Things change. The world today is not the same as we knew it even just a few years ago. One thing that remains constant is old movies.
Everyone, I suppose, remembers the first time they saw The Wizard of Oz. For me, the year was 1949. I was five year old, the film was already ten years old.
What was my biggest impression at that tender age? Not the tornado. Not the flying house. Not the wow transition from black-and-white to color. Not the Munchkins. Not the scarecrow. Not the tin man. Not the lion. Not the melting of the wicked witch. Not the revelation of the wizard as a fake. Nope, all that was fascinating, of course, but the biggest impression was my grandmother’s revelation that the good witch was played by someone named “Billy”!
My first reaction was that “Billy” was a man dressed up as a woman, something I had never heard of before. My grandmother, however, explained that, no, “Billie” was a woman whose name was a nickname for Wilhelmina. Actually it wasn’t. Her birth name was Mary William, but that’s another story.
My grandmother’s cousin, she went on to say, made all of Billie Burke’s clothes when she was a great star of the Broadway stage. Whether “made” meant she designed them or merely stitched them together I don’t know, but the woman was apparently quite well enough off and because she died intestate, her money was divided up between her surviving cousins. Because my grandmother predeceased her, my family got nothing. It annoyed my mother that none of her aunts and uncles were willing to share their good fortune with her, but that, too, is another story.
The second time I saw The Wizard of Oz was when it began its annual TV showings in the mid-1950s. TV was black-and-white back then and the biggest screens were only 17″, but even so it was an unforgettable experience that many of us re-visited every year until color TVs came along and made the experience even more memorable.
Since the advent of home video in the early 1980s, it’s been possible to own The Wizard of Oz and watch it any time the spirit moved us. It was one of the first films released in the DVD format in 1997 and has now been re-released three additional times in at least five different versions.
There was the 1999 Special Edition which added commentary and a “making-of” documentary hosted by Angela Lansbury. Six years later there were two versions: the two-disc Special Edition and the three-disc Special Edition, both of which added tons of extras, the three-disc version including five previous versions of the story.
The newly released “ultimate collector’s edition” on both standard DVD and Blu-ray includes all that and more.
New to this “ultimate” edition are a 70th anniversary watch with “genuine crystals”; a reproduction of the original 1939 campaign book; a “Behind the Curtain of Production 1060” book; a one page replica of the original budget; a documentary on director Victor Fleming; the 2007 Hollywood Walk of Fame salute to the Munchkins and the 1990 TV movie, The Dreamer of Oz about author L. Frank Baum starring John Ritter, Annette O’Toole and Rue McClanahan. An added bonus is the six hour 1992 mini-series, MGM: When the Lion Roars, which is presented on standard DVD within the Blu-ray box set.
Both the Blu-ray and standard DVD releases of “the ultimate collector’s edition” are limited copies, but “limited” is a subjective word here. The Blu-ray, for example, is limited to 143,000 copies. Contrast that with the Original Cast recordings of hard to find Broadway shows that are “limited” to 1,000 copies and still not selling out!
Long before movies were available for home viewing by the general public, Original Cast recordings were the closest thing we had to simulate the theatre going experience in our living rooms. It’s a rich tradition that was begun by the British who recorded the 1928 London cast of Show Boat while the original Broadway cast went unrecorded. While songs from various productions of shows in the U.S. were recorded, it wasn’t until 1943’s Oklahoma! that full cast recordings were made. Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific in 1949 were the first to be recorded on LP vinyl, the format that lasted until CDs took over in the late 1980s.
By the time My Fair Lady was recorded in 1956, cast recordings and movie soundtracks were best sellers among the record buying public and commonplace in homes across the country. Nowadays they have become a niche item. Where once it was a given that a hit Broadway show or revival would be recorded for posterity, shows today often come and go without a record deal.
Fortunately most of the hit shows of yesteryear were recorded on vinyl and transferred to CD before the market dried up and are available to the dwindling number of collectors out there. Unfortunately releases of the few that have not been transferred to CD have practically come to a halt. Sony, much to my surprise, actually did release one of the legendary missing shows earlier this year when it dusted off Maggie Flynn, the melodic 1968 Civil War musical starring Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy.
Aside from the occasional offerings of the major record labels, we thankfully now have Kritzerland. Kritzerland is a small company that is trying to fill the gap by reproducing old shows and movie soundtracks that have fallen between the cracks. However, with their limited budget and small following they are able to produce only 1,000 each of their products. Ironically the movie soundtracks, even of obscure titles, sell out faster than the cast recordings of long missing gems.
This year they have already given us Illya Darling; Anya and Show Girl and have just released Cry for Us All.
The oldest of these shows is Show Girl, a 1961 revue that earned Carol Channing a Tony nomination for Best Actress. She’s delightful and the tunes are amusing if forgettable but it’s nice to have if for no other reason than to confirm that Channing was not just a two-show wonder (Gentlmen Prefer Blondes; Hello, Dolly! ).
The 1965 musical, Anya, the musical version of Anastasia, was a troubled production. Though the music is first rate, the libretto has always been a problem and the show has never been successful in any of its subsequent incarnations. This original version stars Constance Towers, Michael Kermoyan, Lillian Gish and Irra Petina.
Various record companies had been promising us Illya Darling for years, but it took Kritzerland to get hold of two songs missing from the original LP release of the 1967 musical version of Never on Sunday and to place all the songs in the show in their proper order. Though hardly one of the greats, it’s a charmer with Melina Mercouri recreating her most celebrated screen role. She won an Oscar nomination for the film, a Tony nomination for the show.
The musical version of Hogan’s Goat, 1970’s Cry for Us All should have been a major hit with its score by Man of La Mancha ’s Mitch Leigh and a cast that included Robert Weede, Joan Diener, Steve Arlen, Tommy Rall and Helen Gallagher, but alas, was not. People don’t know what they’re missing. It’s a great score beautifully sung by some of the best voices of the last century. Weede (The Most Happy Fella; Milk and Honey ) was nominated for a Tony.
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