THE COOL ONES 1967

My fondness for…no, make that absolute love for this Swinging Sixties pop musical is as close to boundless as it is baseless. Baseless, not in that I love it without reason (on the contrary, the list of things I love about The Cool Ones would fill up this entire post). But baseless in that my affection for this unfailingly gladdening go-go groove-a-rama has absolutely nothing to do with good filmmaking and 100% to do with the emotional, visceral, wholly subjective delight I derive from its cheery evocation of a particularly happy time in my youth.

Debbie Watson as Hallie Rogers

Gil Peterson as Cliff Donner

Roddy McDowall as Tony Krum

Phil Harris as McElwaine

Nita Talbot as Dee Dee Howitzer

George Furth as Howie

Mrs. Miller as Mrs. Miller

In the mid-Sixties, I was just a kid (ten years old in '67), but I had a teenage sister who subsisted on a steady diet of the latest 45s (7-inch, 45rpm records) and every dance T.V. show she could cram in between doing her homework and making sure one of us younger siblings hadn't set fire to the house or each other. After school, she would rush home to watch Where The Action Is, Shindig, Hullabaloo, Hollywood a Go Go, or The Lloyd Thaxton Show, teaching me all the latest dance steps (which often consisted of little more than planting your feet in one spot and shaking like you're trying to dislodge a spider that's landed on your clothes) and the words to the Top 40 record hits of the day via the Hit Parader magazine she religiously purchased every month. My sister's need for a practice dance partner (I was the only boy among four girls) granted me premature entrance into the world of teenagers, and I don't think I ever got over it. 

May- 1967
Hit Parader was a teen fan music publication that featured the lyrics to all the latest songs

The colorful mod clothes; the crazy, code-like slang; the infectiously happy-sounding music; the dances so formless and silly that you had no choice but to lose yourself in abandon...all pretty heady stuff for a bookworm little kid like me. I was much too shy (then) to ever express myself so freely in the outside world, but in our living room, with the furniture pushed to the sides to create a dance floor, I felt like I was a part of the very "happening" world of the '60s. For some reason, The Cool Ones brings back those days to me better than any of the similar films of the era. Thus, when watching it, I find it a physical impossibility not to break into a smile and surrender myself to the nostalgia of it all.

The Whizbam Dancers
Teri Garr (left) was a staple dancer in a great many of these '60s teenage musicals

The Cool Ones is a breezy, above-average Beach Party movie cloaked in a somewhat toothless satire of show business — specifically the teen-centric West Coast music scene circa 1966. Hallie Rogers (Watson), a professional wiggler on Whizbam (a fictional teen rock & roll T.V. show patterned after its real-life counterparts, Shindig and Hullabaloo), harbors a burning desire to hang up her go-go boots and pursue a career as a pop singer. But, alas, at every turn, she finds her ambitions thwarted. Condescended to by well-meaning friends ("This is a boy's world. Isn't it enough to be with them all the time…and get paid for it?") and rudely dismissed by Whizbam producer Mr. MacElwaine (Harris), frustrated Hallie throws an on-the-air fit that inadvertently sparks a new dance sensation: The Tantrum.

Psycho-Chick: Hallie makes a bold play for stardom

That's a young Glen Campbell back there being upstaged by desperate-for-fame go-go girl Debbie Watson. Campbell, cast as the lead singer of the fictional pop group Patrick and the East Enders, would release his two signature hits the year this film came out: Gentle on My Mind and By the Time I Get to Phoenix. 

Of course, she's immediately sacked: "How dare you flip your wig on our time!" scolds McElwaine flunky George Furth. But lucky for Hallie, her musical nervous breakdown has caught the attention of washed-up-at-24 former teen idol Cliff Donner (Peterson). With Cliff's help, plus the assistance of eccentric pop music impresario Tony Krum (McDowall) — "Tony Krum? Like, he's zero cool! Everything he touches gets well!" — Hallie finally lands the opportunity to realize her dream of pop-singing stardom. But will true love, ethics, and a modicum of singing talent derail Hallie's teen dreams before they even start? Well, you'll have to tune in, turn on, and stay cool to find out.

"She's young, ambitious, and therefore dangerous. It takes a few
years on a girl to know how to mix a cocktail of ambition and desire."

