The Wiz Brings African American Talent to Broadway

Date January 5, 1975

Although it opened to lukewarm reviews, The Wiz, an African American version of The Wizard of Oz, survived through audience word of mouth, ran for several years, and won seven Tony Awards.

Locale New York, New York

Key Figures

• Geoffrey Holder (b. 1930), director and costume designer called in to “save” The Wiz
• Charlie Smalls (1944-1987), composer and lyricist
• Ken Harper (1939-1988), theatrical producer who conceived and developed The Wiz

Summary of Event

Producer Ken Harper approached Geoffrey Holder two years before The Wiz opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York City, querying him about directing an all-African American version of The Wizard of Oz. Harper had trouble finding financial backing for the production but finally found a backer in Twentieth Century-Fox, which provided one million dollars, enough to fund the entire show. Early in its development, direction and choreography were in other hands, but when The Wiz ran into trouble, Geoffrey Holder came back and performed a show-business miracle in a few weeks, transforming the show as both director and costumer into a hit musical that ran for 1,672 performances and won seven Tony Awards, including the award for best musical. Holder himself won two Tony Awards for his work.

Initial reviews of the theatrical production were only lukewarm, but strong word-of-mouth response and a publicity campaign funded by Twentieth Century-Fox kept the show open. Eventually, these two forces resulted in enormous ticket sales, and the musical made show-business history. A letter to The New York Times protesting that newspaper’s lack of appreciation of the musical pointed out that The Wiz was more faithful to the original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), by L. Frank Baum, than was the “classic” Judy Garland film The Wizard of Oz (1939). At the same time, The Wiz was relevant to a 1970’s black American audience. The musical contained “inside jokes,” and its music was African American. The Wicked Witch of the West was brought onstage by slaves yelled at by an overseer with a bullhorn. When Dorothy “freed the slaves,” they headed for the North—to the Emerald City, a fantasy Harlem—reflecting the Great Migration of African Americans after World War I. There they met the Wiz, dressed like a fantasy hipster or pimp in glittering white and wearing green “shades.” “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” was replaced by the refrain “Ease on down, ease on down the road.”

The Wiz had not one but two Good Witches. Dee Dee Bridgewater played Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. Clarice Taylor played the other, the “trickster” witch. Fifteen-year-old Stephanie Mills played Dorothy. Mabel King as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, had a show-stopping song, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” Hinton Battle played the Scarecrow; Tiger Haynes played the Tin Man, attired in a garbage can and a skillet hat. Ted Ross was the “signifying” Cowardly Lion, and André De Shields played the Wiz.

The creative artists involved met the challenge of developing a new and updated version of a story that every schoolchild knew and that was already a film classic. Kansas became the cultural equivalent of Lenox Avenue in Harlem, and the Emerald City was, as the Newsweek drama critic said, “a kind of utopian cocktail lounge.” Most reviewers praised the visual aspects of the show, the direction, the choreography, and the performances of the actors. Many, however, thought that the book by William F. Brown was weak. Some had reservations about the score, finding the songs, with several notable exceptions, too similar to one another musically. It may be that these critics, many of them white, simply were not attuned to the black American music these songs represented.

In July, 1975, a writer for The New York Times described The Wiz as a “blaxploitation” musical, adding that “sociology surely had something to do with the tolerant reviews heaped upon . . . the insistently all-black version” of The Wizard of Oz. Not sharing that critic’s disdain, the voters for the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre in April, 1975, awarded The Wiz seven “bests,” more Tony Awards than any other nominated show. In addition to Geoffrey Holder’s two awards for Best Director and Best Costumer, Ted Ross won the Tony for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, Dee Dee Bridgewater won for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, Charlie Smalls won for Best Score, and George Faison won for Best Choreography. The show itself received the Tony for Best Musical.

Smalls’s music was variously described as rock, rhythm and blues, gospel, and soul. Although some reviewers regarded Brown’s book for the show as rather weak, they liked the use of black American urban experience, language, and slang in a book that otherwise faithfully followed the original story. The Tony Award for Best Book, however, went to James Lee Barrett for his work on Shenandoah.

Interviewed after winning the two Tony Awards, Geoffrey Holder explained the genesis of the show and his final contributions to it. Holder said that two years before the show opened, producer Ken Harper had asked him to recommend a director for The Wiz. He suggested Louis Johnson, director of the 1970 hit musical Purlie, based on Ossie Davis’s 1961 Purlie Victorious, or Donald McKayle, director of Raisin (1973), based on Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. Harper asked Holder to do some costume drawings for the show. After listening to the score, Holder did a series of forty drawings. Harper then wanted Holder to direct, choreograph, design costumes, and play the role of the Wiz.

Later, Harper chose Gilbert Moses to codirect. Holder withdrew from the production except as costumer. Moses then hired choreographer George Faison. When the show ran into trouble in tryout performances in Baltimore, Holder took over for Moses. In tryouts in Detroit and Philadelphia, he reshaped the show, plucking Hinton Battle from the chorus to play the Scarecrow and restoring the tornado ballet, which had been eliminated. It became a show-stopping number on Broadway.

