black dialect, "dat" ) and is seen in an ensemble shot, but has no lines at all. Those familiar with Horne's biography know that "Show Boat"s Julie LaVerne, an archetypical "tragic mulatto" character, was a role Horne coveted. Although she was offered the part in a 1946 Broadway revival that MGM refused to release her from her contract for, but given the racial prejudices at the time and the essential "reveal" aspect of the role itself, it's unlikely Horne was ever seriously considered for the 1951 film version.

It’s not exactly the easiest thing being both an aware African-American man and a huge fan of classic film. Often it means finding ways to make peace with wonderful movies that nevertheless include disrespectful, ofttimes painfully degrading racial clichés and promote heinous stereotypes. It means having your comments on the topic downplayed by missing-the-entire-point comparisons (“The marketing of stereotypes is Hollywood's stock in trade!"), or minimized by over-broad generalizations (“That’s how they thought back then. You gotta overlook it!”).

Words and Music  - 1948

It means you sometimes have to be “that guy” who brings up the alternative point of view at a Gone With the Wind screening or Busby Berkeley film festival (Berkeley had a distinct fondness for blackface numbers), or you’re Mr. Buzzkill who’s accused of politicizing the arts when you contradict the suggestion that the largely all-white world depicted in classic films reflect a “simpler, gentler time.”  You're the wet blanket out to subvert people’s cherished memories of sweet-natured mammies, childlike slaves, and benevolent servants; and you’re the PC guy who insists on applying contemporary attitudes to works that are essentially historical records of cultural attitudes of the time in which they were created.

Lena with Eddie Anderson in Cabin in the Sky (1943), the film that made her into a star

But films are not frozen in time, they live. And to me, it's an important part of the cinema experience to continue to see the old through new eyes.

What I saw in Lena Horne's very contemporary rebellious spirit paved a way for me to see the humanity behind Black stereotypes in movies I'd previously felt so offended by, I simply shunned them. I have since developed a profound respect for the Black actors who had to play these roles, knowing that it couldn't have been easy, and in many instances, must have been soul-killing work. Lena Horne may not have been the first Black actor to refuse to play maids or servants, but she certainly must have been one of the few to still have her job after doing so.

Today, when I look at that clip from That’s Entertainment, I am impressed as hell with Lena Horne's attitude. She's a hero to me because at a time when nothing was expected of her but to be a sepia-toned fantasy object, she owned her anger, expressed her resentment, and voiced her outrage.  And that she did so at a time when so many others couldn't ... well, for me, that just made her the biggest star MGM had on the lot that day, and certainly the most memorable and inspiring woman I saw on the screen that Friday evening back in  1974.

Photograph © Carol Friedman

The complete 10-minute newsreel covering the MGM 25th Anniversary luncheon is available for viewing on YouTube  HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014

THE WIZ 1978

A conversation between Motown head honcho Berry Gordy and Universal Studios regarding the already eight-months-into-preproduction film adaptation of The Wiz:

Gordy -“I just got awakened by a call from Diana (Ross) who wants to play Dorothy in 'The Wiz'! She had a dream that she played the part and the film was one of the biggest smash hits of all time!”                                        "The Wiz Scrapbook" by Richard J. Anobile

And thus began one of the most divisively controversial casting decisions since Jack Warner threw Julie Andrews over for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

Diana Ross has the answer to the question:
 "Whose turn is it to be the big screen's next Dorothy Gale?"

The Wiz is based on the 1975 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical that is itself a very '70s, funkified, all-Black reimagining of Frank L. Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The story of the little Kansas farmgirl who gets whisked away by a tornado and learns the value of home and family through the help of characters she meets in the mythical land of Oz is a tale as well-known and beloved as Alice in Wonderland. The Wiz, which hews closely to Baum's book (silver slippers, not ruby), was created at the height of the '70s Black Pride revolution in fashion, music, film, and art. 

The Broadway production (then billed as The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz") was an attempt on the part of Charlie Smalls (music) and William F. Brown (book) to create a modern children's fantasy familiar enough to encourage crossover appeal, yet reflective of contemporary Black culture. The score is full of songs influenced by funk, soul, and gospel, and the book is peppered with comic dialog derived from '70s slang idioms. Thanks to the creative contributions of director/costume designer Geoffrey Holder and the powerhouse vocals of 17-year-old Stephanie Mills as Dorothy, The Wiz proved a great success and went on to win seven Tony Awards that year, including Best Musical. 