As movies satirizing teen culture and the music business date as far back as Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956), there's really not much that's particularly surprising or fresh in what The Cool Ones has to say about the mercurial nature of show biz, fickle teenage fans, the randomness of fame, or the absurdity of pop trends. In fact, fans of The Flintstones are apt to note similarities between the plot of The Cool Ones two episodes of the animated series: 1961 - Fred becomes an overnight teen singing sensation named Hi-Fye. 1965 - Fred stubs his toe and inadvertently creates a national dance craze called "The Frantic." But what The Cool Ones benefits from is a light touch and a wry self-awareness.  

Have a Tantrum

No question about it. The grooviest song in the entire score and my absolute favorite is the infectiously percussive "The Tantrum." Why this song wasn't released as a single is beyond me. Although The Cool Ones failed to produce a soundtrack album, some songs were covered as singles released by other artists. Frank Sinatra recorded "This Town" for his 1967 album The World We Knew, and Nancy Sinatra sang it on her 1967 T.V. special Movin' With Nancy. Petula Clark's rendition of "High" (the ski-lift number) appeared on the B side of her single "This Is My Song." 

Olivia Newton-John resurrects Debbie Watson's 

black T-shirt and tiger-print mini for 1980s Xanadu.

The Cool Ones doesn't take itself too seriously, and things move along at a brisk pace thanks to the crisp direction of Gene Nelson. A former dancer, singer, and actor (Oklahoma!, Tea for Two) who won a Tony Award nomination for his role in the original Broadway production of Follies, Nelson directed two Elvis Presley movies and worked extensively in T.V., directing episodes of Star Trek, Gilligan's Island, and Debbie Watson's 1965 T.V. show Tammy. The producer of The Cool Ones is actor Willliam Conrad, to whom I owe an invaluable cultural debt for producing film vehicles for Connie Stevens (Two on a Guillotine - 1965) AND Joey Heatherton (My Blood Runs Cold -1965). 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Well, I'd say it's a neck and neck tie between the music and the dancing. Each of these is capable, at various points in the film, of being both marvelous and ludicrous…frequently simultaneously.

With a soundtrack of some 20-odd songs (accent on the odd), The Cool Ones is virtually wall-to-wall music, with practically every cast member granted the opportunity to burst into tuneless song at one point or another. The songs are a delightfully mixed bag of groove-a-riffic pop ditties, duets, ballads, and plot-propelling book-type numbers of the kind found in traditional movie musicals. 

Warner Bros produced The Cool Ones and therefore saved a fortune in royalty fees by peppering the film's soundtrack with old songs from their vast music library. There's a great deal of amusement to be had in hearing go-go arrangements to such conservative standards as Secret Love, It's Magic, and Birth of the Blues

The Cool Ones is rumored to have initially been conceived as a project for Nancy Sinatra and her longtime songwriting partner Lee Hazlewood. (Debbie Watson does all of her own singing, but sharp ears might recognize Sinatra's trademark deadpan vocals on The Tantrum.) If that's true, it goes a long way toward explaining the relative ambitiousness of the film's soundtrack of original songs. The late-great Lee Hazlewood (These Boots Are Made for Walkin', Sugar Town) contributes many fine and very danceable tunes to the film's score, along with composer Billy Strange and several others. Even at its weakest (Gil Peterson is seriously rhythm-challenged), the music in The Cool Ones is never less than enjoyably cheesy and fun.

Roddy McDowall acquits himself very nicely singing a number whose title might well have
 echoed the actor's own thoughts about his career at this stage: "Where Did I Go Wrong?"

The Cool Ones features guest appearances by several pop groups from the '60s whom you've likely never heard of. Top to bottom: The Bantams, The Leaves, and my personal favorite, T.J. and the Fourmations, materializing in full performance out of an elevator.

PERFORMANCES

Acting of any kind usually gets in the way in movies like The Cool Ones, which run on charm, energy, and personality. Watson and Peterson make for a photogenic, likable couple totally devoid of any real chemistry, but they have real screen charisma and are certainly easy on the eyes.

That actually goes double for the molded-in-plastic good looks of Gil Peterson, the world's worst lip-syncher but the best wearer of tight pants I've ever seen. With his chiseled profile, Young Republican haircut, and stiff countenance, Peterson is more convincing as a Thunderbirds marionette than as a late-'60s pop star. But thanks to his one-size-too-small wardrobe, he makes for terrific male eye candy in a genre noted for its propensity for zeroing in on the shimmying backsides of female dancers in bikinis. 

