Looking Back on Return to Oz after 35 Years

When Return to Oz came out in 1985, I was just the wrong age for it.

I was at the end of my teens, busy with college and summer jobs. Even though I still considered myself an Oz fan, I didn’t find time to spare for an Oz movie that lots of early reviews called a dark disappointment.

If I’d been five years younger—and maybe even if I’d been five years older—I’d have gone to Return to Oz that first year. But I was at a crest of being intellectually serious, and was among the many who stayed away.

Return to Oz wasn’t a success at the box office or with most critics, but some of its first viewers loved it. And more fans developed through the VHS releases and repeated showings on the Disney Channel. Now, thirty-five years after the movie’s release, it’s considered a cult favorite. Furthermore, the intervening years have brought more Oz adaptations to make it look good.

This year the International Wizard of Oz Club was due to hold its national convention this upcoming weekend. Then came the pandemic. The in-person gathering had to be canceled, and organizers turned their energy into creating a virtual convention titled “To Oz? To Oz!” It will run from the afternoon of Friday, 14 August, through Sunday, 16 August, and registration is free.

As part of OzCon International’s contribution to that Oz Club online event, I just finished chatting with three people who were just the right age to appreciate Return to Oz in the 1980s and to view it with new eyes today.

First I hosted an online panel with Sarah Crotzer, professor of English and Film and editor-in-chief of The Baum Bugle, and Eliza Wren, a filmmaker and musician who composed her own rock score to Return to Oz. Our topic was “Return to Oz at 35.”

Then I chatted with Freddy Fogarty about how Return to Oz made him an Oz fan and about some of his favorite movie memorabilia. Freddy’s collection was one of the bases for the El Segundo Museum of Art’s terrific Oz display last year.

The recording of those conversations is scheduled to premiere in the “To Oz? To Oz!” lineup on Saturday afternoon. As at any good fan convention, there are plenty of other things happening, too. To view the videos and live events this weekend, one has to be registered in advance, but I believe that eventually all this 2020 content will be available online.

Gauging Jason Segel’s Knowledge of Children’s Literature

The news that actor Jason Segel has published a children’s book made me wonder if he had produced good, or even adequate, literature or if this was yet another celebrity publication.

True, Segel wrote the script for The Muppets and other movies, and he’s not really a household name. But did the level of recognition he’s gained in Hollywood mean he received less editing and more resources than an average first-time children’s author? And why did this book need a coauthor, Kirsten Miller?

This afternoon I heard Segel interviewed about the book on Radio Boston. In response to the host’s mention of the scary bits of the Wizard of Oz movie, Segel immediately asked, “Have you seen Return to Oz?” He described that movie’s use of electroshock but also noted that other scary parts come “from the books.” So I’m ready to grant that Segel knows children’s literature.

One striking pattern in the interview is how Segel cited all sorts of children’s media together: Roald Dahl and The Goonies, the Oz books and the Oz movies, Coraline and The Muppet Show. Is that how young readers/viewers think of their stories in this world of quick and close cinematic adaptation?

A Charming Tik-Tok

This figurine is based on Tik-Tok in Return to Oz.

It was crafted by Alessio or Ale Buz, an Italian artist who works in polymer clay sculpture. It’s part of a small set of Oz figurines.

Alessio has molded similar figures of many other fantasy figures. His style seems to work particularly well with characters from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

Believe in Yourself

Over the years I’ve read several stories from actresses (and novelists) who were inspired by seeing some version of Dorothy Gale at a young age. But I hadn’t seen a remark like this:

Watching Stephanie Mills in “The Wiz,” I thought, “I want to play that part” — which, obviously, being white and male, was not going to happen very easily.

That’s from actor Evan Handler, telling the New York Times about how he got interested in acting.

IMDB.com says Handler shares a birthday with Ray Bolger, but of course his closest brush with Oz stardom was his memorable experience with the Return to Oz Nome King.

Personally, I think Handler might do a good job as a well-written Wizard.

Yes, I’ve Heard About the New Movie

Soon after I first joined the International Wizard of Oz Club in late 1976, its journal, The Baum Bugle, was full of articles about the making of the The Wiz. How many stars the movie would have! How many costumes had been sewn! How many square miles of yellow linoleum had been laid in New York City to simulate the Yellow Brick Road!

