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TechnoratiThe Man Who Put the Rainbow in ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Thanksgiving is around the corner, and families will be gathering to share a meal and, perhaps, enjoy another annual telecast of "The Wizard of Oz." The 70-year-old film classic bears close watching this year, perhaps more than in any other, for the message woven into the lyrics, written during the Great Depression by Oscar-winning lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. There's more to the Scarecrow and the Tin Man than meets the eye, and Harburg's message has renewed resonance today in the midst of the greatest financial collapse since the Depression.
Harburg grew up in New York's Lower East Side. In high school, he was seated alphabetically next to Ira Gershwin, and the two began a friendship that lasted a lifetime and helped shape 20th-century American song and culture. Ernie Harburg, Yip's son and co-author of the biography "Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz?," told me, "Yip knew poverty deeply ... it was the basis of Yip's understanding of life as struggle."
Harburg was deep in debt after the 1929 Wall Street crash. Gershwin suggested that Harburg write song lyrics. Before long, he wrote the song that captured the essence of the Great Depression, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" Ernie said of the music industry then: "They only wanted love songs or escape songs, so that in 1929 you had ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.' ... There wasn't one song that addressed the Depression, in which we were all living."
"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" became a national hit and remains a kind of anthem for hard times, corporate greed and the dignity of working people:
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
In the 1930s, Harburg became the lyricist for "The Wizard of Oz." He also added the rainbow to the story, which doesn't appear in L. Frank Baum's original 1900 book, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." This led Harburg to write the famous song "Over the Rainbow," sung by the then-unknown Judy Garland.
While academic debate persists over whether Baum intended the story as a political allegory about the rise of industrial monopolists like John D. Rockefeller and the subsequent populist backlash, there is no doubt that Harburg's influence made the 1939 film version more political.
The film, says Ernie Harburg, is about common people confronting and defeating seemingly insurmountable and violent oppression: The Scarecrow represented farmers, the Tin Man stood for the factory workers, and the Munchkins of the "Lollipop Guild" were the union members. Ernie recalled: "There was at least 30 percent unemployment at those times. And among blacks and minorities, it was 50, 60 percent. And there were bread lines, and the rich kept living their lifestyle."
"The Wizard of Oz" was to be "MGM's answer to [Disney's] ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' " Ernie recounts. It was initially a critical success, but a commercial flop. Yip Harburg went on to write "Finian's Rainbow" for Broadway. It addresses racial bigotry, hatred of immigrants, easy credit and mortgage foreclosures. In 1947, "Finian's Rainbow" was the first Broadway musical with an integrated cast. It was a hit, running for a year and a half. When Harburg's unabashed political expression made him a target during the McCarthy era, he was blacklisted, and was banned from TV and film work from 1951 to 1962. Ironically, in the middle of his blacklist period, CBS broadcast "The Wizard of Oz" on television. It broke all viewership records, and has been airing since, gaining global renown and adulation.
This October, "Finian's Rainbow" began its first full Broadway revival-the first since it was originally produced six decades ago-to rave reviews. Yip Harburg would be especially proud, no doubt, to know that one of the actors, Terri White, who plays a black sharecropper in "Finian's Rainbow," is back on Broadway despite having recently been homeless. From sleeping on park benches to starring on Broadway once again, this is just the kind of tale that inspired Harburg.
In response to his blacklisting, Harburg wrote a satiric poem, which reads in part:
Lives of great men all remind us
Greatness takes no easy way,
All the heroes of tomorrow
Are the heretics of today.
...
Why do great men all remind us
We can write our names on high
And departing leave behind us
Thumbprints in the FBI.
Let's give thanks to Yip Harburg and all heretical artists, past and present, who have withstood censorship and banishment just for talking turkey.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
33 Comments so far
Show AllPutting aside the political subtext of this interesting article, I realized for the first time that Harold Arlen, who wrote the tune for "Over the Rainbow," had a collaborator, Y.E. Harburg, for the lyrics.
I got to wondering about this collaboration and wanted to know more about it. I found a gem of an article by Laurence Maslon that answered all my questions.
You can find it at http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=298
Bring America Back !!!!
***All Progressives need to know who put the 'rainbow' into
the wonderful Wizard of Oz !!! I've always thought that the
Star Wars Seriologies drew upon the mix of humans with
imginary characters like Chewbacca, R2D2, and Jabba the Hut !
Exactly like the mix of the wonderful Oz characters !
