Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  Maud realized she was stuck. There was nothing she could do. She put her car in reverse. But when she looked in her rearview mirror, she realized that the car behind her was a giant Rolls-Royce.

  “Oh, dear me,” Maud said, affecting a frail old-lady voice. “I don’t want to back up. My husband never taught me how. I’m afraid I’m going to hit that lovely limousine right behind me.”

  The guard looked exasperated. The honking from behind started up again.

  “Oh, all right. Pull forward and make a U-turn, then pull out the out gate.”

  As if to demonstrate her poor driving skills, Maud pushed down on the gas too fast, making the car lurch forward.

  Maud glanced in the rearview mirror. The guard was looking at the next car. Now was her chance.

  She gunned it, then careened around the corner to the back lot. Jumping out of the car, she ran across the parking lot as fast as her seventy-eight-year-old legs would carry her and turned onto the studio’s main street, where she was immediately lost in the profusion of workers, costumed actors, folks carrying pieces of sets, and several grooms leading saddled horses.

  She heard a commotion behind her—guards shouting—but she had reached the entrance to the Thalberg Building. She slowed her steps to a walk and tried to calm her breathing and the pounding of her heart as she entered the lobby.

  Facing her was the same receptionist she’d encountered the first time she arrived at the Thalberg Building, almost nine months previously. She was blond again, and pretended not to recognize Maud.

  “I’ve got an appointment with Mrs. Koverman,” Maud said, still somewhat breathless from her sprint. “Maud Baum.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “I don’t see your name here.”

  “Call her!” Maud said. “Tell her it’s Mrs. Maud Baum, here to speak to her about Judy.”

  “Have a seat.”

  “No! I’m not going to have a seat!” Maud said. “Call her now. Tell her it’s an emergency.”

  But instead of waiting, Maud kept on walking. A moment later, she was on the elevator. She saw the studio guards entering the lobby just as the elevator doors slid shut.

  Ida Koverman was sitting at her desk, guarding the entrance to Mayer’s office like a German shepherd with a taste for red meat.

  She barely looked up when Maud came in, but as Maud approached, she stood and jerked her head toward the ladies’ room.

  “We meet again,” Ida said, as they stood in front of the mirrors in the bathroom. “What’s going on? Is another one of the gents bothering our girl?”

  “It’s not that,” Maud whispered.

  “Well, that’s a relief. I try to look after her—but, you know, she’s badly outnumbered. The little-girl-to-creep ratio in this place does not work in her favor.”

  “It’s actually something else,” Maud said. She knew that Ida Koverman was fiercely on Judy Garland’s side, but Maud had no idea how she would feel about Maud trying to interfere with creative decisions.

  “They’re planning to cut the rainbow song from the picture,” Maud began. “Some of the boys asked me to come up and talk to Mr. Mayer. I’m not sure if it will work, but I told them I’d try.”

  “They want to cut the rainbow song?” Ida asked. “But why?”

  “The film’s running time is too long, apparently,” Maud said. “And I think it should stay in because—”

  “You don’t need to tell me why. It’s because that girl needs that song—it’s going to be the thing that makes her into a star!”

  “Okay, so what should we do?”

  “Listen, go on in and talk to him. Just remember, he’s a hardhead about business, but he’s as sensitive as they come.”

  Maud entered the blinding-white inner sanctum of the M-G-M Studios for the second time. Louis B. Mayer sat at his massive white desk. Just like the last time, he didn’t even glance up when she came in, but continued flipping through a bound script.

  “Mr. Mayer,” Maud said.

  “Sit down,” he said gruffly, still without looking up. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  Maud sat perfectly still and waited for what seemed like a long time.

  “Now, Mrs. Baum, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ve heard that you are planning to cut the rainbow song from the film.”

  “Already done,” he said. “Preview was a big hit, but the song dragged the action down. Too slow. Too sad. Too unbecoming to have a star singing in a barnyard.”

  “But can’t it be undone?” Maud asked.

  “Can’t be undone. This decision was made at the highest level. Out of my hands. We’re in the business of making money, and the picture was too long.”

  “Are you sure?” Maud said. “Because—”

  Mayer held up his hand, then returned to perusing his papers.

  “Will that be all?”

  Maud stood up to go. She turned away and took a few steps toward the door. Defeated. Surely the movie would be good enough without the rainbow song. How had she gotten so convinced that the song was Frank’s voice, alive again, pouring out into the world? Hogwash and superstition—that’s what it was. She was getting soft—she, who had always believed that magic was what you created from hard work and persistence, not something you plucked from thin air.

  But an odd sensation, like a hand upon her shoulder, made her stop. She spun around and faced Louis B. Mayer.

  “Do you remember when I first came in here?”

  He looked up. “Yes, Mrs. Baum, I do.”

  “I came because I wanted to make sure that my late husband’s story was in good hands. I told you that many people think of Oz as a real place. That you had a duty to those people to make that place come alive.”

  Mayer was still watching her.

  “And you know what? I’ve watched your studio create magic using cameras and paint and glue and machines. I saw how you took the miniature house and filmed it dropping from the air, then reversed that film so that the house seemed to be flying up into the air.”

  “Clever, wasn’t it?” Mayer said.

  “And I saw how you created Munchkinland for real. I walked through it myself and knew that this must have been what Frank himself saw running through his mind when he was writing it. There was magic afoot here in the studio. True movie magic, and you made it, out of giant fans and painted sets and photographic wizardry.”

  Mayer was smiling and nodding his head in agreement.

  “But there’s more to making magic than that,” she said. “There’s a giant beating heart at the center of this story. That heart is real, and that heart sounds through this picture, through these songs, and then when Frank’s jacket turned up on the set—I knew he was with us.”