Then the movie came out, a critical and financial disappointment. Bad casting and overproduction not only sank the film but in some ways ended the “blaxploitation” business for years.

A few years later, the journal reported the imminent arrival of Return to Oz, Disney’s first big-budget attempt to use its movie rights to L. Frank Baum’s later Oz books. Again, the technical aspects of the production caught the attention of the press, particularly the appearances of many Baum characters and such feats as filming in a hall of mirrors.

Then the movie came out. As Buzzfeed’s article “The 11 Most Traumatizing Moments from Return to Oz” catalogues, it was a dreary, anxiety-ridden mashup of two of Baum’s most popular novels. The movie has many moments straight from my childhood favorites, all in a tone that made me wonder why they had ever appealed to me so strongly.

That track record is why I haven’t been writing enthusiastically, or even mildly optimistically, about Oz the Great and Powerful, due out this weekend. I’m curious about this new movie, but I’ve been disappointed before.

Newspapers and magazines, needing content to separate one movie studio’s ads from another, have offered many articles this month on the production and the Oz mythos. The New York Times’s contribution on Sunday started out by spelling the name of the Good Witch of the South as “Glenda.” The Boston Globe’s design-driven discussion of Oz’s influence on American culture didn’t even mention Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins. So I’m not becoming any more optimistic.

Maurice Sendak on Oz

Here’s the late, great Maurice Sendak on the power of the MGM Wizard of Oz, from the pages of the New York Times:

“Children make crucial decisions at that point,” he said, “and it happens in the wink of an eye. It’s those crucial seconds when the mother and father can’t watch. This was so absolutely, beautifully, rendered for me when I was very young and I saw ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There’s a scene that I think was a little bit St. Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus for me. It was near the end of the movie, when Dorothy is imprisoned in the room with the Wicked Witch, and the witch takes the hourglass and turns it over and says: You see that? That’s how much longer you’ve got to be alive.

“And Dorothy says, I’m frightened, I’m frightened, and then the crystal ball shows Auntie Em, and Auntie Em is saying, Dorothy, Dorothy, where are you? and Dorothy hovers over it and says: I’m here in Oz, Auntie Em. I’m locked up in the witch’s castle. Don’t go away, I’m frightened. And I remember that when my sister took me I burst into tears. I knew just what it meant, which was that a mother and child can be in the same room and want to help each other, and they cannot. Even though they were face to face, the crystal ball separated them. Something separates people now and then. And I think it’s that moment that interests me, and compels me.”

When Disney was planning a quasi-sequel to that movie, the studio hired Sendak to help design it. Ultimately he had little to do with Return to Oz, but he did produce this poster for the publicity campaign. This image is from Surrender Dorothy’s Etsy site.

I’m not sure who the somewhat sinister gent on the right is supposed to be.

Sendak also drew the more cheery cover art for Books of Wonder’s Oz: The Hundredth Anniversary Celebration. But why would the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman have eating utensils?

Judging MGM’s Wizard of Oz as an Adaptation

Last week I quoted a Salon article collecting thoughts by a bunch of writers about their favorite and least favorite adaptations of children’s books. Several had interesting (and varied) things to say about the most famous Oz movies.

Gregory Maguire, author lately of Out of Oz:

I would insist that the 1939 film of “The Wizard of Oz” is better constructed than the 1900 novel on which it is based, and that “Return to Oz” is an overlooked masterpiece much better than the several Baum novels upon which it is based.

(More to come on the contrast between Baum’s and Maguire’s approaches to Oz. I need to get my notes together.)

Jane Yolen, author of so much:

I think the Judy Garland “Wizard of Oz” is better than the book, which, while wildly inventive, has such flat affect and overly simplistic prose that it makes my teeth ache.

(More of Yolen’s thoughts on the book, and my response to that assessment, back here.)

Daniel Nayeri, editor and author:

I don’t think “The Wizard of Oz” can rightly be called a “good” adaptation. It might be a good movie, but it didn’t do the world of Oz any favors (aside from keeping it in print for so long).

While the MGM Wizard of Oz does a lot of things right, it also gets a lot about Oz wrong. The need to add a valuable lesson about life to the story—“She had to learn it for herself”—both brings absolute jibberjabber out of Judy Garland’s mouth and turns her whole trip to Oz into a punishment. I think that’s even more off the mark than making Dorothy a wimp and making Oz a dream.