Well, number one, that was a whole accident. I met Ken Harper on the
street, at Third Avenue. We had dinner. And after dinner at my apartment Harper
said he want to do The Wizard of Oz
with today’s music—as a television show or something to that effect. It was not
a Broadway show at the time. He wanted the bad witch to be beautiful and the
good witch to be ugly, someone like Moms Mabley—and Josephine Baker to be the
bad witch.
He
asked me, “Oh, you would be lovely as the Wiz.” Well, I said, why not? As a
black guy, I said I must help him. I should support him. It was a nice idea.
Geoffrey next elaborated on how the show acquired its backers, how he developed the concept drawings and costumes.
[Ken Harper] called me and asked if I’d like to come to an audition. I wore a
white suit, being very Geoffrey Holder, just to support Ken.
Now,
this old man’s sitting, listening to the music, and Ken Harper only had a
little cassette tape. He played the music for this man, and he tried to tell the
whole story, how he had conceived the story.
This
old man said, “Well, who can play Dorothy? Lena Horne is too old. We don’t have
any stars.” In that period nobody ever thought of Motown—nobody ever thought of
going in that direction. This old man, the only black he knew was Lena Horne!
I
was very disturbed at the presentation. I said, “Ken, when I get time, I will do
some drawings for you.”
So one day when I had some time, it was a Sunday, and I drew the Lion, the Tin Man
and Dorothy, the Tornado, and all the characters. I called Ken—I’ll never forget
this—he said, “Geoffrey, you know I don’t want to come to the west side.” I was
on 92nd Street and Broadway, and he didn’t want to cross Central
Park! I said, “Ken, find your ass in my house now.” So he came over and he saw
the drawings and he freaked out.I
said, “The next time you have an audition, show these drawings.” These drawings
would erase Judy Garland from their minds. It would erase Billie Burke. All of
the images they have of The Wizard of Oz
will be erased when they see it done this way.
A
couple months later he got a lead to Los Angeles, to Twentieth Century Fox. I
said, “Don’t leave without these drawings.” He took the drawings and I think he
took Charlie Smalls, or he took his music.
He
met Gordon Stalberg, head of Twentieth Century Fox. Gordon Stalberg just loved
the music, just loved the drawings, didn’t care for the book—wanted him to work
hard on the book. “Why doesn’t Geoffey Holder design the show, do the
choreography, direct the show, and play the Wiz? And here is 750,000 dollars.
Go ahead and do it.”
It
was the first time a major movie company had invested in a Broadway show. It
had never been done before. Ken was very happy about the whole thing.
I asked Geoffrey how he had become the director of the show.
I had never asked to direct. I had never asked to choreograph. I didn’t ask to
play the Wiz or even design the costumes. I did the costumes as a gesture to
support [Ken Harper].
Well,
in signing the contract, somebody said, “I don’t see how one man can do
everything.” I said, “That’s an insult to my energy!” See, the major directors
today have always been choreographers—Jerome Robbins, Herbert Ross, Michael
Bennett. You don’t have a choreographer and
a director. When you do costumes [too], you save money because you know exactly
how the costumes are going to be used; you don’t have to deal with a costume
designer who is busy showing his line and has not related to what the book is
all about.
They
had a clause that they wanted me to have a co-director. I said, “I’ve never
heard of a co-director. I’m not in trouble, why would I need somebody to help
me?”
And
they said, “Oh, we must have a co-director.”
I
said, “No no no, I need an assistant director—that’s something else.”
They
said, “If you don’t sign the contract, you’re out.”
I
said, “Fine, I’m out! I didn’t ask to be in in the first place. May I have back
my drawings?”
They
said, “Oh, we want the drawings.”
I
said, “No no no, those are MY drawings.”
There
was a bad conflict about that, because the concept was in the costumes. And
they knew that was what Gordon Stalberg liked. I was very broken-hearted, not
for the fact that I had to have a co-director. I was broken-hearted because I
thought Ken Harper would have stood up for me.
Well,
something told me, “Geoffrey, forget it. Resign and just do the costumes.”
“OK,
I’ll do the costumes. And I want to speak to the new director”—which was
Gilbert Moses, who automatically hired [choreographer] George Faison. “I don’t
want him to see my costume designs. I want to know what he has in mind. These
costumes were for my direction, for my choreography.”