Dee Dee Goes for the Gusto
Nita Talbot's butt-grab greeting assures us were not in Frankie & Annette territory anymore

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

If the music in The Cool Ones sends me over the top (to use the vernacular, it's wiggy!), then the dancing is just out of this world. It's fun, energetic, and just a blast to watch...I get all charged up seeing it. The unbilled choreographer is Toni Basil (of '80s "Mickey" fame), a Shindig! alumnus and student of David Winters (West Side Story), the great-granddad of go-go choreography. It's his distinctive style that's most apparent in the film's ensemble dance numbers. And while Winters never went on to have a career comparable to that of Hullabaloo dancer Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls), he choreographed several films (Billie and Viva Las Vegas), many popular T.V. specials (Movin' With Nancy) and went on to direct and produce films. 

Dancers in The Cool Ones are recognizable from any number of '60s teen musicals.

The Whizbam dancer in the top screencap with the incredible bare midriff is Anita Mann, pictured here with Davy Jones dancing in THIS VIDEO. A terrific dancer, Mann went on to choreograph Solid Gold (and even took a couple of dance classes from me back in the 80s!)

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I adore the mad, mod fashions. The so-bad-it's-good dialogue (it surprises me how often I find it to be genuinely funny. The scenic, time-capsule locations in Palm Springs and Los Angeles (much of it taking place just a block away from my old apartment on La Cienega near the Sunset Strip). That odd running gag about a mystery man coveting Cliff's vintage automobile. There's even the film debut /swansong of atonal '60s novelty act, Mrs. Miller (not to be confused with Merv Griffin's professional audience member, Miss. Miller). It's a silly movie, and it never apologizes for it. Maybe that's my favorite thing of all. 

Roddy McDowall pretty much coasts on the same performance he gave the previous year in Lord Love a Duck  (a superior satire, but not nearly as much fun), while effortless scene-stealer Nita Talbot and veteran actor Robert Coote provide stronger support than the film sometimes deserves.

The Cool Ones was a bomb when it came out, but I have a hunch that had The Cool Ones been made just a few years earlier, it might likely have been a hit. The world was changing fast, and pop culture trends even faster. The Cool Ones -- which feels like a movie from 1965--came on the scene at a very pivotal time. It was released just months before the hippy-dippy Summer of Love ushered in the psychedelic rock era. A time so drastically different in look and sound that The Cool Ones, with its clean-cut teens and well-scrubbed leads, looked as dated as a hula hoop.

Now, so many years later, The Cool Ones feels like right-on-on-time. Lumped together in a movie vision of the '60s fueled by Bye Bye Birdie, Elvis musicals, and Beach Party movies, The Cool Ones fits right in. It may not be a classic on any score, but truly fun and entertaining are incredibly hard to come by, and on that score, The Cool Ones rates top on my list. Although its many pleasures harken back to my distant youth, the enjoyment it gives me as an adult brands it a timeless favorite.

And then, of course, there are still some things that just never go out of style.

BONUS MATERIAL

In 1962 Gil Peterson released an album of easy listening standards. Songs like "I'll Be Seeing You" and "In the Wee Small hours of the Morning." I've no idea how the L.P. did, but I can't believe sales were helped any by that weird, Kean-esque artwork on the cover. 

The lead singer of T.J. and the Fourmations (the band that stalks Tony Crumb at the hotel) is Chris Gilmore. She was billed as Annette Ferra when she appeared opposite James Coco & Raquel Welch in the 1975 Merchant-Ivory musical drama The Wild Party. 

In Stephen Rebello's 2020 book Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! chronicling the making of the film Valley of the Dolls, it's revealed Gil Peterson appeared opposite Patty Duke in a deleted scene that had him playing Neely O'Hara's co-star in the movie "Love and Let Love."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

PETULIA 1968

Some years back, director Francis Ford Coppola released The Godfather Trilogy 1901-1980: a chronologically reassembled edit of all three of his Godfather films. As appealing as it was (in a passive, brain-dead, sort of way) to have the sprawling Corleone saga laid out in a fashion so as to make it impossible for even the most distracted viewer to lose the narrative thread, the sad result was that in the attainment of unequivocal comprehension, all poetry was lost. Robbed of the sometimes poignant juxtapositioning of past and present events, The Godfather became just another gangster film.