Significance

In 1984, The Wiz was revived on Broadway, but the revival was far from successful. Stephanie Mills was the only original cast member in the revival. The reviewer for The New York Times found the new production depressing: “The Wiz was hardly a great musical in 1975, but it had something to say, and it said it with verve and integrity.”

In 1987, there was a minor flurry when a suburban Chicago dinner theater cast white actors in seven of the seventeen roles of The Wiz, including the role of Dorothy. Some of the black American actors who had toured in The Wiz had been available for the dinner-theater production. In its defense, the management cited its past attempts at nontraditional casting of black actors in traditionally white roles. Ernest Perry, the ethnic minorities committee chairman of the Midwest regional office of Equity, an actors’ union, pointed out that the chief complaint was that the show itself had been created specifically by black American artists for black American performers.

In 1978, Universal Studios released what was described as the most expensive film musical ever made up to that time, with a budget of about $30 million. Reviewers regarded the film version of The Wiz the last major black American film of the 1970’s. The director was Sidney Lumet, actress Lena Horne’s former-son-in-law. Lumet and the author of the film script, Joel Schumacher, were white. Some reviewers thought that the generally recognized flatness of the film version was the result of the change from African American director and writer to white artists.

Except for Ted Ross and Mabel King, who were in the original Broadway production, major actors replaced the less-well-known Broadway actors in the film. Nipsey Russell, known for his appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, played the Tin Man to excellent reviews. Michael Jackson, then nineteen years old, played the Scarecrow, and Richard Pryor played the Wiz. Diana Ross, thirty-four years old when the film was made, played twenty-four-year-old Dorothy.

The director and scriptwriter received negative criticism for changing the locales and weakening the themes. Instead of traveling from Kansas to an urbanized Emerald City, Dorothy starts uptown in Harlem, travels downtown into white New York, and finds the Wiz in the World Trade Center. Lumet also was criticized for distancing the audience from the actors and scenes with too many long shots and not enough close-ups. Joel Schumacher, who adapted William F. Brown’s book, was criticized for failing to understand the nuances of black American idiom and “street humor” in the original.

Reviewers thought that Richard Pryor’s talent was wasted in a virtually unwritten role, that Diana Ross was too old to play Dorothy, and that Michael Jackson, although sweet and charming, was also wasted. Nipsey Russell received the best reviews. Reviewer Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called his two numbers “Slide Some Oil to Me” and “What Would I Do If I Could Feel?” the best in the film.

Lena Horne, as Glinda the Good Witch, was posed against a night sky at the end of the film to sing “Believe in Yourself.” Newsweek reviewer Jack Kroll commented that Horne sang the song in The Wiz with “fiercely exultant dignity.” Horne repeated this number in her brilliant one-woman show at the Niederlander Theater in New York City a few years later, winning a Tony Award for her performance. Her show was autobiographical and included a healthily satirical section on her days at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion-picture studios. Her singing of “Believe in Yourself” moved theater audiences to tears and to shouts of approval.

Perhaps the success of the Broadway production of The Wiz helped pave the way for such all-black American musicals as Eubie! (1978), Bubbling Brown Sugar (1975), and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978). Perhaps the success in the early 1990’s of Jelly’s Last Jam, a musical fable about the life of musician Jelly Roll Morton, might remind audiences that The Wiz, like the Baum book on which it was based, was a fable, too, about finding courage and self-reliance without forgetting roots. Whatever its connections, The Wiz stands in theater history as a shining illustration of ethnically oriented entertainment that succeeded in the mainstream.

Bibliography

Bogle, Donald. “The Wiz.” In Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1988. A fairly detailed account of the 1978 film version of the Broadway musical, including capsule reviews. Agrees with reviewers that the white director and scriptwriter altered the “blackness” of the original musical. Praises Nipsey Russell and Lena Horne.

Buckley, Tom. “About New York.” The New York Times, April 21, 1975, p. 42. An interview with Dee Dee Bridgewater that ran the morning after she won a Tony as best supporting actress.

Douglas, Carlyle C. “’The Whiz’ Behind The Wiz.” Ebony, October, 1975, 114-122. A biographical profile and interview with Geoffrey Holder after he received two Tony Awards, as director and costumer of The Wiz. Discusses his other artistic talents as actor, dancer, and painter as well as his boyhood in Trinidad.

Gill, Brendan. “Broadway.” The New Yorker, January 13, 1975, 64-65. Offers a mostly favorable review of The Wiz, although it expresses many of the reservations expressed by other reviewers.

Lester, Eleanor. “Geoffrey Holder—The Whiz Who Rescued The Wiz.” The New York Times, May 25, 1975, p. II-1. Article on Holder focuses on events leading up to his directing The Wiz.