[Gilbert
Moses] said, “How can you make a wicked witch melt on stage? And how can you
dwarf men and make them look like Munchkins?”
I
thought he had a concept—he didn’t. The man had no vision—no fantasy vision,
that is—I’m not knocking his credibility as a director. But he didn’t have a vision
for the show.
The
show opened and we were in Baltimore, and every time something was wrong, they
criticized the costumes. They couldn’t hear the crows sing. “Cut the costumes!”
Mr.
Faison wanted to have the tornado coming up like a tarantula. I said, “No,
that’s baffling to the audience. A tornado is something that goes up into the
sky.”
There
were a lot of misunderstandings. We were doing three different shows. The
reason why they really wanted Gilbert Moses was so that he could work on the
book with Bill Brown. That’s what they wanted him for. When the show got in trouble, they decided to get rid of Moses. Ken Harper asked everybody—he asked
Hal Prince, Donald McKayle, Patricia Birch, to direct the show. Pat Birch said,
“The only person who has any sort of continuity and some vision is really
Geoffrey Holder.”
I
was signed to direct the show. There was a lot of bad feeling for me. I was
considered arrogant. I was considered grand. And I am arrogant, and I am grand,
but I know what I know, and I know what I want.
I
got a hundred yards of black silk, and I went and said to the costume lady,
“Make me a black bonnet. Attach this silk to the bonnet. Fly that over that
trapeze and feed this girl like you feed a microphone, so that she can dance
around the house as the house spins.” And that’s how we got the tornado ballet.
And we stopped the show within the first two minutes! Gordon Stalberg was
coming back to see the show next day, and if I’m going to be the director by
then, I needed something new.
Geoffrey and I talked on for another hour at least—about adventures during the try-outs, the publicity campaign, theatre politics, Holder's 1983 revival, his short-lived involvement with the film version, Michael Jackson, and much more.
At one point, I mentioned to Geoffrey how much I loved the brilliant but subtle moment in the show when Dorothy quietly undoes her tight pigtails and lets her hair down while she is singing "Home." Dorothy visually grows-up while singing the song.
Geoffrey seemed pleased I had noticed and remembered that specific detail from seeing the show only twice, eleven years earlier. He said that Dorothy's journey from little girl to young woman during the course of the show was critical. Dorothy had to be a little girl at the opening of the show—and how do you make a seventeen-year-old Stephanie Mills look like a little girl? He explained he had put Dorothy in her best Sunday dress, as if the family had just returned from church and Dorothy hadn't changed into her everyday clothes yet. Dorothy is running around, playing with Toto, risking wear and tear on her most expensive dress, just like any very little girl might. Then Geoffrey casually mentioned his most brilliant touch. He had designed Dorothy's dress to be just a little too small for Dorothy, a little too short. She is outgrowing it! This subtle touch shows Dorothy is a child, wearing an old dress she's becoming too big to wear and that her aunt and uncle can't easily afford to replace.
I had just graduated from NYU's undergraduate design program and would be beginning my MFA at Yale School of Drama in set and costume design in the fall. I don't think I ever got a better lesson in my life in what real costume design could be. Geoffrey had created character, informed the audience of Aunt Em's and Uncle Henry's socio-economic status, gave Stephanie Mills something to play as an actress, and with luck, triggered some strong emotion-memories in the audience—all with a little white dress that didn't fit quite right.
I remember one other thing Geoffrey said that I find most pertinent to this three-blog series about creating an all-Black version of The Wizard of Oz. Geoffrey pointed out that L. Frank Baum, in his effort to make Dorothy a universally identifiable character—an every-child, so to speak—gave no indication in the text of Dorothy's race or skin color. Even W. W. Denslow, the illustrator, had made Dorothy racially neutral by coloring her skin a non-realistic skin color, bright yellow.
Geoffrey Holder's point is essentially the same made by pioneering Black theatre critic Sylvester Russell in Part One of this series. He wrote in his 1904 article: "The [Wizard of Oz] is a budget without race or color . . . It's a something from somewhere that nobody knows anything about." Race doesn't come into play when you're made of tin, stuffed with hay, are a lion, a cow, or a simple little girl, off on an adventure. I've little doubt that this idea informed Gertrude Blanton's decision that The Wizard of Oz was the right show for her all-Black production in 1923.
Anyone can be Dorothy. Anyone can go to Oz.
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