Diana Ross as Dorothy

Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow

Lena Horne as Glinda

Richard Pryor as The Wiz

Nipsey Russell as The Tin Man

Ted Ross as The Cowardly Lion

Mabel King as Evillene

Theresa Merritt as Aunt Em

When it was learned that Motown and Universal Studios were to collaborate on a film version of The Wiz, speculative casting buzz centered around Stephanie Mills reprising her Broadway role and Motown Golden Girl Diana Ross being cast as the glamorous Glinda the Good. Of course, all that changed with Diana's fateful dream and the subsequent early-morning call to Berry Gordy.

Disregarding the very real possibility that Miss Ross’ dream could just as well have been a nightmare, the powers that be behind The Wiz—a film that stood the chance of being one of the most expensive musicals ever made—abandoned plans to conduct a nationwide talent hunt for a talented, age-appropriate unknown yo play Dorothy and instead went with what then must have seemed a smart business move: casting an internationally famous, Oscar-nominated singer/actress with both marquee value and mainstream appeal. Thus, swayed by variables ranging from the capricious (Diana wanted it, dammit!) to the practical (Ross' participation most assuredly contributed to the acquisition of other notables, like pal Michael Jackson and Lady Sings The Blues co-star Richard Pryor), The Wiz was launched with considerable fanfare and star-power, but also amid a flurry of boxoffice-crippling negative publicity.

While I really liked the look of Diana Ross in The Wiz, a vocal majority let it be
known they preferred their Ross glamorized and Mahogany chic.

The mounting of a large-scale film adaptation of The Wiz was already a sizable professional gamble (not only was the public touchy about anyone challenging the memory of a film as beloved as The Wizard of Oz but there had not yet been any kind of boxoffice precedent for such a big-budget film with an entirely Black cast). A gamble not entirely helped by the almost unanimously unpopular announcement that the, shall we say, “mature” Diana Ross would be playing Dorothy, a character whose age is unspecified in Baum’s books (a fact Ross was quick to point out at every opportunity), but whom even the most imaginative of readers were unlikely to have envisioned as a fully-grown woman.

One wonders how things might have turned out for The Wiz and, indeed, Diana Ross' feature film career (it came to an abrupt halt with The Wiz) had Ross campaigned for the role of Glinda. As it now stood, the head-scratching incongruity of her casting and all the changes it precipitated (Dorothy was now a 24-year-old Harlem school teacher with a doozy of a social anxiety disorder, living in a brownstone with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry) fueled the public's already strong perception of Ross as an ego-driven diva. The mainstream press tends to already look upon the ambitious artistic endeavors of Black artists with a hyper-scrutiny not applied to the work of white artists, and so in the film's initial stages of production, the negative advance buzz threatened to overshadow everything else. 

The news of Ross' casting set off a veritable tornado of outraged cries of ruinous miscasting the likes of which we wouldn't hear again until 1990 when perennial daddy’s darling Sofia Coppola plodded through the waters of casting nepotism and single-handedly sunk The Godfather Part III.  In hindsight, it's obvious that the preoccupation with Ross's casting also served as a convenient grievance smokescreen for those taking racist umbrage over Black artists "daring" to tackle a beloved all-white cinema classic.

The casting of 33-year-old Diana Ross proved an insurmountable hurdle for many viewers, blinding them to The Wiz's many delightfully witty design concepts. Here, Dorthy and pals dance atop charmingly bulbous Oz Taxicabs in front of a surreal rendering of the Cowardly Lion's home, The New York Public Library.  The cabs, in satiric commentary on an all-too-familiar urban reality, are always off-duty when the black characters try to hail them. The Yellow Brick Road traffic signals flash "Ease" or "Don't Ease" for pedestrians.

