Monday, July 7, 2003

Oz Stuff

Eric Gjovaag operates a terrific Wizard of Oz website and he writes to correct a dumb error I made in the item before last and have already fixed (I typed the name of Jack Haley Jr. when I meant plain ol' Jack Haley). He also informs me...

As for Ray Bolger, the dancer he saw was Fred Stone, who had first gained fame as the Scarecrow in the original 1902 stage production of The Wizard of Oz. Bolger didn't see Stone in The Wizard, however, but a later show. So far as I've heard, by the way, the story is true — at least, I haven't heard anyone say it wasn't. Bolger's main argument for playing the Scarecrow was that his style of dancing was much more fluid and suited to the Scarecrow than the Tin Woodman. I doubt he suffered much less from the make-up, even the Scarecrow make-up and costume were a pain in the keister...

I'm under the impression that a number of folks who knew Bolger believed that his main reasons for wanting to play the Scarecrow were the ones I cited. At the moment, the only "source" for this I can recall was an actor I knew who had worked a lot with Bolger, but I believe I read it elsewhere, as well. In any case, the Scarecrow was obviously the big dancing role and it sure looks like a more comfy costume. If you had to spend months under hot lights in one of those costumes, which one would you have preferred? But thanks, Eric. Wonderful website you have there.

• Posted at 9:34 PM · LINK

Sad News

Those of us who attended the wonderful seminars at the Museum of Television and Radio were quite familiar with its president, Robert Batscha. Dr. Batscha did as much as any human alive to preserve our broadcasting heritage and to find old tapes and kinescopes and make them available to historians and fans. How sad to find his obituary in the newspaper.

• Posted at 9:31 PM · LINK

Interesting Buddy Ebsen Fact

As we all know, the late Mr. Ebsen was at one point slated to play the Tin Man in the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz. Actually, before that, he was going to play the Scarecrow and Ray Bolger was going to play the Tin Man. But Mr. Bolger announced that he had his heart set on playing the Scarecrow and told some tale about how he had once seen a great dancer on stage doing a Scarecrow Dance and ever since that moment, had dreamed of someday playing a Dancing Scarecrow. It seems to be commonly believed that the story was malarkey; that Bolger wanted the Scarecrow role because (a) it was a bigger part, (b) it was a better showcase for a dancer, and (c) it would involve much less painful make-up.

Whatever Ray's motives, Buddy agreed to swap and, just to prove that no good deed goes you-know-what, Ebsen nearly died from the original version of the make-up. He wound up in a hospital and Jack Haley stepped in to play the Tin Man in a much less lethal form.

Anyway, this is all interesting but it's not the interesting fact I thought I should post. The interesting fact is that the pre-recording of the songs had been done before Ebsen was replaced. The Tin Man's solo was recorded anew with Jack Haley but none of the other songs were. So when you hear the foursome singing, "We're Off to See the Wizard" in the movie, you're hearing the voices of Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr...and Buddy Ebsen.

• Posted at 6:23 PM · LINK

Another Buddy Gone

Not much to say about Buddy Ebsen, who is dead at age 95, except didn't he have a great couple of careers there? Not many performers work so much and for so long. Not many star in three successful TV shows — in his case, Davy Crockett, Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones — and are so universally loved. I'm not sure what Mr. Ebsen's last performance was but it may have been a sketch he did for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. They were doing little fake previews of TV shows of the future and one was something like Barnaby Jones Fights Martians...with Buddy Ebsen still in the title role.

I'm guessing he was around 90 when he taped the spot and the best part of it was the whoop of joy from the audience when they saw him, even though the segment was pre-recorded. Maybe Jay will rerun it tonight. (Hey, Marvin! If you read this in time, go down the hall and suggest it to someone.)

I met Buddy Ebsen a few times, never for very long. He was charming and polite and rabidly right-wing, though not the way a Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter does it. Buddy's worldview was pretty much locked into 1940. That version of America had worked for him and he didn't see why it shouldn't work for everybody. It was pointless to debate him and no one attempted it, not even when he referred to John Wayne as a "war hero." I think Buddy could have said the world was flat and everyone would just have smiled at him and nodded.

I took one of the occasions to ask him about Walt Disney, who was a good friend and employer to him over the years. I'd always heard that the Disneyland animatronics started with an idea of Walt's to create a robotic Buddy Ebsen that could dance for people. At the particular moment I brought it up, Mr. Ebsen was being assaulted by someone else asking geeky questions about the Hillbillies show: Was Jethro really that dumb? Why didn't Elly Mae wear a bikini in the cee-ment pond? Stuff like that. At the mention of Disney, Ebsen lit up — and not just because he was freed from the previous line of questioning. He spoke warmly of his good friend Walt calling him every so often and saying, "Will you come out and dance for us?" Walt didn't have a choreographer and didn't seem to understand (or care) that you don't just tell a dancer to dance...you tell him what he's supposed to dance about. But Buddy went out to the studio several times and did something in front of Walt's cameras, and later he'd go back and see various puppets clumsily replicate what he'd done. He told me, "When I go out to Disneyland and I see all those puppets like Abraham Lincoln and the bears performing, I think 'I started that.' But you know, Walt never did get a puppet to dance like I did."

• Posted at 1:04 PM · LINK