Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 53, no. 1 (Spring 2009), pgs. 41–46
Citations
Chicago 17th ed.:
Berezin, Marc. “Oz on a Budget: The Making and Selling of Barry Mahon’s The Wonderful Land of Oz.” Baum Bugle 53, no. 1 (2014): 41–46.
MLA 9th ed.:
Berezin, Marc. “Oz on a Budget: The Making and Selling of Barry Mahon’s The Wonderful Land of Oz.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 53, no. 1, 2014, pp. 41–46.
(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs and vintage advertising that have not been reproduced here.)
There are Oz films—and then there are Oz films. Some are good (MGM’s Wizard of Oz, the 1973–74 Russian animated versions), some are bad (the 1925 Larry Semon Wizard) and some might best be described as the “ugly ducklings” of the Ozian litter. One such creature is The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969) directed by Barry Mahon. The life story of Barry (Jackson Barrett) Mahon would make an interesting movie itself. Born in Bakersfield, California in 1921 to an established family, he ran away from home, eventually joining the Royal Air Force. In 1942, after completing ninety-eight missions and shooting down nine enemy aircraft, he was captured by the Germans. In 1942, Mahon took part in a Stalag breakout that would later inspire the film The Great Escape (1963). During the 1950s Mahon became the manager of fading film legend Errol Flynn, and directed the star’s final film Cuban Rebel Girls in 1959. Over the next decade, as a writer-producer-director, he would churn out more than forty independently made low-budgeters. Some were thrillers or exploitation films (Rocket Attack U.S.A.[1961], The Dead One [1961]), but most were so-called “nudies”; relatively tame (by later standards) sex romps geared to the down-scale “grindhouse film” circuit. For the most part, these features were done without much effort or pride.
By the end of the 1960s, the industry began to change. U.S. film censorship was relaxed to the extent that Mahon felt that adult films “had become so rough that most of us can’t stand to make them anymore.”[1] Despite his cinematic stock-in-trade, he remained a family man and so decided (mostly) to forsake the nudie genre and instead embrace the opposite end of the 1960s filmic spectrum: the “kiddie matinee.”
While children’s matinees had existed for decades, the weekends-only kiddie matinees of the 1960s were the brainchild of producer/showman K. Gordon Murray. Along with rival Childhood Productions and others, he would lease children’s films (mainly newly English-dubbed fantasies from countries such as Mexico and the two Germanys) and show them on a regional basis at neighborhood theaters for one or two weekends. Beleaguered parents found them to be convenient babysitters while doing their downtown shopping. “There is no expanding market right now for exploitation films, but there is for kiddie films,” declared Mahon.[2] In any event, most of the domestically produced matinee-only fare (as opposed to mainstream studio productions from Disney and others) was extremely low-budgeted and the director’s planned output would be no exception. Most independent kiddie fare tended to be either well known fairy tales or Christmas Santa Claus features. L. Frank Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz (later shortened to The Land of Oz) had been in the public domain for nine years, and had already been filmed once in 1960 for The Shirley Temple Show. In view of its famous predecessor, it seemed a good choice. Before The Land of Oz (as it was then called) even went into production, Mahon had to agree to lay out $90,000 for advertising expenses in order for Childhood Productions to agree to distribute it. The actual film budget itself was a mere $50,000.[3]
While acknowledging that it would take $300,000 to break even on the deal, the director nevertheless was described as having “such confidence . . . that he is ready to predict $800,000–1,000,000 in domestic rentals.”[4] The script, he proclaimed, was “the best kiddie script anyone I know has seen.” Most surprisingly, he also hoped to “pull a coup” by having narration spoken by MGM Oz legend Judy Garland. While Mahon did have upscale Hollywood connections (he was a friend of Orson Welles), needless to say, the actress (who would die in June 1969) never loaned her vocal talents to the production.
Shooting began in early 1969 at F & B Ceco Studios of North Miami, Florida. Funding came from proceeds raised when Mahon’s Cinetron Corporation went public at the end of 1968. As was his norm, Mahon hired a young and inexperienced crew that would train on the job while working cheaply.
The on screen talent was equally unknown. Tip, the story’s main character, was awkwardly portrayed by Barry’s youngest child, ten-year-old Channy (Chandos Castle) Mahon (whose mother Clelle served as script supervisor).
The least obscure performer today would be Michael R. Thomas, who doubled as both the Scarecrow and character makeup artist. At age seventeen, Thomas had first appeared as Frankenstein’s Monster in makeup of his own design in Mahon’s Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico (1967). He would later go on to a successful career as a makeup artist on such big budget Hollywood films as Ghostbusters II (the former Oz Scarecrow also applied the Stan Winston-designed makeup in The Wiz) and act in direct-to-video exploitation flicks.