The artful manipulation of time in The Godfather films—the past coexisting with the present—is more than just a stylistic conceit; it's an essential representation of the films' narrative themes of destiny and predetermination. In Petulia, the conveyance of time as a nonlinear phenomenon reflective of the characters' fractured lives (a point of annoyance for several critics back in 1968), is no less fundamental to the telling of this distinctly Sixties, yet timeless, story.

Down on Me
Well-heeled attendees of a charity fundraising dance "Shake for Highway Safety" react to the rock group Big Brother & the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)

Richard Lester’s Petulia is the story of a small group of very pretty people whose perfect-looking lives are nevertheless bloody battlefields strewn with the carnage of emotional (sometimes physical) violence every bit as senseless and arbitrary as the glaring images of the Vietnam War that flicker from the largely ignored TV sets running nonstop in every room. Depicted in an artfully disjointed style which intercuts flash-forwards and flashbacks with scenes occurring in the here and now, Petulia examines the tentative love affair between impulsive, unhappily married newlywed Petulia (Christie) and the generationally displaced surgeon Archie (Scott). Archie is an old-fashionedly decent man facing a kind of existential mid-life crisis in the midst of "The Pepsi Generation," and he doesn't know quite what to make of it all.

Just as Coppola's use of flashbacks in The Godfather created a sense of history encroaching upon the present, Petulia is an almost-love-story told in a time-tripping, hopscotch fashion so organic to the era (the swinging Sixties); the place (Summer of Love San Francisco); and characters (the beautiful people), that it’s impossible to imagine the film realized in any other way.

Julie Christie as Petulia Danner

George C. Scott as Archie Bollen

Richard Chamberlain as David Danner

Shirley Knight as Polo (Prudence) Bollen

Joseph Cotten as Mr. Danner

I saw Petulia for the first time just two months ago, and given my predilection for all things Julie Christie, it struck me as more than a little puzzling how this near-perfect little gem had managed to elude me all these years. I suspected I would like it, but I didn't really expect to love it as much as I did. Funny, touching, and full of startling performances...it's so perfectly attuned to my tastes and interests it practically has my name on it. Advertised at the time of its release as “The uncommon movie,” Petulia might well have added "unexpected” to the mix, for I've really never seen anything quite like it. Not only does it have Julie Christie at her most jaw-droppingly gorgeous (EVER…and that’s saying something), but she, George C. Scott, and Richard Chamberlain bring an empathetic intensity to characters one might best describe as guardedly dispassionate.

Although they share no scenes together, Petulia reunites Kathleen Widdoes (pictured) with her The Group co-star, Shirley Knight 

Petulia is Richard Lester's savage picture postcard satire of American life in the late Sixties. A time when sentimentality was considered square, relationships tangential, and the polished-metal, automated world of “now” was moving and changing so fast it stood in constant danger of leaving itself behind. As a dissection of an emerging cultural scene and its people, Petulia is a surprisingly focused social skewering considering its relative lack of distance (it's one of the few mainstream films commenting on the decade to actually have been filmed where and when what we commonly associate with '60s culture originated). Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, The Ritz) takes a fragmented, psychedelic view of the gleaming-surfaced existence of  jaded, wealthy hippies and disillusioned, drop-out professionals. A world where the disenfranchised poor and people of color are always glimpsed (just barely) on the periphery, and the hippies are just as phony and callous as the straights. The darkly comic, fumbling interplay of these lost-and-found souls striving—often in shell-shocked bemusement—to reach out to one another in a disposable, mechanized, instant gratification society is rendered in strobe-light glimpses boldly captured by Nicolas Roeg’s (The Man Who Fell To Earth, Don’t Look Now) kaleidoscopic camera lens.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Petulia (based on the John Haase novel, Me and the Arch Kook Petulia) is very effective, not to mention outrageously stylish, in the ways it depicts the messy complexity of relationships. Contrary to what songs, romance novels, and fairy tales would have us believe, really connecting with another human being is a frustratingly difficult business. It's imperfect, inconsistent, and comprised of a million little disappointments and uncertainties, all tethered to an overpowering but seldom acknowledged need for human contact. 

