And I think it was the latter… the vulnerability… that most endeared him to me. “C’mon, get up ‘n fight, ya shiverin’ junkyard!” “Put ya hands up, ya lop-sided bag o’ hay!” Lahr was funny… but vulnerable too. One of my all time favorite characters from any movie. “Why’d ya have to go an’ hit me? Is my nose bleedin’?” Like a big vaudeville cry baby, via downtown Yiddish New Yawk. The Cowardly Lion? Bert Lahr? Who couldn’t identify with him? I loved the way he moved too. I didn’t cry, so I didn’t need an oil can, but seeing Jack Haley trapped inside his tin armor, I knew that I too, needed… out. Plastered-down hair until the late 60s, I was a suppressed, parent-pleasing machine, a pre-med, pre-determined wannabe… until I turned on, tuned up in, and… exploded… by becoming an artist, a performer, a producer of my own work, a clown. All through high school and college, I was my own kind of Tin Man. As a result, I became a volcano waiting to erupt. I was never encouraged to express myself. Too afraid of my parents, my grandparents, my sister, my friends… laughing at me. I never took a dance step, never sang a note. How was I like him? Well, during those black and white childhood years, I was super re-pressed. Every time he cried, he’d lock himself up. Not as much fun as the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion. Of course, I loved the way Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor tapped their way into our hearts in Singin’ in the Rain, and I loved anything flawless Fred Astaire ever did on the silver screen, but when it came to character acting and dancing, it was always Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow that seared my memory with inspiration and humor. Sure, I was smart, but I’d imitate Bolger for years, having my own legs fall out from under me, as became a comic performer, a modern dancer, a rubber-legged clown myself. Just the way he moved… Bolger’s rubbery legs falling out from under him, too much straw poking out from his neck and ankles, his self-deprecating, goofy, and ever-searching way of talking because he never thought he was smart enough. I think I fell in love with the Scarecrow first. I mean, who wasn’t in need of a better brain, a bigger heart, or more c-c-c-ourage. Or the Wicked Witch? But I wouldn’t be surprised if they too, identified with one of Dorothy’s delinquent and flawed traveling companions. I don’t know about little girls watching the film maybe they identified with Dorothy. I never knew which of the three to identify with. I remember everything about the film… the story, the songs, the art direction, eventually the colors, and especially… the characters: Judy Garland’s innocent and wide-eyed Dorothy, Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West, Billie Burke’s Glinda the Good Witch, Frank Morgan’s spineless Wizard, all the Munchkins, Toto the Dog, and in particular, Dorothy’s three magical traveling companions: Ray Bolger’s brilliant, rubber-legged Scarecrow in search of a brain, Jack Haley’s stoic and creaky Tin Man in search of a heart, and Bert Lahr’s stuttering and cowardly Lion in search of some c-c-c-ourage. And I make my eleven year old adopted son from Indonesia watch it every year… just about Easter time. I have a pair of red ruby slippers that I bought in an art gallery in Echo Park hanging just above my keyboard. In fact, I still have black and white publicity photos from the film on my walls in Echo Park today that I bought in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1970s. Still, those were early, formative years that made indelible impressions on me, and as a result… I’ve never forgotten it. I had already stopped watching the movie every Easter, and I only saw it a few more times as the decades rolled by. The Yellow Brick Road was actually yellow? The poppy fields were bright orange? The ruby slippers red? The Emerald City green? In color? Impossible.īy then though, by the time I saw the Wizard of Oz the way it was so beautifully filmed and intended to be seen, I was “all grown up”. The first time I saw the film in color, I was shocked. But the whole thing naturally, on our black and white TV in New Yawk, the 1950s. Not just the beginning of the movie, in Kansas, before the tornado. How many times have you watched the movie Wizard of Oz? Me? I don’t know exactly, but… probably at least eight years in a row, on TV, every year from ages six to fourteen.
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