Part 1

Part 2

When Dorothy opened her front door, she let in a swirling, Technicolor maelstrom of absurd gimmickry, as Mervyn LeRoy's half-baked, slipshod plan to capitalize on Walt Disney's success. And well, it was quite literally Technicolor. I'll give LeRoy credit for this much: if he was going to make such a drastic transition from Vidor and Canon's gritty pure cinema build to more Disney-esque cinema entertainment, the switch from sepia tones to Technicolor was an appropriate and well-used one. I cannot be nearly as complimentary to what was being colored. The garish fantasy land Dorothy stepped into was wholly incredible. Even Disney's settings weren't so far-fetched, and he built his promotion around a talking mouse as his top babyface!

It didn't stop there. Director Norman Taurog used this scene to introduce one of his big new signings, Billie Burke. Again, this was a good call in and of itself. Not only was Burke a good veteran hand who had performed ably throughout the decade in films like Dinner at Eight, Topper, and Merrily We Live (the last of which earned her an Oscar nomination), she had previously worked with Judy Garland in the movie Everybody Sing, which was pretty much made as a vehicle to help get over Garland with the fans. She was a natural fit for the movie. So naturally, they had to handicap her by giving her a ridiculous gimmick. Floating in in the shape of a large pink bubble, Burke emerged as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Here I was thinking Almira Gulch had it bad transforming from a bitter old lady into a witch. At least she didn't start out as a pack of chewing gum. I suppose I should be crediting them (well, L. Frank Baum, anyway) for taking a chance on booking a witch gimmick - typically reserved for heels - as a babyface. You're still asking me to buy into a witch. No wonder kayfabe is dead.

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Click here for Part 1.

As production rolled on, it became clear that fighting off MGM's demanding promoters while overseeing production of The Wizard of Oz was beginning to take it's toll on Mervyn LeRoy. Until now, King Vidor had been running a classic, old-school angle with a strong emphasis on realism and pure cinema build. With the help of LeRoy assistant William H. Cannon, he had mapped out a long-term vision for the angle that would have converted the fantastic and wholly implausible story that Baum had concocted into something fans could actually buy into. The Scarecrow gimmick would be that of a man so dumb that he could only get work by dressing up in rags and scaring off crows in a cornfield. The Tin Man was to take a very dark turn as a heartless criminal serving a life sentence inside a hardened tin suit. Though unconfirmed, it is believed that the Cowardly Lion would simply be one of the farmhands working at Dorothy's farm, who would choose to accompany her on her journey and ultimately don a lucha libre-inspired lion mask in order to scare off their opponents. And the Wizard himself was to be nothing more than a travelling con man posing as a fortune teller named "Professor Marvel".

We're lucky than Vidor got to carry out his vision long enough to see that last bit, but it was right at that time that LeRoy was finally driven off of the rails entirely. But interestingly, the last straw wouldn't come from the further meddling of MGM executives. No, it would come from another man in another studio altogether - Walt Disney. Disney had made a name for himself over the past decade booking short undercard animated angles that had proven very effective as a sideshow attraction. But with their emphasis on gimmickry and the prohibitive costs that would be involved, no one ever could have expected that a feature-length animated Disney angle could be anything less than a disaster. They were wrong. "Disney's Folly", Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was a smash hit, completely changing the landscape of the industry irrevocably and forever...and LeRoy wanted a piece of the action. Armed with the knowledge that a main event fantasy angle could draw at the box office, a maddened LeRoy ordered that the angle be reverted to it's original literary entertainment roots. Cannon's vision was scrapped, and Herman J. Mankiewicz, Noel Langley, and Ogden Nash were soon brought in to take his place. In classic pro wrestling fashion, the three writers were all lead to believe that they were the only ones working on the angle, presumably for no other reason than to fool the boys in the back. They were soon joined by Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, and by the time the angle was over, the booking team would be massive and completely out of control as LeRoy's vision for it changed on a seemingly daily basis.

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A while back, when I was more naive to the ways of the world, I wrote something at the Pro Wrestling Only message board about how tenuous the comparisons between pro wrestling and MMA are, and how they could be used to connect pro wrestling with virtually anything, including, for the purposes of my discussion, The Wizard of Oz. Of course, as Bob Dylan said, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. I have had a spiritual reawakening regarding wrestling's undeniable connections to anything and everything, and revisiting that piece only serves to illustrate how wrongheaded I was.

Make no mistake: Judy Garland was more wrestling than wrestling. Working her way up the independent scene, she was initially rejected/held back by the big leagues for not having the right look. She overcame their skepticism through sheer talent and a willingness to sacrifice her body for the boys in the back. She became a top star and a gay icon, and then lost all her money and died of a drug overdose in her forties. In other words, she's a pro wrestler. If there are certain petty distinctions like her not performing in a staged combat sport that would make you think she's somehow different from any other wrestler ever in any significant way, you're delusional. And looking back to that earlier piece I wrote, I'm reminded of just how great a wrestler she was. After all, she made The Wizard of Oz work, and that's no small feat. Where backwards thinking cretins look at Oz and see one of the undisputed masterpieces of cinema, those of us in the know see an angle botched six ways to Sunday, and a massive carryjob by a small and meek girl with powerful screen presence. Confused? You won't be after the jump.

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"Hell, if guys in WWE were cutting WWE style promos as good as Mir, Bisping and Lesnar, WWE would be the one whose business would be turning around."

     -Dave Meltzer

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I have tried many, many times in many, many places to examine, expose, and ultimately discredit the notion that "insert non-wrestling thing here" is in any way, shape, or form pro wrestling. It's been a surprisingly popular talking point for some time now, with no less of a figure than wrestling news kingpin Dave Meltzer being one of it's biggest proponents. MMA seems to be the most common point of comparison, which is understandable, given that it's background actually is in pro wrestling. Still, Nintendo got it's start as a playing card company, and if I held up a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and told you it was a playing card, I'd hope you would think I was an idiot. MMA is a combat sport. Pro wrestling is a genre of fiction. Not only are they different things, they belong to two drastically different classifications of things. That fact that MMA, and PRIDE in particular, may have borrowed aspects from a genre of fiction doesn't change the fact that MMA is a legit combat sport, and pro wrestling is a genre of fiction, and the two can not possibly be considered the same.

Except they are. Or, if not the same, then at least similar. Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s "heel" mannerisms led to an influx of boxing coverage in the Wrestling Observer continuing to this day, aided by several of Meltzer's wrestling sources telling him that the build to the fight - as documented on HBO's De La Hoya-Mayweather 24/7 series was the best wrestling television going today. The release of the documentary The King of Kong prompted comments about the antagonistic Billy Mitchell being one of the best "heels" in the world. Though I was a bit young to follow it at the time, I've been told that Meltzer used to talk about the TV series Beverly Hills 90210 extensively in wrestling terms. And perhaps the most bizarre example happened this past February when had Dave had Bryan Alvarez place an article on the F4Wonline.com website which contained the infamous "Epic Beard Man" YouTube video and a brief comment about how he should be brought in to host Raw and was tailor-made to be in wrestling.

I'm one small voice who's been trying to dissuade people from buying into this line of thinking. I haven't been alone, but still, I'm just one man. And well, this one man has grown weary of fighting what's clearly a losing battle. I surrender. Wrestling is everywhere, everyone, and everything. And if you're willing to see it, some things are even more wrestling than wrestling.

My first example is after the jump.

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