When Diana Ross was brought into The Wiz, the film's original director, John Badham (Saturday Night Fever), took a powder. Scrambling for a replacement, the studio settled on Sidney Lumet (known in the industry as Mr. finish-it-on-time-and-under-budget) in spite of his inexperience with the musical genre. It's a perverse Hollywood tradition that an industry famously averse to risk-taking ONLY seems to take chances when it comes to placing directors unfamiliar with a genre at the helm of multi-million-dollar productions (cue: John Huston and 1982s Annie)

Then-screenwriter Joel Schumacher (Sparkle, Car Wash), later hack-director (Batman and Robin), jettisoned the entire Kansas-to-Oz elements of the play and, at Lumet's suggestion, fashioned the film into an urban fantasy with an Oz resembling a surreal, fever-dream vision of New York. Schumacher, who, like Diana Ross, was a proponent of EST (Erhard Standard Training - the self-help teachings of Werner Erhard which were popular at the time), also inserted tons of Me-Generation proselytizing into the script and supplanted The Wiz's simple themes of "There's no place like home" with a great deal of the "You'll find it within yourself" navel-gazing of the '70s Human Potential Movement.

The Yellow Brick Road leading to The Emerald City
Tony Walton's Oscar-nominated production designs for The Wiz 
convey a charming storybook wit  

The relative haste with which The Wiz was fashioned perhaps explains why a film of this magnitude contains so many errors in editing, dubbing, and "We don't have time for a retake!" awkwardness. As with many films, it was given a release date before even a foot of film was shot. Slated as a summer 1978 release, the date was later moved to the fall due to weather issues, union strikes, and Ross burning her retinas staring into the white beams of The Wiz's eyes. Critics were quick to call attention to shots of a buckled yellow brick road, sweat stains under Miss Ross' almost perpetually upraised arms, poor lip-syncing by the Cowardly Lion, and surprisingly cheesy-looking special effects for a film that cost a whopping $24 million (Dorothy's mannequin-stiff entrance into Munchkin land and Glinda the Good's graceless"floating" were popular targets). However, almost unanimous praise was afforded Quincy Jones' work on the musical score, and the brilliant production design and costumes by Tony Walton (Mary Poppins, The Boy Friend).

Dorothy Learns the Value of Friendship
In another of the film's witty, New York design concepts, the Yellow Brick Road leads to a subway entrance where a sign directs pedestrians to "Get Down"

I first saw the theatrical production of The Wiz in October of 1976 when the touring company of the Broadway show played in San Francisco. Ren Woods (Xanadu) was taking over for Stephanie Mills, and I remember it being a spectacular production. My single strongest memory of the show is the fabulous staging of the tornado whisking Dorothy and her farmhouse away to Oz: The tornado itself was embodied by a beautiful, leggy dancer sporting a scarf headdress that billowed behind her, far beyond the stage's wings. She danced seductively around the farmhouse, ultimately (and provocatively) straddling its roof. As the house began to rotate on a turntable, the ever-elongating scarf wound itself around and around the entire structure until it completely enfolded the house in the fabric. It was mind-blowing!

In the movie version of The Wiz, Glinda the Good is something of a supernatural life coach. Here, she creates the tornado that will blow the house-bound Dorothy out of Harlem into a vision of New York unlike anything I'd ever seen. 

By the time the film version was released in October of 1978, I was living in Los Angeles, and any initial trepidation I may have had about Diana Ross' casting had long been absorbed by all the exciting hype surrounding the film. Michael Jackson's film debut! Quincy Jones arranging the music! Lena Horne returning to the screen for the first time in almost ten years! From Richard Pryor landing the role of The Wiz, to the behind-the-scenes talents of Tony Walton and Albert Whitlock (the latter, visual effects artist for The Birds, Earthquake, Day of the Locust); it seemed as though all the top talents in Hollywood were working on this musical. Once the colorful billboards and posters began appearing around town (tagline: The Wiz! the Stars! The Music! Wow!) and the Ross/Jackson duet single of "Ease on Down The Road" was in heavy rotation on the radio...well, I was gone. Everything surrounding the promotion of the film looked so fantastic that I convinced myself the final film was going to be something so stupendous, it would make us all eat our words at ever doubting the wisdom of casting superstar Diana Ross.

