Jay Scarfone

There have been several essential books published on the making of the 1939 MGM classic, The Wizard of Oz, starting with Doug McClelland's Down the Yellow Brick Road in 1976. Since 1989, several of these have been officially licensed, large-format coffee table books that are written or co-written by partners Jay Scarfone and William Stillman, combining audience-friendly background detail with a range of photographs, makeup and costume tests, publicity materials, and other visual interest. For this new volume, Scarfone and Stillman have stripped back the "fun" and focused on writing what they consider the last word in chronicling Oz; in fact, they've gone so far as to reject official permission, promising their readers a no-holds-barred look at the creation of a movie classic. The result is a "pop academic" volume that is eminently readable if occasionally overly familiar. (Full disclosure: I am acquainted, though not closely, with these authors.)

The book is separated into sections that chronologically analyze the development of the film. The most important of these, by some stretch, is "Pre-Production." In this section, the authors present a much more detailed and comprehensive account of the movie's genesis than has ever been published before, including a lot of context for the filmic landscape of the period. What have previously been fairly glib references to the success of Walt Disney's Snow White are given full consideration here, with one figure providing the focal point for Scarfone and Stillman's research: producer Mervyn LeRoy, whose achievements have previously been downplayed by some of his contemporaries. Just based on the quoted correspondence from LeRoy, it seems obvious that he put a great amount of thought into the best presentation of the Oz material, both as competition to Disney and as an adaptation of L. Frank Baum's original novel. In fact, I've never before given MGM any real credit for preserving (most of) Baum's intent; here, that not only seems apparent, it seems absolutely crucial to LeRoy's vision of the project.

In this section of the book, and occasionally in later ones, the authors manage to poke holes in some of the famous myths of MGM's Oz. No, Eddie Cantor wasn't lined up to play the Scarecrow; no, Shirley Temple as Dorothy wasn't a realistic proposition; no, Ray Bolger probably didn't fight to play the Scarecrow over the Tin Man. In each case, the authors have found the germ of the myth, which has (usually) been stretched and exacerbated into something much grander than reality. Readers should not assume these are selling points for the book - they really take up very few pages - but for long-time, well-versed Oz fans, they're something exciting and new.

Unfortunately, the longer the book goes on, the more it reduces to facts, statistics, and other data. "Production" carefully parses out the work of each of Oz's numerous directors, which is laudable; by the end of the section, however, the attention to detail is starting to feel a little bit exhausting. By the time of "Legacy," the authors are left to tell us the specifics of each national telecast and its host(s), along with details of every rare reunion by the cast. None of this is bad information, but it ends the book in a plodding way; the narrative (such as it is) is over - and has been for quite a few pages.

My only real, strong criticism is that there are occasional details - such as the "revelation" about Jack Haley's adopted son - which feel prurient, extremely tangential to the production of Oz, and (in my opinion) should have been left out. Scarfone and Stillman also have a slightly odd habit of suggesting that minor details in MGM's Oz, or its earlier scripts, are inspired by moments from later Baum/Thompson Oz books. This feels like a rather artificial way to engage the interest of long-time Oz fans, and it usually just comes off as confusing. I sincerely doubt that Glinda's bubble was inspired by the Wizard's soap bubbles in Baum's The Road to Oz (1909) - and that's just one of the more likely examples.

Do I recommend the book? Yes, I do. While the earlier coffee-table books are tremendous fun and beautifully designed, MGM's The Wizard of Oz cries out for a more scholarly text updated for the needs of a critical, twenty-first century audience. Whether this volume turns out to be the "last word" in such texts remains to be seen, but in the meantime, it provides new insights for older fans; for new fans, it should prove essential, one-stop reading.… (meer)