So, too, “The Wizard of Oz”—released 70 years ago today—is, perhaps, the best film ever made.

Or, at least, the most quintessentially American—in terms of our struggles, hopes, aspirations, dreams, and, ultimately, unshakable confidence, that “somewhere over the rainbow… dreams… really do come true.”

MGM had purchased this highly popular and imaginative children’s book written by L. Frank Baum, and published in 1900, for $75,000, specifically for Judy.  During development, the silver shoes became ruby, thus undercutting Baum’s apparent allegory to “bimetallism”—currency backed by silver, replacing “the gold standard” and favoring rural farmers; in contrast to the worthless “greenbacks” some say Emerald City represents. 

We all know the story.

Dorothy, an orphan, living with her aunt and uncle on their Kansas farm, is always getting into trouble, especially with cantankerous Miss Elmira Gulch, who is trying to destroy her dog, Toto.  So, Auntie Em counsels Dorothy to “find a place where you won’t get into any trouble,” which Dorothy envisions in “Over the Rainbow.”

Running away, she encounters Professor Marvel, who perceives Auntie Em’s broken heart in his crystal ball, sending Dorothy scurrying back home but not in time to secure underground shelter safe from the coming tornado, now sealed shut. Barely making it inside the farmhouse, her bedroom window immediately blows loose, knocking out Dorothy and transporting her to the strange and enchanting Land of Oz—“over the rainbow”—where she meets memorable friends and foes, starting with beautiful Glinda, “Good Witch of the North,” whom the Munchkins have called after Dorothy’s house crushed their nemesis.

The Munchkins, she said, “are happy because you have freed them from the Wicked Witch of the East.”  But, Glinda informs Dorothy she has made a “bad enemy” because the “Wicked Witch of the West,” who has no power over Glinda, wants revenge for the death of her sister.

After Glinda reminds the Wicked Witch of the West about her sister’s shoes, she immediately tries to seize them; whereupon they disappear, the dead witch’s feet curling up—and Dorothy suddenly finds herself wearing the prized sparkling ruby slippers.

Glinda counsels Dorothy, “Keep tight inside of them.  Their magic must be very powerful.  Or she wouldn’t want them so badly.”

She also counsels her to seek out the “the great and wonderful Wizard of Oz” for help returning to Kansas, noting he’s “very good and very mysterious” and lives in Emerald City.  To get there, she counsels Dorothy to “start at the beginning” and “just follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

“And, remember,” Glinda says, “never let those ruby slippers off your feet for a moment, or you will be at the mercy of the Wicked Witch of the West.”

So begins her memorable journey down the Yellow Brick Road.

Dorothy soon meets her three traveling companions—the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion—during which they battle all manner of evil forces.  Finally meeting the Wizard, he says he will help only if they bring him the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom.  Incredibly they manage this fete only to discover the Wizard’s powers are limited to wise counsel about the power that resides within oneself—a power that Dorothy channels, at Glinda’s direction, by clicking her ruby shoes three times and repeating “There’s no place like home.”

Of course, “The Wizard of Oz” is more than a fairy tale.  For, Baum and his illustrator, WW Denslow—both active in politics in the 1890s—utilized the same long-standing images editorial cartoonists used to portray American politicians.  Their work, scholars argue, is a metaphor for political, economic, and social currents of the day, especially bitter management/labor clashes; the hardships of rural life; the debate over the currency standard at the heart of populism; and, the prevailing “power of positive thinking”—Dorothy’s ticket home.

The Tornado of 1939; the Coming Tornado of 2009

Yet, apart from its original allegorical intent, far more fascinating is the meaning “The Wizard of Oz” acquires in the context of world events the year of its release, when Hitler’s stated desire for “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” played out.

Parallels that continue, eerily so, in 2009—down to the Empire State Building being lit green during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjead’s visit, as part of a “Wizard of Oz” 70^th Anniversary celebration.

