Jack Snow and The Magic Sled

A couple days ago Jared Davis's Oz blog featured a free on-line recording of Jack Snow's Christmas short story, The Magic Sled. I encourage you to go check it out. Listen to The Magic Sled here!

Original 1955 appearance of THE MAGIC SLED

Snow of course was the author of The Magical Mimics in Oz, The Shaggy Man of Oz, and Who's Who in Oz. After Snow lost his job working at NBC he was hired as a staff writer for the Associated Hospital Service of New York and he edited their in-house newsletter, Inside AHS. It is very probably that Snow named the newsletter himself, as the AHS initials in the title could well be pronounced as "Oz". Jack Snow wrote The Magic Sled for the December 1955 issue of Inside AHS.

The illustration (at left)  is signed Richard Rodriguez. There is some very circumstantial evidence to suggest the illustration might be the work of one of Jack Snow's boyfriends. Yes, Snow was gay in case you hadn't heard. The original AHS printing of the story includes a very brief introduction by Snow, too. If you click on either of these images they will expand to a much more readable size.

Hungry Tiger Press reprinted The Magic Sled in Oz-story No. 5 where it was newly illustrated by Eric Shanower (see below).

Happy Sledding!

Return to Oz on the Silver Screen

This last Sunday, November 28, 2010, Eric Shanower and I had a marvelously Ozzy day!

First we made a visit to L. Frank Baum's grave in Forest Lawn. This was the first time we had been there. It was really nice and I'll talk a bit about that in a blog later this week.

The reason for our day out was to attend an Ozzy double feature. Both the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz and the 1985 Disney Return to Oz were being shown at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. And if that wasn't draw enough, Return to Oz Director Walter Murch was scheduled to be on hand for a Q&A session after the screenings. However, Sunday morning it was announced that the star of the film, Fairuza Balk, would also be appearing!

It was very interesting to see the two films back-to-back. And I liked Return to Oz better than I ever have before, too. Maybe I'm just so aware of its few shortcomings that I'm just not as bugged by them anymore. It was a great day, a great evening, and several other Ozzy friends joined us for the fun.

Of course Eric and I dug a few things out to be signed by Fairuza and Mr. Murch.

Walter Murch and Fairuza Balk on set during Return to Oz

I was happy to find the photo (above) among my Return to Oz images. It shows Murch directing Fairuza on set during the shooting of the film - so it seemed perfect! As you can see they both signed it! Hah!

David Maxine & Fairuza Balk

In the Q&A Murch showed a surprisingly thorough knowledge of Baum's life and career. He also told of reading The Tin Woodman of Oz when he was a kid and how strongly he was affected by the scene where the Tin Woodman has a conversation with his old "meat" head.

Fairuza told of her audition process for the film, and of reading the Oz books as a kid, too, and most interestingly told of a dream she had just before shooting on the film began, where Judy Garland was scolding her and demanding the return of her shoes! Fairuza also told of a day she'd been tired and frustrated and ran away from the set. She went and hid on the back lot at Elstree Studios. She was very generous with her fans afterward, too.

It was a great evening.

Programs! Get Your Programs!

In 2009 I served as Chairman of the Winkie Convention, the largest and longest-running of the International Wizard of Oz Club's annual Oz conventions.

One thing I did in 2009 was to produce and publish an elaborate Program Book for the convention. It contained not only the basic necessities: schedule, maps, information on mealtimes, etc. But I also included a lot of bonus material, interviews with the speakers, bibliographies, essays on the conference's theme by respected Ozian writers, illustrators, and scholars. The 2009 Program contained contributions by: Ray Bradbury,  Gregory Maguire, Eric Shanower, John Fricke, J. L. Bell, Edward Einhorn, and Michael O. Riley. Also a pin-up gallery containing new Ozzy art by Skottie Young, Tommy Kovac, Joe Phillips, Eric Shanower, and Steven Weissman. There was a good deal of other stuff, too, filling out the book's 128 pages. The cover was reproduced from the original painting Michael Herring did for the 1978 Del Rey edition of The Road to Oz.

