"Can't You Feel A Brand New Day?," Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                 "Freedom, you see, has got our hearts singing
                                                    so joyfully!!!!!!!!!!!"
                                                  --"The Wiz," Music and Lyrics by Charlie Smalls


                                         You may very well wonder, what the hell are you looking at, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!
This  moment was in the Christmas compendium my delightful Uncle Chris sent, and the first time I saw it, I could not guess what it was!  I thought it might be--are you ready???-- "Chitty Chitty Bang! Bang!"

                                           Well, it wasn't!  It was "The Wiz" made ten years later, the film version of the Broadway musical, which opened on Broadway, at the Majestic Theatre, on January 5, 1975,(same day, twenty five years before, as "The Member Of The Wedding" at the now defunct Empire Theatre!!!!) and which featured a young Stephanie Mills as a belt-your-lungs-out, Gospel singing Dorothy!!!!!!!!!!!

                                             You have to understand, darlings!  At the then tender age of 20, a youth who thought I knew everything--well, some things DON'T change!!!-- I had no intention of seeing  this desecration of a film I had all my life thought of (and still do) as a Sacred Masterpiece.  But, after the ads started, with all that "Ease On Down The Road," stuff,  and then it became Broadway's top ticket, and THEN I heard the Original Cast Album, where I realized they were not going to copy the MGM film--which is what I feared--I decided to go take a look.  And I actually did enjoy it!

                                                Being the Big Hit it had been on Broadway, the movie rights to "The Wiz" were snapped up, but what a mess was made of an actually decent show!  The only way I was able to figure out the clip, when I saw it, was when I focused on the lyrics.  After identifying the song as "Everybody Rejoice!", which I knew to be from "The Wiz," I realized what I was watching!  I may have seen the Broadway show, darlings, but i absolutely refused to see the film!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                  But what a mess was made of the film!  Setting the Emerald City and Oz in New York City????  Giving this number the same sepia tones as the Kansas sequences of the 1939 film?????????   And, despite keeping stage veterans Ted Ross and Mabel King in their original roles as
The Cowardly Lion, and Evilene, the Wicked Witch Of The West, this just did not pan out.  Though it is  worth hearing Lena Horne, as Glinda, sing the almost classic ballad, "If You Believe," which won a TONY Award for Dee Dee Bridgewater, when she performed it on Broadway!

                                                     The movie just proved that Sidney Lumet had a way with directing social dramas, but did not know jack when it came to musicals!!!!!!! And, despite some A-Listers working in front and behind the cameras, it was a mess!  Louis Johnson's choreography was even more frenetic than Twyla Tharp's in "HAIR," which made "The Wiz" cast seem higher on drugs than any group of hippies or druggies I have ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                       But, as a mess, it is a fascinating and almost watchable one!  Not as unbearable as the film version of "A Chorus Line," but fun in a reverse sort of way--imagine 30 plus Diana Ross, already too old, camping it up as a Senior Dorothy, who should be Looking For Mr. Goodbar, and not the Wizard of Oz!!!!!!!!!!!!!  But the frenetic movement and melody is almost infectious, so I am going to try and share it with you, dolls!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                       Here it is!  Forget that Fruit Smoothie, loves!  This is guaranteed to jump start you out of bed, in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                         "Hello, World!  It's like a different way of living now!"