Al Joseph (Tin Woodman) had acting experience and later appeared in a Lipton Cup-a-Soup advertising campaign. Gil Fields (Wogglebug) was also a professional actor as was Franzisca Baum (Mombi). The actress, who was no relation to L. Frank, was simply billed as “Zisca” in the credits.[5] George Wordsworth (Jack Pumpkinhead) was a men’s clothing model. Thomas cannot recall anything about Caroline Berner and Hillary Lee Gaess (Jinjur and Glinda, respectively) other than that the latter “was paralyzed with stage fright” throughout the filming. While Mahon had promised to consider hiring talent from his previous efforts, the only possible ex-nudie veterans would have been members of Jinjur’s army.[6]
Despite a tiny budget and inexperienced crew, effort was made in some technical areas: the songs by George Linsenmann and Ralph Falco are adequate, but mostly unmemorable. Penni Praigg (today a Miami-based stained glass artist) designed some handsome Ozzy looking costumes and a local plastics company was engaged to create props such as the heads of Jack, the Gump and Mombi’s four-horned cow as well as the body of the Tin Woodman.
Mike Thomas recalls his nerve-wracking experiences as a novice makeup artist: “I had only the most rudimentary knowledge of foam latex, and relied on an old stage makeup book as a guide. That whole aspect of the project was a nightmare of the wrong materials, anxiety, guesswork and ignorance. That I managed to turn out anything was a minor miracle.”[7] For his character conceptions, Thomas employed stills from the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz and John R. Neill’s illustrations for The Land of Oz. “Unlike Jack Haley, Al Joseph had a flat nose, so instead of the usual funnel shape, I created a downward-pointing wax nose resembling a coffee urn spout. It’s a good thing that Baum left the Lion out of the book—doing that makeup would have been a terror! Tom Brumberger (later to become Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis’ personal makeup man) did the “beauty makeup for Glinda, Jinjur, and her army.”[8]
The production experience was harrowing for Thomas (“I arrived in Florida weighing 165 lbs. and returned to New Jersey at 140!”), but proceeded smoothly enough, with only one or two takes done on the tight budget. Many of the glaring technical deficiencies arose from the filming environment. F & B Ceco had once been a small factory, and was located in a heavily industrialized area, with airplanes constantly flying overhead. The extremely poor lighting (which led to multiple shadows being thrown all over the cast and backgrounds) was the result of cramped sets and the production being limited to two types of film stock, each of which required more lighting than could be procured under the physical and financial circumstances. Thomas does not consider the Oz film to be typical of Mahon’s cinematography, which was usually better looking. However, set designer Ray Menard (who also voiced the Gump) hadn’t much to work with, and the results were some very cramped-looking, bare-bones sets with thin plywood “scenery” and plain, tinted backdrops without even painted images on them (although the colors do match those of the Oz books).
By mid-year, shooting had ended. The film was re-titled The Wonderful Land of Oz, perhaps to remind audiences of the “Wonderful Wizard” referenced in song in the MGM film. The Childhood Productions deal was then announced in the trade papers.
The distributor prepared its standard kiddie matinee advertising, including a colorful poster promising “so many thrills you’ll be OZIFIED!” and commercial saturation of local children’s television programs. [The poster is reproduced as the back cover of this issue of the Bugle—Ed.] However, it seems that the Childhood publicity department was less than familiar with the film itself and the characters depicted therein. The press book lists “a Pumpkin Man” and “Glenda the Good Fairy” as personages with whom audiences would “renew acquaintanceships” while being introduced to “Jack the Pumpkinhead” (two Pumpkinheads?), “a talking horse,” and the Gump, “a huge bird made of sofas.” Neither the Sawhorse nor any other equine is in the film. Theater owners were encouraged to have local libraries mount displays of Oz books and film stills and to procure cooperation of PTAs and school officials to “circularize[sic] the children in the lower grades.”[9]
The new film hit the matinee circuit on the weekend of October 31-November 2, 1969 with a compact seventy-one minute running time. Mahon confidently told a reporter: “We think that OZ will gross conservatively speaking $40,000 to $500,000 this year and maybe that much next year . . . It will continue to sell for years. Pictures like that are ageless.”[10] Perhaps, but his estimates were already lower than they were a few months earlier.
It is not known if the film actually played in theaters after the fall of 1969, nor are there any box office figures readily available. Soon after Wonderful Land, Mahon directed several films at Pirate’s World, an amusement park/concert venue in Dania, Florida. He had hoped that he could continue in the kiddie matinee genre, but unfortunately for him, Childhood’s parent company Cinecom was sold and the new owners soon halted the release of new children’s films. Mahon was forced to rely on inferior distribution and his Jack and the Beanstalk (1970), Thumbelina (1970), and Santa’s Christmas Elf (Named Calvin) (1971) did not receive the sort of publicity that Oz had. Indeed, neither Mahon nor his Cinetron investors ever saw much from the entire kiddie endeavor. Years later, he claimed to one interviewer that Wonderful Land “was very successful, but the guy running Childhood ran it into bankruptcy.”[11] He told another that he had been “screwed on distribution” and that the Cinetron public offering was “a farce.” Dispensing with his grandiose tone of the past, he also commented about Thumbelina (and by extension Wonderful Land and his other children’s films) that “the only good thing about [it] was that it was made to play at kiddie matinees, where they weren’t too particular.”[12]
After shooting his 1970 kiddie and non-kiddie Pirate’s World efforts, Barry Mahon left filmmaking altogether and entered the Florida real estate market. Later, he returned to California, where he would become a pioneer in the use of computers to monitor motion picture budgets and schedules and provide financial analysis. Some of his children (including Chandos for a while) would become film producers. The erstwhile “Tip” wisely never acted again. He would leave film production to become the CEO of a number of entertainment technology-related companies. The elder Mahon died of heart failure in Las Vegas on December 4, 1999. Newspaper obituaries focused on his wartime heroics and made no mention of either the nudie or kiddie films.