Reuters

At the time, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was pursuing a policy of appeasement based on his belief that the Allies had badly treated Germany after its defeat in World War I.  This only fueled Hitler’s aggression—leading to Germany’s occupation of Austria on March 13, 1938, and union with Germany (the Anschluss), explicitly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.

Several Members of Parliament including Anthony Eden, who had resigned as Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary, and Winston Churchill, now called on Chamberlain to take action against Hitler and his Nazi government.

Next, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia for Germany, a crisis heads of Germany, Britain, France and Italy “solved” while meeting in Munich, exactly a year before the “Wizard of Oz’s release,” on September 29, 1938, leading to the “Munich Agreement,” which transferred to Germany this fortified frontier region that contained a large German-speaking population. Czechoslovakia’s head of state, protesting this decision, was told Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland.

Churchill and Eden likewise attacked the otherwise popular agreement asserting the British government behaved dishonorably and had lost the support of Czech Army, one of Europe’s best.

It was only in March, 1939, when the German Army seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, breaking the Munich Agreement, that British Prime Minister Chamberlain finally realized Hitler could not be trusted.

Sound familiar?

On September 1, 1939, the month “The Wizard of Oz” was released, Hitler invaded Poland with over 2 million troops from Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Slovakia (a small contingent)—marking the beginning of World War II.

The “Polish September Campaign” began one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Germany-Soviet agreement pledging non-aggression if either was attacked by a third party), and ended October 6, 1939, with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.

Poland, 10% of which was Jewish, subsequently became the Nazi’s dumping ground for European Jews whom Hitler isolated in urban ghettos, the largest being the Warsaw Ghetto—where 300,000-400,000 people were densely packed, many of whom died due to rampant disease and starvation under the Nazi SS; many dying at Treblinka extermination camp—254,000-300,000 alone during a two months-long operation in 1942; tens of thousands more dying during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, protesting deportations to Treblinka—the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust.

By the end of the World War II about three million Polish Jews had died; only 50,000-70,000 survived.

Now, seventy years after the release of “The Wizard of Oz,” a parallel global situation is playing out where dishonest, or perhaps hopelessly deluded, Islamic extremist leaders are singling out the Jewish people, seeking, for now, to exterminate their memory by denying the Holocaust, most notably in the case of the Iranian President; or asserting, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, “Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. Or so says Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.”

Associated Press

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vigorously protested the United Nation’s giving a forum to the Iranian Holocaust-denying President, saying it was “a disgrace of the U.N. charter.”  (The Iranian delegation did not bother to attend the Israeli leader’s speech presenting the historical record.)

Mr. Netanyahu held up copies of minutes of the meeting of Nazi officials in 1942 planning the extermination of the Jews at Treblinka, as well as construction plans for Nazi concentration camps—documents he obtained on a recent visit to Berlin, including to a villa, called Wannsee, where the extermination plans were drawn up.

Villa in Wannsee where “Final Solution” conference was held on January 20, 1942

“Are these protocols lies?” he said, holding them up. “Are the successive German governments that have kept these documents for posterity all liars?”

Mr. Ahmadinejad had told a rally in Tehran, the week prior, that, “After the Second World War, [Jews] created the story of Holocaust… and then they made hundreds of films and wrote hundreds of books to argue they have suffered and need a home…. This is a myth, and Zionists are criminals.”

Mr. Netanyahu, while praising those who had walked out or had stayed away, castigated delegates who had remained in the General Assembly Hall to listen to Mr. Ahmadinejad, saying “… to those who gave this Holocaust denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?”

“Yesterday the president of Iran stood at this very podium and spewed his anti-Semitic rants,” he said. “Just a few days earlier he claimed that the Holocaust was a lie.  Perhaps some of you think this man and his odious regime only threaten the Jews. Well, if you think that, you are wrong, dead wrong. What starts as attacks on Jews always ends up engulfing others. … This regime embodies the extremes of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Drawing exact parallels to World War II’s carnage, Mr. Netanyahu said the “assault on truth” threatens a repeat of this bloody war and cited Winston Churchill’s warnings about metastasizing threats in the war’s run-up.  “The question facing the international community,” he said, “is whether it is prepared to confront these forces or just accommodate them.”

