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The Wizard of Oz and Kansas have been inseparable since farm woman Dorothy Gale first skipped down the yellow brick street. However a Mud Bowl Thirties picture may maintain Kansas again from what it needs to be.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
“The Wizard Of Oz” and the state of Kansas have been inseparable for the reason that film debuted in the summertime of 1939. However does a permanent picture from the Mud Bowl maintain Kansas again from what it needs to be at this time? Reporter David Condos ready this report for the Kansas Information Service and NPR.
DAVID CONDOS, BYLINE: Any Kansan who has stepped outdoors the state has heard the identical quip. Nathan Dowell actually has.
NATHAN DOWL: the joke. They’re like, oh, you are not in Kansas anymore. Like, you realize, if I had a nickel for each time I heard that.
CONDOS: However he does not thoughts an excessive amount of. In spite of everything, he is the museum director at two “Wizard Of Oz”-themed sights in his hometown of Liberal, Kan. – Dorothy’s Home and the Land of Oz.
DOWL: We now have every kind. And up right here, we’ve got a number of posters.
CONDOS: Dowell reaches previous a glass memorabilia case to tug a framed doc off the wall. It says the state has designated this city in far southwest Kansas because the official dwelling of Dorothy Gale.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE WIZARD OF OZ”)
JUDY GARLAND: (As Dorothy Gale) I’ve a sense we’re not in Kansas anymore.
CONDOS: Actress Judy Garland’s well-known line gave Kansas a world model. However generations after the movie’s launch, that model may not be all bluebirds and lemon drops anymore. So is the state’s connection to “Oz” a present or a curse that retains Kansas boxed into an outdated, inaccurate picture?
DOWL: Properly, you realize, the film did not work too exhausting to promote us with how black and white the whole lot is and the mud and the whole lot. However the message of the film remains to be there is not any place like dwelling.
CONDOS: Maybe nowhere is that contradiction on show greater than proper right here at Dorothy’s Home in Liberal.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Dorothy Gale) All proper. So proper right here, we’ve got our yellow brick street. And on right here, we’ve got over…
CONDOS: That is our tour information. You might need heard of her.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Dorothy Gale) I’m Dorothy Gale.
CONDOS: She’s 1 of 10 Dorothys on employees right here, and all of them stay stubbornly in character whereas on the job. She skips down a path of bricks painted yellow, sporting sequined pink footwear and a blue gingham gown that museum guidelines specify should be selfmade. She sings. She dances. She re-enacts scenes from the film.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Dorothy Gale) Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my.
CONDOS: This explicit Dorothy is the granddaughter of one of many museum’s founders, so portraying essentially the most well-known fictional Kansan and of all feels pure.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: I’ve some household which are like, you try this for a job? You receives a commission to stroll round in pink slippers and speak to folks? Like, yeah, after all I do.
CONDOS: Liberal’s model of “The Wizard Of Oz” could reside in a tan warehouse off U.S. Freeway 54 slightly than the Emerald Metropolis, however vacationers simply maintain coming.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE WIZARD OF OZ”)
RAY BOLGER: (As Scarecrow) To Oz?
JACK HALEY: (As Tin Man) To Oz.
JUDY GARLAND, RAY BOLGER AND JACK HALEY: (As Dorothy Gale, Scarecrow and Tin Man, singing) We’re off to see the wizard, the great wizard of Oz.
CONDOS: Someday’s web page within the museum guestbook options entries from Washington, D.C., Houston, Mexico. A truck driver from Idaho interrupts our tour to get his image with Dorothy. For lots of people, “Oz” nonetheless holds a particular place of their coronary heart. Current retirees from Wisconsin, Lee (ph) and Terri Wieser (ph), pulled over in the midst of their cross-country street journey.
TERRI WIESER: I noticed the signal for Dorothy. And I really like “The Wizard Of Oz” (laughter). I grew up with it.
CONDOS: Childhood recollections.
T WIESER: Yeah.
CONDOS: Yeah. Yeah.
T WIESER: Yeah, a number of good recollections.
CONDOS: So, apart from Dorothy and Toto, what precisely did they look forward to finding in Kansas?
LEE WIESER: I used to be pondering we’d see a twister.
(LAUGHTER)
T WIESER: Hopefully not.
