Oz Was
Dreamed c.1956, & c.1977 by Geoff Ryman
No one believes this, but it's true. Long before I wrote Was, but just after reading Aljean Harmetz's book The Making of The Wizard of Oz, I had a dream.
MGM was a concentration camp. "ARBEIT MACHT FREI", it said over the gate. The actors were allowed to live only so long as they acted well, did not freak out and their movies made money. The moment they fell from favour, they were killed.The dream was more a comment on the studio system than the movie. The first Tin Man, Buddy Ebsen, was made very ill by his aluminium powder make-up. Margaret Hamilton was very severely burned by a special effect and did not sue because she wanted to work regularly. When she retumed, the green, copper-based make-up stung the newly healed skin, They later blew up her stand-in.I dreamed I was filming The Wizard of Oz in a concentration camp. I was the guy who trained the dog. So I had a double worry. If my dog did not behave well, acting on cue, then it would be killed. Possibly I would.
The crew built sets, shaking with terror. Garland acted knowing she was under a death sentence. My dog kept running off and hiding. Part of the nightmare was trying to find him as the director shouted, "Where is that dog?"
But more than that, for actors especially, time runs out like the sands in the witch's hourglass. They grow into the wrong age like Mickey Rooney, or suddenly find that a younger generation no longer cares for them. All show biz careers end in failure, sometimes decades before the death of person concerned. You're never ready for it, either.
I've always felt that the Oz story was about death and coming to terms with it.
I remember one half-dream from when I first saw The Wizard of Oz. It was on very late, I was very young, and I was drifting in and out of sleep.
When Dorothy lands in Oz, there is a long inquest into whether the Witch of the East is dead. The coroner all in black arrives with his giant Death Certificate. Everyone keeps asking "Is she dead?"In a sense, I was right.I thought they meant Dorothy. I thought Oz was some kind of Heaven, and Dorothy could only stay there if she were dead, otherwise she would bc cast out. In my confusion I wondered if that was why she was following the Yellow Brick Road. Because she was alive and couldn't stay.
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