***What we also could learn from Amy Goodman would be the
exact identity(s) of 'the man behind the curtain', who on
Sept 11, 2001 told her to report Bldg #7 World Trade Center, NYC had
collapsed, when clearly on videotape over Amy's shoulders
stands upright Bldg #7 !!!!
***Shortly thereafter, Bldg 7 did collapse into it's own
construction footprint at 5:30pm, and from having been
pre-rigged with explosive demolitions. The owner of Bldg 7
referred to the incident, as the "pulling" of the structure,
a term reserved only for pre arranged demolitioning of
buildings in the construction industry ! "Pulling" !!
***Clearly, 'the man behind the curtain'==just like the
Wizard, had fore-knowledge that Bldg 7 was going to come
down, and wanted to get the "scoop" out to his favorites!
***'The man behind the curtain' also favored the CNN network
as well as the BBC network with this advance knowledge, because they reported Bldg 7 as collapsed , also prior to
its doing so !!!
****Progressives need to know from Amy Goodman exactly
who and where she received the info about Bldg 7 that day!
Perhaps , we need that info even more than who put the
Rainbow into the Movie ! ??
From Rhymes for the Irreverent by Harburg.
In '29 when the banks went bust
Our coins still read "In God We Trust"
And for the brave at Thanksgiving dinner you might offer an alternative prayer:
"For what we are about to receive,
Oh Lord, "tis thee we thank,"
Said the cannibal as he cut a slice
Of the missionary's shank.
It is unfortunate that "The Wizard of Oz" is not brought out to full screen theatres more often than it is. You haven't seen that scene in which Dorothy Gale opens the black and white door of her home to the technicolor world of Oz until you have seen it on the big BIG screen.
I was the manager/projectionist in a theatre that specialized in small art movies, cult classics, and foreign films. We ran kiddie matinees on weekends. It was an old theatre with a huge screen and in it I was thrilled to be showing some movies that truly deserved big BIG screen presentation and rarely got it, even then, and even less now (I'm not sure anyone can say they've seen movies like "Bladerunner", "Eraserhead", "Koyaanisqatsi" etc. if they have not seen them on the big BIG screen)
It was during a several weekend run of "Wizard of Oz" that my world turned rather dark and foreboding: a friend of mine was shot in the head during a robbery attempt. The movie was the one bright and inspirational spot in my life at that time, and I am still grateful to it for the life raft it gave me during an otherwise bleak and frightening time.
Curious, and I don't mean his in any homophobic way, but why do gay men like "The Wizard of Oz" so much? I know this has part to do with the way gay men seem to be enamored with glamorous actresses who came to a tragic end, like Marylin Monroe and Judy Garland. I guess sit also has to do with the campy-ness of the movie too. But that just brings up the question of why is camp associated with gayness?
questions ur putting in here do sound right of course, only why are we all so relating certain issues with certain other issues and in certain ways too?
when my mother, a Hollywood addict since an early age, also sympathized with MM's or JG's "tragic end"s, did it mean she was gay (lesbian, whatever) for that matter?
she sympathized with the tragic deaths of almost any single man or woman or large groups of people anywhere and for whatever the reason, and although of a little bit of a domineering attitude (mainly because my father was a rather quiet and silent man without such attitudes himself thus leaving the 'part' for my mother to take in order to handle family issues) she was still very womanly, as well as very romantic and with her own weak or strong points and characteristics, just like everybody else.
although coming from a rather troubled childhood --grown up without a father, under a depressed and sad mother and living in poor financial conditions albeit coming from aristocratic backgrounds, my mom nonetheless was indeed a rather 'gay' person though, for as far long as the word meant (still means in the dictionary!) something like "happy" or "cheerful" and so forth, as in "children are gay" or "yellow is a gay (happy BUT NOT NECESSARILY homosexual!) color" and things like that, yet somehow, only heaven knows why, the word has long since been ended up with an almost totally different implication; and just because the generally homophobic society is against homosexuals (rightly so?) then the word *gay* is now mouthed in a 'peculiar' manner with 'weird' meanings and 'visions' or 'sounds' or "atonement" etc so wrongly attributed to it ...
i saw this old lady working in a huge American chain store in the suburbs of some Californian county lately, with her name GAY printed loudly in bold capitals on her id badge!
imagine that: they very same type of people who handle the word so "homophobially" these days, used to even call and officially christen their children with it in the not so distant past ...
