IT'S NOT AS FAR AS YOU
THINK. FOLLOW THE
YELLOW BRICK ROAD
AND YOU'LL END UP IN
RUSSELL TOWNSHIP.
Story by BRIAN E. ALBRECHT
Photographs by JAMES A. ROSS
| A hundred years ago. L. Frank Baum created a book of fantastic
creatures including Winkies and hammer-headed Quadlings,
witches both good and bad, winged monkeys... And above all, Munchkins, a cowardly lion, a brainless scarecrow, a tin man with no heart, a humbug wizard and a lost girl from Kansas with her little dog, Toto. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an instant hit in 1900, followed by 13 sequels written by Baum before his death in 1919. There were at least six movies based on his books, including the most famous 1939 version, The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. Baum also created a character he never envisioned - the Ozzie. Not the heavy-metal musician or the cardigan-clad television spouse of Harriet, but the passionate fan who has dedicated his or her life to everything and anything Oz. |
| Basha Puleo's collection includes replicas of
the ruby slippers (top) that
Dorothy wore in
the movie The Wizard of Oz and a clock-shaped heart
(right) like the artificial "ticker" the Tin Man received in the movie. |
 |
 There's No Place Like Home: Basha Puleo often greets visitors dressed as an ambassador from the Emerald City of Oz. |
"I can't tell you how many times I've seen the movie. Whenever I clean, I put The Wizard of Oz on, and just dance around the house." - Basha Puleo |
|
There are hundreds of Ozzies across the country, who meet at annual festivals featuring aging Munchkin actors as guest celebrities; swap Oz trivia and lore; and pave the Emerald City green with money to buy Oz curios, collectibles and commemoratives. One of the most ardent Ozzies is Basha Puleo, who most probably will greet you at the door of her Russell Township home, clad in a screaming green wig and similarly hued sequined shoes and hat, as an ambassador from the Emerald City in the Land of Oz. Follow the simulated yellow brick road that falls across her doorstop - past "Munchkin" the dog and "Dorothy" the cat - and you enter the Ozone. It's a floor-to-ceiling, multi-roomed, stacked display of Wizard of Oz dolls and doo-dads, pictures and prints, photos and furniture, books and bric-a-brac, ornaments, costumes, sculptures, videos and vinyl. Twenty years of serious collecting are represented here. Plus another couple decades of not-as-serious gathering that started the day a six-year-old girl first saw and fell in love with the 1939 movie when it was shown 10 years later at a theater in downtown Cleveland. Then, after actually meeting one of the retired movie Munchkins, Puleo fell under the spell of Oz as surely as dancing through a field of poppies. "Why Oz? Why baseball cards? Why stamps?" she asks, "People collect stuff, and Oz is my stuff." Indeed, Her husband, Julius "Sonny" Puleo, says, "When people come over, they can't believe it. They usually want to come back, because you cant' really see it all in one visit." He good-naturedly tolerates his wife's conversion of nealy half their house to a virtual Oz shrine, saying "If it makes her happy, it's fine with me." For a tour of her home, Basha Puleo cues up the movie soundtrack to set an appropriate musical mood, and you're off to see the wizard, et al. Starting in the foyer, there's a children's tea seat with four chairs, the seats representing Dorothy and her three fellow travelers, place around a table set with an Oz teapot and matching plastic "china." Displayed on a nearby shelf are assorted 1910 Baum books, autographed by movie Munchkins, and a pair of red-sequined "ruby slippers" - not the Judy Garland originals, which were recently purchased by another collector for $750,000. "Did you know the magic slippers in the book were silver?" Puleo asks. "MGM changed them to red because they showed up better in the movie." |
Puleo, who speaks to local groups, is a repository of emerald gems of Oz movie trivia, which she periodically dispenses throughout the tour. Did you know that Margaret Hamilton was severely burned when she first appeared in jets of smoke in Munchkinland as the Wicked Witch of the West? Or that Buddy Ebsen (aka Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies fame) was the original Tin Man, but had a severe allergic reaction to the aluminized silver makeup? And, contrary to legend, that isn't a dead Munchkin hanging from a tree in the background of one scene, but an ostrich loose on the set. The tour moves to the living room where the wide-spreading branch of an apple tree (remember the mean apple tree in the movie?) is decorated with dozens of Oz ornaments and lights. There are armies of ax-wielding Tin Men, Acres of Scarecrows, Witches on brooms and Wizards in hot-air-balloons, Little Dorothys everywhere.
|
Part of Puleo's Oz collection includes this children's
table, chairs and tea set, which she hopes someday to
duplicate in an adult-sized version.
| "She's a very sweet person, and oh my gosh, she is into it." says Pellegrini of Puleo and her passion. "They call her "The Green Lady" because of all her [Emerald City] outfits. She's like a ray of green sunshine when she walks in a room." The retired 77-year-old actress lives in Phoenix and is one of the 11 surviving Munchkins of the original 124. (In the movie, she's one of the Munchkin babies emerging from a flower, and in another scene wears a flowerpot on her head.) Pellegrini is pleasantly surprised by the enduring popularity of the movie, giving due credit to Puleo and her fellow Ozzies. "It's the people who've made it a success, and I just have to thank all those people for keeping it going," she says. "I've met so many fans and made so many friends from one end of the country to another because of it." These fans and friends who meet at the Oz festivals are a big part of Puleo's collection. She tries to concentrate on things with a person attached, such as autographed books and prints, and mementos or photos of Oz artists and actors she's met. These include such folks as Judy Garland's stand-in, Caren Marsh-Doll, now 81, and Anna Mitchell, the Munchkin who was a burlesque stripper. "It's a living thing," Puleo says of her collection. "There are people attached to everything I have, people who make it interesting." |
The enduring popularity of Baum's century-old-story isn't limited to fervent Ozzies. Puleo says the story of the little girl from Kansas appeals to a broad spectrum of people, "because it has simple, basic values, from a kinder, gentler world." Puleo occasionally wears her ruby slippers to work (for Givenchy fragrances at Dillard's in Mentor). She says young children will point and exclaim. "Dorothy shoes! Dorothy shoes!" Parents invariably quip. "If you click them three times, will you go home?" Puleo jokes that the job supports her collecting. But she says she has no idea how much it has cost to assemble a collection she describes as modest when compared to some Ozzies who've gone totally around the yellow brick bend. "To me, it's not how much you can pay, it's how little," she says. "I look for bargains, trade with other collectors, whatever it takes." It's a passion to last a lifetime, and Puleo has no intention of quitting. "Never!" she says. "You never have enough stuff!" After all, if she ever wants to travel somewhere over the rainbow, there's really no place like home. Brian E. Albrecht is a Plain Dealer reporter who still gets the willies from those creepy flying monkeys in the movie. He can be reached at 216-999-4853 or through magmail@plaind.com |
The above article is "Reprinted by permission,
The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine
1801 Superior Avenue,
Cleveland, OH 44114 (216) 999-4800
magmail@plaind.com
© 2000, All Rights Reserved."
This article appeared in the November 5th, 2000 Edition of the Magazine.
The article in The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine is in a magazine
layout format which we are unable to duplicate on this Web site.
But, the text and the photographs are the same.