The straightforward Archie can’t make head-nor-tails of the captivating but confounding Petulia, who is herself of two minds about her beautiful but abusive husband, David. Polo, Archie’s ex-wife, is not quite over him, yet seems to have leapt into a compromise relationship. Meanwhile, their friends Barney and Wilma (?!) -Arthur Hill and Kathleen Widdoes - whose own marriage is falling apart, scheme to have them reconcile. These emotionally inarticulate couplings form a roundelay of missed chances and miscommunications endlessly reenacted by the uniformly dissatisfied protagonists. Individuals whose words and actions seem to be forever at cross purposes with their desires.

As Petulia is as much a social satire as a poignantly bleak meditation on emotional authenticity (“Real, honest-to-God tears, Petulia?”), the picture of America that Lester paints is one of alienating mechanization and deceptive appearances. Richard Lester’s San Francisco is one of automatized motels; switch-on fireplaces; indoor flowers that die when exposed to real sunlight; decoy hospital room TV sets; sullen flower children; nuns driving Porches; topless restaurants; gloomy all-night supermarkets; and kiddie excursions to Alcatraz Prison (which is a reality now, but was not, if I remember correctly, the case back in 1967).

Among the row houses of Daly City, Archie seeks the assistance of two two non-cooperative hippies (that's WKRP's Howard Hessman in the pink shirt) 

PERFORMANCES
No one does sham superficiality better than Julie Christie. From Darling's narcissistic Diana Scott, Far From the Madding Crowd's perniciously thoughtless Bathsheba, to the emotionally vacant Linda Montag of Fahrenheit 451, Christie has made a career of adding depth and dimension to otherwise unsympathetically shallow characters.
The walking contradiction that is Petulia Danner: arch posturing one moment, self-recriminating anguish the next, is one of Julie Christie's strongest most persuasive performances.

I can't say I've ever cared much for George C. Scott (who somehow grows increasingly more handsome as the film progresses) but I think he is rather spectacular here. He avoids the usual self-pity that comes with these kinds of roles and makes Archie into a strong, very likable character you come to care a great deal about. It's a most effective dramatic device when a staunchly unexcitable character in a movie breaks into a smile, and when this happens in Petulia, it just about breaks my heart.

Special mention must also be made of Richard Chamberlain (then known exclusively for TV's Dr. Kildare and as a heartthrob romantic lead) daringly cast against type and delivering an overwhelmingly chilling portrayal of a man who is a physically perfect, psychologically damaged, Ken doll.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
A film set in '60s San Francisco is bound to be visually vivid, and Petulia is a marvelous-looking movie whose color photography is as expressive as it is overwhelming. There are psychedelic light shows accompanying musical appearances by The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, striking vistas of Bay Area locations, and the candy-colored mod fashions of the day take on a fairly 3D effect.

My partner was the first to take note of the beige/brown cheerlessness of Archie's bachelor apartment (top) contrasting so expressively with Petulia's fraudulently festive pink and yellow boudoir (below).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

It's always struck me as a curious phenomenon how so many films from the '80s and '90s can appear so dated to me, yet most of my favorite films from the late -'60s and '70s seem to have a timelessness about them. I don't pretend to know the reason, but I suspect it's because so many '60s and '70s films are about people and relationships, while '80s and '90s films are chiefly the result of pitches, formulas, and focus groups. Ignore the swinging '60s window dressing (but who would want to?) and Petulia is as topically relevant today as it was in 1968. Perhaps more so

Estrangement. The natural consequence of erecting barriers in the avoidance of pain

On the strength of one month's ownership of the DVD and three viewings, Petulia has become my absolute favorite Richard Lester film. The first American feature from a director known for his bold comedic style, Petulia is not as great a thematic departure as it at first appears. There are plentiful examples of Lester's penchant for absurdist humor, caustic irony, and the sad/funny details of human interaction. But what distinguishes Petulia for me is the humanity at the core of this little microscopic vision of the world. That and the sophisticated style of its execution. In that, Petulia is indeed an uncommon movie.

Petulia is, at its heart, an adult twist on the classic fairy tale. Petulia is the damsel in distress who, perhaps tragically, can't or doesn't want to be saved. David, the Prince Charming whose beauty conceals a beast. Archie, the frog prince who lives happily ever after.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2012

THE WIZ 1978

A conversation between Motown head honcho Berry Gordy and Universal Studios in regard to 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 of 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 issues of weather, 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 wings of the stage. 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 members of the audience 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 have Diana Ross have first crack at her only song; and finally, 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 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 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 in spite of 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.

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2012