That's cool. I had no idea. Thanks.
wow what a great piece. Consequently this is where the rainbow in the gay rights movement comes from as well. I grew up loving this movie, just like millions of other queer folk all over the country. For queers, hearing Judy sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was a dream we couldn't dare hope for. Hearing Glenda the good witch telling the munchkins to come out! come out! and seeing the world in color, was something from our dreams. Of course the message is for anybody, we all have to find our own self worth; and friends and family really are the most valuable things in life.
Oh; and my favorite lines are,
"Rats! Trapped like mice!" when the lion, scarecrow and tinman are surrounded by the guards in the witches castle
and
"Toto to? Toto to!" when Dorthy is finding out she can get back to Kansas after all
The Wizard of Oz came out in 1939 eh! Judy Garland was unknown! I was just a kid but I thought I'd known her forever.
My sister and I watched it together in the Futurist Cinema on Scarborough beach. It was wartime and the beach was festooned with barbed wire and, I suppose, land mines . . . although I never tested my luck.
The allegorical significance was nearly lost on us little kids . . . until . . . until Toto swished the curtain . . . I've been a cynic ever since.
My daughter and I watched it, together again, on telly this fall. Toto is still the smartest of the lot!
Huh, a gun just went off outside my window: of course November eleven.
Are those be-medaled old farts mourning their dead and glorify their deeds to impress naive young kids to off and fight the next one?
I don't have any medals but I know the smell of cordite . . .
The guy is still behind the curtain . . .
The images and characters represent political images of the time and the debate of the day regarding monetary policy. In the book Dorothy's slippers are silver.
"I'd unravel every riddle
for every individ'le
in trouble or in pain"
I don't know a snippet that expresses a better thought!
Amy Goodman is another phony "liberal" and obvious gatekeeper of the U.S. Empire.
Listen to Amy Goodman carefully--she is a wonderful disinformation specialist who is heavily funded by the elite establishment.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You're either completely ignorant of Amy Goodman and Democracy Now or you are a right-wing troll.
Goodman was the only broadcast journalist with any significant audience size to fearlessly and consistently blast Team Bush's WMD lies in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. She was the only one at that time who interviewed at length informed, well-credential WMD experts like former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter and various experts from the DOE and IAEA (such as Mohamed El-Baradei and Hans Blix) who criticized the WMD lies as well--when the rest of the broadcast news herd were blackballing these people entirely and hosting retired military spokespersons who were paid shills for the Pentagon. She routinely has as guests whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds that none of the MSM will touch.
Let's see one (1) example of disinformation by Amy Goodman, or an example of how she is funded by "the elite establishment."
Thank you metal. I started listening to her during the first "Gulf War" when she could only be heard on WBAI and was the only broadcast journalist period (maybe not with a significant audience then)to give any alternative to the vulgar regurgitation of Pentagon propaganda that was being served up on the MSM. That was the beginning of the new paradigm for post-Vietnam war coverage.(I'll never forget watching Diane Sawyer practically drape herself all over a new killer tank on display in the studios; she was like one of the blonde bimbos they used to have on "Let's Make a Deal.") "Democracy Now - the exception to the rulers!"
"You and your little dog, too.... YEEEEEEEhahahahahahahha...."
While I appreciate some of the things Amy Goodman does, I agree with at least part of the sentiment that EastCoastLefty101 states.
Why doesn't she take the extra necessary step? I find many similarities between Goodman and commondreams in that they supposedly espouse progressive views, but when push comes to shove, always chicken out (sell out?) by supporting the corporate candidate.
Why wasn't there really continuous criticism of Obama during the primaries on the very issues that he is failing on today (health care and the war)? And don't say that people didn't know. People knew, Nader knew.
Why were Nader, Kucinich, and Gravel given a back seat and not given serious attention to their candidacy?
It's easy to criticize Obama now, even commondreams does it, but it was missing in action when it would have made a difference, during the primaries.
Mr. Nader was talking about the same exact issues when running for president but they didn't publish it then. Instead they took and Obama/Hillary slant.
And Mr. Nader is aware of these contradidtions. During the 2000 election, when he filled up Madison Square Garden (over 15,000 people showed up), he said on the podium that the New York Times would not publish anything about the event the following day. And sure enough, the supposedly left leaning NYTs did not have one word about it. Two days later there was something in the entertainment section related to the musicians who performed for the event (Patty Smith, Ben Harper etc).