If it can be said that any single image sold me the film version of The Wiz, it has to be this vision of Oz rendered as a surreal landscape where the Coney Island Cyclone roller coaster meets five Chrysler buildings. It's exactly like something a kid would conceive of as a fantasy image of New York.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As I mentioned in a previous post, the one way to get both the best experience of a movie yet at the same time the least reliable impression of how that film will perform at the boxoffice, is to see it on opening night. The Wiz opened at the famed Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood. The Dome itself was bathed in yellow light, as were the decorative fountains out front. The only thing missing was a literal Yellow Brick Road. Lines stretched around the parking lot, and the sold-out opening night audience was primed for an "experience." And that's what they got. The crowd ate the film up. Laughter drowned out dialog, special effects and sets drew gasps of approval, and the conclusion of every number was met with rounds of applause.
The audience was especially responsive to Diana Ross' vocal performance (which, no matter what one thinks of her acting, is pretty phenomenal here). Seriously, Ross was never known as a belter or even considered particularly soulful...not in the Aretha Franklin vein, anyway...yet in The Wiz she displayed a versatility and range that had audience members literally screaming! By the time her soul-searing rendition of "Home" ended, some audience members were acting as though they were at a live concert. It was all very heady and a major goosebump experience for me, especially the dancing. Ah! Such dancing! Were The Wiz edited down exclusively to its dance sequences, that alone would be enough for me. Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled by The Wiz and was positive that the film was going to be a big, big hit. Of course I was dead wrong.

The cast of The Wiz reacts to early reviews

The newspaper critics savaged virtually everything about The Wiz, all uniting in agreement over Diana Ross' adult Dorothy being a severe liability no amount of movie magic could surmount. The public even chimed in, complaining of the film being too dark (if cinematographer Gordon Willis ever shot a musical, it would look like The Wiz), too scary, too preachy, or just too somber in tone. Grease (a film I absolutely abhorred, by the way) emerged the big musical blockbuster of 1978, and The Wiz, much like the misguided reworking of the film's title character, pretty much slumped away in ignominious defeat.

PERFORMANCES
I like Diana Ross a great deal. Indeed, I get teased a lot by my partner due to my baseless belief that she can't be as bad as her diva reputation attests, because she has such kind-looking eyes (I also think Faye Dunaway has kind eyes...so maybe my partner has a point). I find Diana Ross very likable in The Wiz but I'm the first to say that she really needed to turn it down a notch. Her idea of conveying Dorothy's shyness is to approach the role as though she were portraying Laura in The Glass Menagerie...with all of the attendant ponderousness. She's far too high-strung and neurotic from the start. By the time she reaches Oz you almost expect her head to fly off, she's so unwound.

No one can say Diana Ross didn't throw herself into the role
The rousing production number Brand New Day is one of my favorites...for any number of reasons.

That being said, I think Ross is rather appealingly game throughout the film, throwing herself into the strenuous dancing and singing in a way I can't help but admire. She's in the finest voice she's ever been, and while I get a little worn down by her personality towards the end (she's a tad harsh on Richard Pryor), I have to say her grown-up Dorothy has never bothered me as much as it has others. A friend of mine once made the astute observation that when The Wiz came out, the concept of a grown-up unable to leave home was such an anomaly, with audiences balking at what they considered to be the obvious contrivance of her character. Today, with what we know about social anxiety and the phenomenon of "Boomerang Kids" who stay under their parents' roof well into adulthood; The Wiz seems almost ahead of its time.

The Great and Powerful Oz

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
If my blog has any objective at all (which it doesn't, but I'm trying to make a point), it's to promote my firm contention that "good" movies are not always the ones we most enjoy and that a film's boxoffice success or failure has absolutely no bearing on its actual quality or value as entertainment. For example, Variety's list of the 100 highest-grossing films of all time reads very much like an "avoid at all cost" inventory of my least favorite movies. Whereas the films that bottom out in the "flop" category (Day of the Locust, 3 Women, Two for the Road) are among those that have meant the most to me.

The great Quincy Jones makes a cameo as one of the fashion-conscious citizens of The Emerald City

The Wiz is, in many ways, a mess. There is little time devoted to character; it seems over-infatuated with scale over emotion; some script choices are seriously ill-advised (by this point, the cinematic de-fanging of irreverent comic Richard Pryor had come to border on the tragic); it doesn't seem quite fair to the legendary Lena Horne to give Diana Ross have first crack at Horne's only song just minutes before she's about to sing it. Lastly, it's much too long.
But I swear, there is something about The Wiz that has the power to lighten my heart every time I watch it. It's certainly full of spectacle and eye-popping visuals; it has moments when it's lighthearted and fun, and there is no lack of energy and style in the thrilling musical numbers. Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, and Ted Ross provide a refreshing contrast to Diana Ross' twitchy over-emoting (which reminds me of Joan Crawford's exhaustive earnestness), but even that is mitigated by her peerless singing, which is the finest part of her performance. Her rendition of "Home" forgives all transgressions.

