Not Pumpkin Pie!

Beth and I are back from California for the second time in a month, and from this year’s OzCon International, the first full one since 2019. I think the Friday programming might have been shorter than in previous years, but I haven’t actually checked on that. The themes this year were the centennial of The Cowardly Lion of Oz and Oz in animation.

First on the agenda was a screening of The Tin Woods, a short stop-motion about the Tin Woodman’s origin story. In order to simplify it and make it stand alone better, Nick Chopper is the only character seen on screen, and we’re not specifically told about the circumstances involved. In fact, there’s no dialogue.

Is that Tik-Tok’s schematic on the screen?
After that, we watched Ted Eshbaugh’s 1933 short The Wizard of Oz, which I’d seen before; and the remaining footage for Ken McLellan’s unfinished animated project from 1928. It looked like it was focused on gags and silly action sequences, much as the Eshbaugh one is, but it was supposed to eventually include characters from books other than the first. There was concept art for the Patchwork Girl, and the Sawhorse was actually incorporated into the Wizard scenario. Then came a history of Oz in animation with Freddy Fogarty, Atticus Gannaway, Eric Gjovaag, and Erica Olivera.

It seemed pretty thorough, but I’m always hearing about obscure Oz cartoons I was previously unaware of. I do remember watching the DiC Saturday morning cartoon, which used the designs and personalities from the MGM film, but also used the concept from the books of small towns with specific themes. Whether that was intentional or not, I couldn’t say.

Saturday started with the costume contest, and I keep telling myself I should enter again, but I never do. Most of the costume ideas I have don’t seem feasible with the resources I have access to. We got a Glinda, a Cowardly Lion, Te Craft as the 1902 stage version of Dorothy accompanied by Imogene, a very young Dorothy and Lollipop Guild Munchkin, an uncharacteristically shy Patchwork Girl, Erica as Ozma, Zoe O’Haillin-Berne as the Cinar anime version of the Wicked Witch of the West, and Ruth and Neil Cuadra as Ruth Plumly Thompson and John R. Neill on a book cover.

I wrote the Master’s Quiz this year, as well as another one that wasn’t used because I was unclear on the instructions. Freddy hosted a show-and-tell session, where what was shown included a quilt, some animation cels, and replicas of props from Return to Oz.

At Beth’s suggestion, I ended up talking about the time we went to Neill’s old house and the Jenny Jump State Forest. Everyone who attended got an Oz Kids cel. We saw the tail end of Dina Massachi’s talk about Dorothy’s guardians. Ryan Bunch gave a talk on Oz musicals, Eric Shanower one on the research for his book about The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, and Peter Hanff a discussion of Cowardly Lion.

The latter included a bit about his own correspondence with Thompson, and her history continuing the series.

There was some discussion of how the characters in the book develop over time, although I still think Notta Bit More was left with a lot to learn. After dinner, Brad Birch, showrunner of Dorothy & the Wizard of Oz, gave a presentation on that show.

I’ve still never seen that, as I think it’s only on Boomerang. A panel on Oz and the supernatural, with Shirley Carpenter, Gita Moreno, John Bell, and Dina, covered multiple topics under that general umbrella, although they admitted that it was a very broad topic.

I’ve often seen it come up that L. Frank Baum’s take on magic in his fantasy series is generally secular and scientific in nature. There’s no faith-based element, or need to believe in it in order for it to work. While magic users can certainly be evil, magic is neutral in and of itself. And while Baum had an interest in spirtualism, it tends not to come up in his books. But there are occasional indications of higher powers at work in the world, particularly in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Dina mentioned her fan theory that Dorothy could be a changeling, and while I don’t think I’ve come across that specifically before, I believe it was David Hulan who once suggested that she could have had a mortal mother and fairy father. The evening program ended with the 1927 play School Days in the Land of Oz, originally a puppet play performed by a school class.

Nate Barlow directed, Erica came up with the costumes, and I played the Cowardly Lion.

The play itself is a weird idea, with some of the main characters being students in Professor Wogglebug’s class, despite the fact that many of them are adults.

Jane Albright mentioned during rehearsal how weird it is that Ozma has a line “go home and tell your mothers” when a lot of the characters don’t have them. And the dialogue is pretty much all puns. There’s a recurring gag about Jack Pumpkinhead getting scared when someone (usually the Hungry Tiger) mentions pie, yet in Patchwork Girl, he makes pumpkin pies for his guests. There’s a reference to Cowardly Lion, but even more to Hungry Tiger, the 1926 Oz book.

The Sunday program started with a viewing of Journey Back to Oz, and while I didn’t watch the whole thing this time, I’d forgotten that they had sequences that were, uh…let’s just say homages to the pink elephant scene from Dumbo. Mombi makes an army of green elephants, and the Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion both have psychedelic fantasy sequences about encountering them.

But then, Disney had already ripped off themselves with the Heffalumps and Woozles. Sarah Crotzer, who wasn’t physically there, did a presentation through Zoom about Filmation’s Oz projects, most of which never made it past the planning stage. She particularly focused on The Yellow Brixx Road, which sounds like it was essentially The Electric Company with Oz elements.

There was an article on this show in the Spring 2021 Baum Bugle. Sam Milazzo talked about animated parodies of Oz, something pretty much every cartoon series did at some point. I hadn’t seen any of the ones he focused on, which were Marsuplilami, Rugrats, Phineas and Ferb, and Earthworm Jim. I watched that last one pretty regularly, but hadn’t seen the Oz episode. Sam did mention two animated parodies I watched on their original airings, Beetlejuice and Futurama. And that was it, although we did do some more stuff in the area, which I’ll save for another post. I was able to obtain pretty affordable hardcover copies of Grampa, Giant Horse, and Pirates, plus Eric’s new book on Tik-Tok Man and Dina’s The Characters of Oz.

One theme for next year’s convention will be games, so that will be two things I like and Beth doesn’t. We’ll have to see what happens with that; it’s too early for me to make plans for next year. And thanks to everyone who talked with us, despite my incredible awkwardness even with people I know.