Indeed, will the world community have the confidence to reach within itself, like Dorothy, to confront the evil that threatens its arrival in a place where “dreams… really do come true”—where the peoples of the Middle East finally learn to live in peace by acknowledging and respecting each other’s cultural and religious differences.

She always wanted to be “glamorous,” forgetting her far-surpassing appeal as the very essence of America. 

Her story, the final earthly chapter ending forty years ago today, embodies American triumph and tragedy.  

Born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, her life nearly ended in 1921 after her parents’ marriage was rocked by revelations of her father’s homosexual infidelity. 

But, family physician Dr. Marcus Rabwin told Frank Gumm, “you go back to your wife and tell her I said she must have this baby.”  The “powerful” Garland “force field,” as fellow MGM star Ann Miller put it, was evidently already at work. 

“Baby” Gumm first stole hearts when, at age 2½, she performed “Jingle Bells” before an audience, discovering to her delight that, besides her father, her other great love was performing and making people happy. 

She just couldn’t stop singing; so her father finally had to carry her off the stage.  

The family soon decamped to a desert California town north of Hollywood after her father was “caught with a young boy.”  There, Ethel, sought solace from her troubled marriage by single-mindedly devoting herself into making the “Gumm Sisters” stars.  

Needless to say, little Frances was the standout-their big break coming in 1929 with four one-reel shorts.  But when comedian George Jessel evoked howls of laughter just by mentioning their name, he suggested they take New York Drama critic Robert Garland’s surname; Frances took her first name from Hoagie Carmichael’s popular song “Judy.”  

On November 16, 1935-six months after Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Louis B. Mayer signed up “Judy Garland”-she sang her first professional rendition of “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart,” live on coast to coast radio, as her father lay dying.  Dr. Rabwin, who 14 years earlier had advised the family to bring their daughter to term, called Judy to let her know her beloved father would be listening-radio waves being their last physical “connection;” he died early the next morning.  

The young, 4′11″ Garland came to studio executives’ attention when she sang “You Made Me Love You” to Clark Gable at MGM’s party celebrating his 35th birthday-a rendition she repeated, while looking adoringly at Gable’s photograph, in the all-star extravaganza Broadway Melody of 1938. 

Bandleader Artie Shaw famously summed up Judy’s talent, singing and dancing her way into America’s hearts, telling her, “You become the song.” 

So, too, she became the tragedy of American culture-force-fed uppers and downers, plus diet pills, by five different doctors so she could keep up the pace of performance demanded by her MGM bosses who were giddily beside themselves with her money-making potential. 

MGM hit the jackpot when it paired Garland with Mickey Rooney in a string of “backyard musicals.” This winning formula, first showcased in the ironically titled 1937 B movie Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, was followed by Love Finds Andy Hardy, leading to eight more films featuring this adorable, dynamic duo. 

Dr. Rabwin’s wife, Marcella, then working at MGM, asserted, “They didn’t mean to addict her. They were trying to get a picture finished.” Yet, the hard truth is, in the process of finishing the picture they laid the groundwork for Judy’s early demise.  

As E.Y. Yip Harburg, Wizard of Oz lyricist, explained, “A picture is one of the most devastating things to your nervous system.”  Even more so for Judy.  As Robert Goulet said, “No one came close to her because she was so vulnerable.”  

Her very vulnerability-she required constant reassurance she was, indeed, talented and pretty, given her high-strung, insecure nature, exacerbated by her teenage loss of paternal affirmation-was the source of her greatness.  This mega-talented star was all heart and just poured herself into her performances.  But, combined with all the barbiturates and amphetamines, it was a toxic mix.  As Oscar Levant wrote in his 1969 book, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, “at parties, Judy could sing all night, endlessly… but when it came time to appear on a movie set, she just wouldn’t show up.” 

In 1940, after Judy collapsed on the set of Strike Up the Band, in desperate need of months-long rest, she was given only weeks to recover.  