CONDOS: And twisters will not be the least flattering factor some guests affiliate with Kansas. Our Dorothy tour information has heard all of it.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: I’ve seen lots of people and heard lots of people say that they thought this is able to simply be horse buggies and nothing right here. They usually have been fully stunned that it was – I do not know – fashionable (laughter).
CONDOS: It is exhausting to separate the movie from actuality, even for specialists like Brian Hoyle.
BRIAN HOYLE: I’ve by no means been to Kansas, though I really feel like I’ve generally via “The Wizard Of Oz.”
CONDOS: He is a movie research scholar who teaches on the College of Dundee in Scotland.
HOYLE: It is wonderful how a movie can have such cultural resonance that it units up in my head that, you realize, Kansas is that this good place, this protected place, this good place, the place that we sort of yearn to return to. , it is – there is not any place like dwelling.
CONDOS: He says one of many movie’s key improvements is the way it visually contrasts the subdued rural Americana of Kansas and the colourful Technicolor of Oz. Even to theatergoers in 1939, the sepia tones that wash over these Kansas scenes would have appeared previous, a throwback to the silent movie period.
HOYLE: After which Munchkinland hits you, and it is like you have not seen colour earlier than.
CONDOS: However at this time’s Kansas sits someplace in between these two extremes. Sure, it is windy, however Kansas has harnessed these breezes to turn into one of many high states for producing wind power. There are nonetheless loads of farms right here, however today, they’re run by fewer farmers who rely extra on GPS satellites than scarecrows. And two-thirds of the inhabitants of Liberal – hometown to the movie’s archetypal white farm woman – now identifies as Latino. The state has rising city facilities, too, which are attempting to show from constructing grain elevators to constructing microchips and electrical automobile batteries. But when outsiders nonetheless consider Kansas as Dorothy’s yard, that would damage efforts to draw the high-tech companies and staff it wants for the long run. Only a few years in the past, the state dropped its “Oz”-themed tourism slogan, there is not any place like Kansas. Colby Sharples-Terry of the state tourism workplace says it was time to increase outsiders’ view of Kansas past the yellow brick street.
COLBY SHARPLES-TERRY: I do not need to say it is like a love-hate relationship in any respect – completely adore the film – however we in tourism are tasked with altering perceptions about Kansas.
CONDOS: The state is not clicking its heels to depart “Oz” behind fully. It may by no means purchase the advertising that “Oz” has performed for Kansas through the years.
SHARPLES-TERRY: You may’t put a greenback quantity on that.
CONDOS: However as tradition turns into extra fragmented, the spell “Oz” solid over America may begin to fade. Gabbi Corridor is inventive director with tourism advertising company Noble Studios in Nevada. She says each new era grows up additional faraway from the movie’s heyday.
GABBI HALL: As vacationers age, is that one thing you possibly can anchor onto as a model?
CONDOS: But when not “Oz,” then what would Kansas anchor its model to? Corridor says current analysis from one other company reveals the highest phrases customers affiliate with Kansas are wheat, flat, boring and “The Wizard Of Oz.”
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE WIZARD OF OZ”)
GARLAND: (As Dorothy Gale, singing) Someplace over the rainbow, manner up excessive…
CONDOS: So is Kansas nonetheless higher off with “Oz”? Jane Albright thinks so, even when it means enduring the identical previous jokes each every so often.
JANE ALBRIGHT: Some folks need to take that as an offense – I actually do not. It is essentially the most beloved film on this planet.
CONDOS: Now, she could also be biased. She joined the Worldwide “Wizard Of Oz” Membership as a 13-year-old rising up in Topeka, Kan. Many years later, she’s ending her sixth 12 months because the membership’s president, connecting lots of of “Oz” followers across the globe. And due to Dorothy, all of them know her dwelling state.
ALBRIGHT: Dorothy wished to get again to Kansas. And the entire idea of house is tied to Kansas in that movie. So, to me, there’s not something disparaging about that.
CONDOS: In the long run, possibly Kansas does not should be a magical dreamland to be someplace particular. It will possibly merely be dwelling. For NPR Information, I am David Condos in Liberal, Kan.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE WIZARD OF OZ”)
GARLAND: (As Dorothy Gale, singing) Sometime I am going to want upon a star and get up the place the clouds are far behind me, the place troubles soften like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that is the place you may discover me. Someplace over the…
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