The Emerald City sequence, filmed in the Plaza of the World Trade Center Towers

I've always loved the show's score, and Quincy Jones' arrangements are very good. But in the end, I always come back to Tony Walton's designs for the look of The Wiz as being one of the most enduring pleasures of the film for me. I keep noticing new details in the costuming and sets each time I revisit it. The Wiz's whimsical take on a grungy New York City may not be to everyone's liking, but it is the single most cohesive thematic thread in a film that, at times, feels as though it were created by a hydra. Envisioning and constructing a complete fantasy world on film can't be easy, but Walton's contributions meet and even exceed the potential The Wiz had for being one of the great musicals of the 70s.

The New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair was transformed into Graffiti City for Dorothy's arrival in Munchkin Land  

The Emerald City

In a world where three Transformers films and three Twilight films rank among the highest-grossing movies of all time, you'll never convince me that audiences avoid films simply because they're "bad" or even "inept." Many factors play into why a movie flops, some of them having nothing to do with what's happening up there on the screen, others having to do with our culture. Hollywood doesn't have the most stellar record when it comes to highlighting and showcasing Black talent, and American movie audiences STILL have a long way to go toward accepting films with African Americans in principal roles. The Wiz isn't perfect, but there's no doubt in my mind that large segments of the populace were never going to give it a chance from the getgo, and Hollywood allowed its boxoffice performance to excuse its already rigid practice of rarely greenlighting motion pictures with Black protagonists or Afrocentric themes.

Escapism Politicized
Hollywood films are predominately about the white experience. Unless politicized or shunted to the background, the depiction of black life on the big screen is still all too rare.

In a strange way, The Wiz is one of those movies I think many people wanted to like, but the film kept thwarting the viewer's goodwill. Diana Ross' Dorothy is a tough nut to crack. Ross' one-note performance never engages our hearts. Then there is the matter of her "journey" in Oz. We're given endless spectacle in lieu of character identification, and sometimes it's hard to find reasons to care about what happens to her. The script, which relies on the impressive makeup effects to provide most of the character distinctions for the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, doesn't always make a lot of sense...even for a fantasy. For example: I thought it a grievous mistake to have Dorothy actually "resolve" to kill Evillene as The Wiz requested. Killing the witch by mistake in an effort to acquire her broom is one thing; having her make a conscious decision (however reluctantly) to murder Evilene (even if she IS a baddie) feels somehow wrong.

Dorothy is just a little too happy for a woman who's just committed involuntary manslaughter

When I think of The Wiz and how much pleasure I derive from it despite its flaws, I think of my friend, a big fan of Grease, who will call my attention to how much he loves that film in spite of its cast of middle-aged teenagers, icky message of "conform or be unpopular," and the score's anachronistical '70s-sounding, disco-era musical arrangements.
Just like Dorothy discovers that her imperfect home is nevertheless a place that makes her happy, it's good to remember that if a movie brings you joy, it doesn't have to be perfect. It only has to have something that makes you respond to it. That's personal, that's private, and it has nothing to do with whether the movie is deemed a hit or a flop by Variety.

There's No Place Like Home

BONUS MATERIAL
Although The Wiz is only 34 years old as of this writing,  Diana Ross is the only major cast member still living.

According to the book Footprints on Broadway by David W. Shaffer, dancer Gregg Burge (he played Richie in the film version of A Chorus Line, was featured on TV's The Electric Company, and co-choreographer of Michael Jackson's Bad video) appears as Michael Jackson's dance double in certain scenes in The Wiz and had to sign a release promising not to seek credit.

Diana Ross' self-produced album Diana Ross Sings Songs From The Wiz was intended for release in 1979 but shelved when the film performed so poorly. The album was finally released in 2015.

Clip of the "Gold" Emerald City sequence 

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2012