Besides her flagging energy, her tendency to show up late rankled her bosses, and on June 17, 1950, a week after she turned 28, MGM cut its prized star loose-the last straw being the demands of Royal Wedding (1951).  Thus, began a series of incredible comebacks, starting with her dazzling concert tour, including her history-making performance at the London Palladium.

Judy became close friends of Betty Hutton during Las Vegas performances, overcoming hurt feelings over Betty replacing her in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). 

Betty-while a lesser star, albeit possessing the same booming talent, paternal void, and extremely sensitive nature-almost died of a drug overdose just three years after Judy’s death, only to be “saved” by Fr. Peter Maguire, who helped her play the role of a lifetime-”Being Beautiful Betty.”  

“Being Beautiful Judy” was the one role Garland never mastered.  But, as a star, looking down from the celestial firmament, it’s a good bet she’s mastered it now.

*********************

Sources (among others): Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow, A&E Biography (1997), one of ten lives featured, including that of Ronald Reagan, during Biography’s 10th Anniversary celebration; Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir by Lorna Luft (1998); Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (winner of five Emmys, based on Luft’s book), Lifetime Television (2001).

The Duke, still ranked Americans’ all-time favorite film star, whose popularity only increases with time, was an “extremely close friend” of Ronald Reagan, said their close mutual friend, longtime Paramount Executive, A.C. Lyles.

Both “Duke” and “Ronnie” shared a clear moral vision concerning America’s greatness-only using force to liberate not conquer, as President Reagan characterized it five years, almost to the day, after Duke’s death, in his poignant tribute to the “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” on June 6, 1984, commemorating D-Day, in which, Lyles said, “he just spoke from the heart.”

“Here, in Normandy,” said Reagan, “… the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.” 

“When people saw (Duke) on the screen” in movies like The Longest Day, about the Normandy Invasion, Lyles said, “they always wanted to be on his side because they knew that under (his) leadership… they were going to be on the winning team. He was Americana.”  Like Reagan, “he made us all proud to be Americans.”

Sadly, Duke Wayne, who stumped on the campaign trail for his friend, helping him reach the pinnacle of American politics, left the stage before Reagan assumed the presidency.

There Reagan would effect in the present what Duke re-enacted in motion pictures.

But, he didn’t do it alone.

Reagan soon became friends with someone who cut an even larger figure on the world stage with whom he shared the same simple, yet large values, based on safeguarding the dignity and rights of man, which Fascism and then Communism had brutally undercut.

His friend-none other than Pope John Paul II-became, according to Nancy Reagan, his closest friend, sharing with him the same vision of defeating Communism without firing a shot.  Indeed, as Martin and Annelise Anderson reveal in their new book, Reagan’s Secret War, his ultimate goal was to rid the world of the nuclear threat, which is now more relevant than ever.

While Duke’s artistry brought to life hard-fought victories over Fascism, Reagan and the Pope engaged in this epic battle against Communism as history was unfolding.

Amazingly, Reagan-having helped liberate oppressed peoples behind the Iron Curtain-died almost 25 years to the day after Duke passed away.

Both represented a continuum of values evoked by Reagan’s words, speaking of the “Boys at Pointe du Hoc,” many in the audience, that “It was faith and belief, it was loyalty and love” impelling them to scale those Normandy cliffs.

“All of you loved liberty,” continued Reagan, and “God was an ally in this great cause.”

They were willing to die to “protect and defend democracy” knowing “God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next.”

“Do not bow your heads,” Reagan said, repeating Colonel Wolverton’s plea to his parachute troops the night before the historic Invasion, “but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.”

Now that America confronts an enemy every bit as daunting as that President Reagan faced, the question is, which Republican-and there can only be one-will look up and provide that continuum of morally clear, strong leadership today and in 2012?

Who, indeed, will speak from the heart?

Mary Claire Kendall, writer and commentator, has extensive political experience, including a stint as one of Lee Atwater’s “30 nerds.”  She served as a Reagan political appointee at the U.S. Department of Education, 1987-88.