The Wonderful Land of Oz quickly passed into oblivion. One of the only known reviews accorded the film was penned by John Fricke in the Autumn 1970 Baum Bugle. Fricke opined that it was “cheaply produced, poorly acted and badly directed.”[13]
For some reason, the compilers of the American Film Institute Catalog only listed Channy Mahon and Joy Webb (Ozma) in their cast list and mistakenly assigned songs written for the “Wonderful Land of Oz” stage show at the Banner Elk (North Carolina) Oz Park to the film (two sources have also erroneously reported that Dorothy appears as a character in the film). Wonderful Land remained available into the 1980s as a 16mm rental, but was rarely, if ever, screened. The kiddie matinee genre itself would dwindle and finally disappear by the end of the 1970s.
Sometime between the late 1980s and 1990 Mahon sold the rights to Wonderful Land and his other children’s films. By 1991, they were in the possession of Jeffrey C. Hogue. Inspired by a number of inquiries about its availability, he allowed Wonderful Land to be released by specialty label Something Weird Video in 2001 on videocassette, and as a double-feature DVD with Mahon’s Jack and the Beanstalk that was distributed by Image Entertainment in 2002. The latter release has since garnered a number of reviews from Web sites and blogs catering to those with a taste in “cult” and “so bad they’re good” type productions.[14]
Most modern reviews have concentrated on the astonishingly cheap production values, bad performances, and technical defects. However, at least one critical opinion has shown some affection: “It’s easy to mock Oz and take potshots at its ineptness and ‘bizarrity.’ Yet curiously, the film does effectively create a wholly imaginary world.”[15] While such qualified accolades have hardly turned this little ugly duckling into a swan, The Wonderful Land of Oz (one of the few U.S.-produced Oz dramatizations that is faithful to Baum) is at long last attracting some serious attention.
The author would like to thank Mike Thomas, Rob Craig, Scott Hutchins, Barry Yellen, Jeffrey C. Hogue, Ian Merrick, James Jaeger, and Willard Carroll for their assistance in preparing this article.
Sidebars: This article originally ran with two sidebars, one excerpting Rob Craig’s review of the film from KiddieMatinee.com (now defunct, but saved on Wayback Machine), one Freeman Williams’ review from The Bad Movie Report.
[1] Robert Metz, “Sale of Nudies to Cover Lien,” New York Times, 27 November 1969.
[2] “From Fanny Hill to Kidpix,” Variety, 1 January 1969, 23.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Zisca Baum also appeared in an uncompleted 1974 kiddie matinee, Pinocchio’s Mystery Movie Matinee. See Ron Merk, “Pinocchio’s Mystery Movie Matinee,” kiddiematinee.com/pmmm.html.
[6] Mike Thomas, telephone interview with the author, 23 June 2003.
[7] Mike Thomas, email message to the author, 22 May 2003.
[8] Thomas, telephone interview.
[9] The Wonderful Land of Oz [film press book], (New York: Childhood Productions, 1969).
[10] Metz, “Sale of Nudies.”
[11] David Todarello, “Mahon & Myth,” Highball Magazine 1:1 (September 1992), 31.
[12] Frank Henenlotter, “Mondo Mahon,” Cult Movies 11 (1994), 48. However, a correspondent of this author has indicated that Mahon did maintain some pride in his children’s films.
[13] John Fricke, “The Wonderful Land of Oz,” Baum Bugle 14:2 (Autumn 1970): 11, reprinted in The Best of the Baum Bugle, 1969-1970 (Antioch, CA: International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc., 2002), 88. With respect to the International Wizard of Oz Club, Mahon once stated, “that Oz Society of America[sic] bugged me until I finally found [a print], and they made a video of that.” Todarello, “Mahon & Myth,” 31. He was apparently referring to Oz Club member Willard Carroll.
[14] The film’s music also endures. YouTube.com includes clips of cover performances of Tip’s solo “I Don’t Want to be a Statue” by no less than two different punk rock bands.
[15] Rob Craig, “The Wonderful Land of Oz,” kiddiematinee.com/w-wloz.html.
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