J. Farrell MacDonald | His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (aka The New Wizard of Oz) / 1914

preferring oz

by Douglas Messerli

 

L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk (screenplay), J. Farrell MacDonald (director) His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (aka The New Wizard of Oz) / 1914

 

Anyone who has seen only the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz might not even recognize most of the characters of Baum’s 1914 cinematic rendition; indeed some of the figures presented here had not even been properly introduced within the covers of his serial publication of books.

    There is no “Oz” per se, just the court and castle of King Krewl (Raymond Russell) which is often described by commentators as being Oz, but which is not necessarily how it’s described in

the intertitles. Krewl’s lovely daughter Princess Gloria (Vivian Reed) is of marrying age, and her father is determined that she shall wed the court courtier Googly-Goo (Arthur Smollet) who we fully observe only late in the film.

     A sensible girl, she has her eye on the Gardener’s son, Pon (Todd Wright), a cute enough chap but not at all the kind of man her father imagines for a son-in-law. Krewl, catching them mid-kiss, scares the young man away; but Pon soon returns via a gardener’s ladder to reassure Gloria that he will love her for eternity.

     This time Krewl scares him off with two palace guards. And in order to make certain that Gloria will not continue her foolish infatuation with Pon, he pays a visit with his daughter to the local Witch, representing no particular direction, Old Mombi (Mai Wells), who has just captured a young lost girl from Kansas wandering around the forest, Dorothy Gale (Violet MacMillan), the first of the characters who today’s movie-goers might recognize.

      But this is not at all Garland’s Dorothy, since she has no dog, no particular destination in which to travel, and certainly has not discovered anything like the Yellow Brick Road which she might follow. As Mombi becomes distracted with the visit of the King and his daughter, Dorothy wanders out of her hut, meets Pon and mostly listens in on the evil doings of the King and Mombi through a back window.    

 

    What we discover is that Mombi, summoning up three of her sisters in witchery, intends to freeze Gloria’s heart so that she can love no one and therefore me mindlessly married off to Googly-Goo or whoever else Krewl has in mind. They succeed nicely, demonstrating to the audience through a kind out-of-body depiction how the normal heart, with just a little bit of ointment rubbed across the breast, becomes covered over with frost. And before you know it, Gloria has been transformed into a being so without will and thought that you might imagine they’d given her a lobotomy instead of a heart transplant. For most of the rest of the movie she simply wanders, following along with Pon and Dorothy. Once Mombi realizes her slave is gone, she attempts to chase her down through the vast woods of Oz, adding to the ever-increasing number of individuals on their way to nowhere.

       As film blogger J. B. Kaufman and several others have noted, it is almost as if Baum and the music composer Gotschalk were making the story up as they go along. As Kaufman writes: “Baum clearly felt bound to no particular scenario in constructing his films. Instead he unleashed his imagination, indulging in a kind of freewheeling whimsy as he concocted new adventures in the land of Oz.”

       They first meet a young boy (performed as a trouser role by Mildred Harris), Button-Bright who has absolutely no purpose in the film and basically admits it upon first meeting Dorothy and Pon (“I’m lost. I don’t know where I came from. And I don’t care.”). He follows along, simply adding to their growing posse.

      As the two plot out their future plans, they encounter the Scarecrow (Frank Moore), who we’ve previously seen created and, through a dance of the fairies and an Indian Princess in a “Spirit of the Corn” ceremony, was turned one autumn night into a living being. Helping him down from his pole they hardly even get the time to ask him if he’d like to join them. Mombi has caught up and, still weak in the legs and unable to run as fast as the others, the Scarecrow is attacked by the Witch, who pummels him with her broomstick and pulls most of the straw from his innards. Pon, Dorothy, and Button-Bright return to restuff their friend as they make their way now, so they have decided, to Krewl’s castle in order to usurp his power, declare the Scarecrow King, and help Gloria unfreeze her heart, an act which Pon has been trying to perform all along.

      Soon after, they discover along their path the Tin Woodman (Pierre Couderc) outside his Tin Castle. Dorothy takes out the oil can, and he fast becomes another friend. As they all rush into to his castle, evidently to rest up for the night, Mombi overtakes them once again, this time threatening the Tin Woodman who, finally irritated with her machinations, takes up his axe and chops of her head without even a pause of consternation.

 

      In probably the only true camera trick of the film, the headless Witch, now left alone, briefly reaches out with her hand trying to find her missing head and, when she discovers it, plants it back upon her neck. This time in her rage she changes Pon into a Kangaroo (the several animal figures of this work, including the mule, the kangaroo, and later the lion being all performed by Fred Woodward).

      By the next morning the odd mix of friends, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Dorothy, and Button-Bright, along with Gloria and the Kangaroo now wandering behind them, set out on their further adventures, this time like Jim and Huckleberry Finn in a raft with Scarecrow performing as the polesman. Alas, his pole gets caught in the bottom of the stream and he with it as he briefly slips underwater to experience a world of puppet fish and even a mermaid before he finally crawls back up the pole and is saved by a giant bird who grabs him up in his beak and drops off nearby where the others come back to shore. I might add, since we are talking about the film’s sexual significance, that by this time nearly all the male figures of the film, Pon, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, so we are told, have fallen in love with Princess Gloria even without a heart thump back in their direction.

      The next day on the raft results in further adventures as they meet up with a wall of water that forces them toward the sky and then back down into the normal waterbed with the help of a camera tilted to one side and then the other.

       At one point they encounter the one and only Wizard (J. Charles Haydon), not at court, but as a traveling salesman with a red wagon pulled by a sawhorse. To rid them of the Witch, the Wizard asks them each to climb into the narrow wagon, while Moobi attempts to follow, the others escaping out a bottom chute. Having entrapped her within, the Wizard takes out a huge can marked “Preserved Sandwitches,” pushing Moobi in the can and quickly covering it as he paints out the “sand” and the final “s” to describe the newly preserved product. Shrinking it down to normal size, he puts the bottle in the pocket of his vest.

 

      The Lion (Woodward again) makes a brief appearance, but seems comfortable at home in the friendly forest, and not at all cowardly as he complains of being in the 1939 version. When he meets up with the gang, very late it the film, he lumbers along with the rest of the posse, but as the group attack Krewel’s castle, discovers that he cannot climb up the wall as the others did just before. Whether he’s afraid of heights or simply displaying a large beast’s limitations is not made clear. But in any event, he misses out on the later palace battles and festivities.

        Dorothy and her gang easily overtake Krewl and Goggly-Goo, who for the first time we actually witness in action, perceiving him perhaps as a foppish sissy-boy—the only outward gay character in the film—although after seeing Krewel duel beside him, we might recognize that the King seems equally effeminate—which perhaps explains his determination to keep him near through his daughter’s loveless marriage.

 

      No matter, the Scarecrow, who has borne the slings and arrows all the soldier’s bows without bodily harm, is declared King, and the court celebrates when he finally finds a way to settle down upon the throne, having never been a very steady being on his feet. The Wizard shows up for the coronation ceremony, unleashing the Witch if she promises to unfreeze Gloria’s heart. She agrees to do so, and the newly awakened, kisses the Kangaroo, turning back into Pon. Everything seems to have turned out just the way it was supposed to, with Dorothy having no intentions of returning back to Kansas since it’s quite obvious she prefers Oz.

 

Los Angeles, June 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).