I was so pleased with the response the book got that we decided to make it a tradition and I prepared a Program book for the 2010 convention as well. This year's volume contained essays by Robert Baum, Edward Einhorn, Judy Bieber, Booklist columnist Michael Cart, and Atticus Gannaway. Bonus features included an art gallery by illustrator Frank Kramer, excerpts from Baum's Flying Girl novel, and a large portion of the 1932 comics adaptation of The Emerald City of Oz, as well as a couple extremely rare items from the Baum Family.

The tradition will continue in 2011 when I am again serving as Chairman for the Winkie Convention and we will again have a deluxe Program Book. But we have a new twist! For several reasons we need people to register as early as possible this year. As an incentive, all people who register on or before December 1, 2010, will receive a hardcover copy of the 2011 Program Book! This may seem like short notice, but the information has been included in all our mailings and on the Winkie Convention tab in the header of this blog. This is just a final bit of encouragement! The cover for 2011 will be a new full-color wraparound image created for the Program Book by Eric Shanower. Just to be clear - All Con attendees will receive the paperback version of the program! The hardcover edition is a thank you gift for the early registrants.

If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, you need to print the Registration Forms from the PDF below and send them to the Registrar listed on the forms. Please try to make sure your letter is postmarked by December 1st! Or contact the Registrar at phanff@library.berkeley.edu and tell him it's on the way. The Registrar can also answer any questions about this.

It's gonna be a great Convention and a great Program Book! Don't miss out!

You can download our PDF Registration Forms at the link below:
http://hungrytigerpress.com/winkies_2011_registration.pdf

Sis Sez Sunday - 22

Sis sure doesn't relish her job at the hot dog stand! And How!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 24, in March 1938. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

When I Think of Home

I found this great video of Stephanie Mills performing "Home" from The Wiz. Mills, of course, created the part of Dorothy in The Wiz back in 1975 on Broadway, and she went on to play Dorothy in both the 1984 and 1992 revivals as well. I saw Stephanie Mills three times in the 1992 revival. She was extraordinary!

Despite being thirty-five years old in the 1992 revival, she was absolutely convincing as a little girl. She wasn't even playing Dorothy as a teenager. Dorothy in the stage version of The Wiz is probably at the most twelve. One thing that helped incredibly, besides Mills's singing and acting, was the fact that she is very short. Probably less than five feet. So the rest of the cast towered over her.

The video below is not from the stage version. It is a music video of Mills performing the song as she did on her 1989 album called Home. She dedicates the song to her friends from Oz - meaning not the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, but Wiz composer Charlie Smalls and Wiz producer Ken Harper, both of whom had died shortly before the album was recorded. In the video you can see a photo on Mills's make-up table of her as Dorothy. She opens a trunk and looks through some of her Wiz memorabilia, including her Silver Shoes, and at the very end she fondly touches a photo of composer Charlie Smalls. Give it a listen!

Tastes Like Chicken!

To all of our readers in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving!

In celebration of Turkey Day here's a sneak-peak at Skottie Young's cover for Marvel Comics' Ozma of Oz No.4.

As you can see, the Hungry Tiger is delighted to meet Dorothy and Billina. We'll just have to hope his conscience holds firm and Billina makes it to issue No. 5! It's not too late to start reading Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's adaptation of this L. Frank Baum classic!  Issue one is in comic stores now!

And if you need to start at the very beginning, the collected editions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz are available in our on-line store.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Kramer!

Today is the birthday of Oz illustrator Frank Kramer who was born November 23, 1905. He would have been 105 today.

Kramer illustrated both of Jack Snow's Oz books, The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946) and The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949), as well as many sci-fi and fantasy stories for magazines such as Unknown Worlds.

I tried to contact Frank Kramer back in the late 1980s in hopes of getting an interview with him. There was a lot of mystery surrounding how he came to illustrate his Oz books - but I must admit I also hoped I might be able to get Kramer to sign a couple books for me. But it didn't work out. Kramer was too ill to communicate with fans by that point. But I did speak briefly with his wife. Kramer died in 1993.

In the last couple years Oz researcher, and former Baum Bugle editor, Atticus Gannaway has filled in many of the holes in Kramer's life and history, for which I am very grateful.

While I never did have the chance to get Frank Kramer to autograph a book for me, I was lucky enough to find a copy of Magical Mimics that he'd autographed for a little girl back in 1946 when the book was new. You can see the inscription below.  Happy Birthday, Mister Kramer!