It's a sham and a shame. And maybe Amy Goodman and commondreams is perpetuating it.
not one more it was your responsibility to
speak up here when obama was running for
office. did you? as a matter of fact it was
all of our job to speak up against him!
I started a website, mailed a letter to each democratic representative asking them to take the Pledge for Peace, wrote letters to the editor, attended peace marches, had antiwar stickers on my car (next to the Nader sticker), talked to friends and family, and strangers.
I started the website in 2006 when I saw that the democrats were failing to end the war.
www.NotOneMore.US
You missed something.
Were you listening to the same Amy Goodman???
Though 2008, she had Nader and Kucinich on her program and covered their campaigns many times. Her program was the ONLY one where Obama's right-wing campaign positions were openly and honestly criticized.
She's put her body on the front lines to report stories everyone else ignores.
What have you done, besides parrot cliches?
Are you really a lefty?
Joe
While she may not go as far as some would like, I still welcome her as an ally. D Now! is one of the only outlets to cover important real stories.
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by dismissing her as a tool of the Empire.
You agree with nothing she has to say?
"You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by dismissing her as a tool of the Empire." -- socialist
I agree!
I start every morning with Democracy Now! -- on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. In fact, if I have to leave the house earlier, I feel completely disconnected from the world, as if I am missing something important.
If I want to know more about a subject, I pick up a book and learn more. Amy can't cover everything in a single hour. Regularly, she interviews Ralph Nader, Nomi Prins, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Dennis Kucinich, etc. -- countless people who are NEVER interviewed by the M$M.
Why, since Amy is practically at ground zero nothing on 911? It makes you wonder if she has been blacklisted or censored somehow; especially since she has other stories that are much less important to most New Yorkers and the country compared to 911. No Steven Jones, no 911 truthers,??
I'd say that there is a large chance that you, and the other tin-foil-hat loony critics of Ms. Goodman are on the FBI's payroll, or their useful idiots.
I have always seen "Oz" as a uniquely anti-religious film, that kind of snuck in under the radar so to speak. What I see as its message is that what we seek is already within us waiting to be discovered. We already have everything we need, so don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.
Very interesting comment. Yet for me the essence of Christianity is "The kingdom of God is within you." Same message. So is the film anti-religious, or is it pointing back to a revolutionary spiritual insight that has been buried by the institutional co-option of the Jesus story?
Harburg was also a strong atheist, knowing "god"(tm) to be another tool to oppress the poor.
The poem's worth quoting in full:
Lives of great men all remind us
Greatness takes no easy way,
All the heroes of tomorrow
Are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo,
John Brown, Thoreau, Christ and Debs
Heard the night cry "Down with traitors!"
And the dawn shout "Up the rebs!"
Nothing ever seems to bust them—
Gallows, crosses, prison bars;
Tho’ we try to readjust them
There they are among the stars.
Thus do great men all remind us
We can write our names on high
and departing leave behind us
Thumbprints in the FBI.
And gobblers of all colors, "Leave your left wings at the Company Gates".
I have never tired of "The Wizard of Oz." It is a brilliantly-written and scored film, for all the reasons stated in this article. It is one of the best political films of all time. As a child I don't know why I liked this film so much, although maybe it was because I wasn't a superficial child. I was never content with mere fluff. As a child I hurt a lot and so "Rainbow" held a lot of significance for me. As I grew older I listened to every line of this film carefully. It is more relevant today than ever before, I agree. Ironic that Amy Goodman writes this today. When I was Costco last week, as I browsed through the stores, looking at things I couldn't begin to think about buying, I came across this huge 70th Anniversary packaging of this movie. It's big and there was no price tag, and you know what they say about items with no price tags -- don't ask because you can't afford it. And, really, the only part of this package you need during these hard times is the movie.
One my favorite lines in this film is the Scarecrow, in excusing himself for talking too much: "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking." I always think fondly of Congress when I hear this line.
"As a child I don't know why I liked this film so much, although maybe it was because I wasn't a superficial child. I was never content with mere fluff." -- Samalabear
The same is true for me! Well said!
In addition, I was drawn to the music -- melodies and lyrics. I still remember reading the original Baum book to my oldest son and my niece and newphew. They were mesmerized by the book -- as I recall, I read it to them in just a couple of days, and they were quite young -- 2, 3 and 4. When we watched the film on TV, they were enthralled, eyes wide, seeing the characters brought to life on the screen!