  Mayer was looking at her, really looking now, and listening. “When your husband’s jacket showed up on the set, I knew. I just knew,” he said, sounding excited. “We try to make magic every single time. Sometimes we hit, and sometimes we miss. But that jacket. I knew it was an omen. I pressed and pressed and pressed to get more money from New York—do you know we spent almost three million dollars on this project? It has got to be a success.”

  “So you do understand.”

  “Of course I understand,” he said. “The picture is great. The song’s gone. It was too long.” He gestured a dismissal. “Have a nice day, Mrs. Baum.”

  As if on cue, Ida Koverman swung the door open.

  “You have a visitor, Mr. Mayer.”

  Judy Garland walked through the door.

  “Well,” Mayer said, lighting up. “If it isn’t my little hunchback.”

  Behind her came the piano player.

  “Do you mind?” Arlen crossed to the white grand piano at the other end of the office. “Did you know that this melody came to me when I was outside Schwab’s drugstore?”


  “I did not,” Mayer said, leaning forward in his chair, intrigued.

  “That was the last trolley stop,” Maud said. “Back in 1910. The exact spot where Mr. L. Frank Baum first stepped onto the soil of Hollywood.”

  “You don’t say.” Mayer stood up, came out from behind his desk, and crossed toward the piano, where Arlen was settling himself on the bench, placing his right foot on the sustain pedal.

  “Let us just do it one more time for you—you’ll see, it stands alone,” Arlen said. “You don’t need the backdrop, or the orchestra. Just listen.”

  Judy’s face, without the heavy stage makeup, looked younger; her hair was pulled back in a plain headband, and she wore a navy blue sailor dress, bobby socks, and scuffed loafers. It was as if the movie starlet had been replaced by an ordinary teenage girl who could pass you on the street without attracting notice. The piano player trilled through the opening chords, and then Judy, softly and simply, began to sing, her hands clasped in front of her. But as her voice soared and filled the room with its clear, strong notes, a glow developed around her, until the light appeared to shimmer. Her arms spread out in front of her, as if the song could not be contained in her small body so she gestured wide to give it room. With everything else stripped away—the lights, the makeup, the cameras—her voice became the simple, deep, plaintive, unadulterated sound of longing.

  Soon tears glistened in Mayer’s eyes. He crossed the room, fully under her spell.

  When the song ended, he started to slip his hand over the girl’s shoulder, but she deftly moved away, positioning herself close to Ida Koverman.

  “You see,” Maud said. “We think the song is a message from the author himself. It might be bad luck to cut it.”

  Mayer pulled a hankie from his breast pocket and blew his nose. He looked at each of them, one by one: first Arlen, then Judy, then Ida, then, at last, resting his eyes on Maud.

  “It’s not that I’m superstitious, but what with the jacket, what with all of the money we’ve put into this thing, I don’t want to bring us bad luck….And besides, that song—it’s goddamned beautiful. You know, I don’t tell this to everyone, but I quit school at age twelve. Had to. Needed to earn a hard living the hard way. See these hands? They were covered with calluses. Was colder than you can imagine up in New Brunswick, Canada. I’d get up long before the sun came up. So cold, so deathly still, and I was always hungry, and I was always thinking that there had to be a better place somewhere,” Mayer said.

  He contemplated the group for a few minutes. Then he crossed to his desk, picked up the telephone.

  “Get me the editing room,” he said. He waited a moment. “This is Mayer. Production 1060. Put the rainbow song back in.”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE WAY OUT, Maud grabbed Judy’s arm and pulled her into the ladies’ room.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” Maud said. “You are going to be a big star. So famous that you won’t even remember my name—and that’s all right. But there is something I want to tell you, and I don’t want you to ever forget it.”

  “Okay,” Judy said, her voice serious.

  “You were born with a gift. A gift so giant that it scarcely fits in your body. You don’t know why you have it, and neither do I, but you have it. I lived with someone like that. It was my husband, Frank. He didn’t even call himself an author—he said he was the Royal Historian of Oz, just writing stuff down. But I want to tell you something right now: it’s not magic. It’s you. It’s your hard work, it’s your gift and what you put into it. You have the power to move hearts, and that is not magic at all.”

  “But…” Judy’s lower lip was quivering. “There is magic. I saw it. What about the jacket?”

  Maud laid her hand upon the girl’s arm. “That wasn’t magic, my dear. That was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Do you know how many old jackets there must be kicking around like that? Sure, it looked like it could have belonged to Frank, and it was made by a Chicago tailor he used to use. It was similar in cut and style, but there was no way for me to know if it was really his. The name tag was illegible—only wishful thinking made it look like Frank’s name.”

  “So you lied, Mrs. Baum?” Judy said, her voice shaking. “You let everyone believe it was magic when it wasn’t?”

  “Oh, but it was magic—just not the way you’re thinking of it. Magic isn’t things materializing out of nowhere. Magic is when a lot of people all believe in the same thing at the same time, and somehow we all escape ourselves a little bit and we meet up somewhere, and just for a moment, we taste the sublime.”

  “Well, that’s just rotten,” Judy said, now in tears. “I thought you could help me contact my father. I believed, and now you are telling me that it’s not true.”

  Judy wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She stuck her hand into the pocket of her dress and seemed to be fishing around for something. She pulled it out and held it up on the palm of her hand.

  “So then how do you explain this?”

  Judy was holding a yellowed, crumpled piece of paper. Maud’s mouth went dry.

  “What is it?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  Judy smoothed out the scrap of paper. She read aloud:

  “The Rainbow King’s daughter sprang from her seat and leaped on the arched bow that awaited her. Dorothy could no longer see her but blew kisses toward her with one hand and fanned goodbye with the other. Suddenly, the end of the bow slowly lifted from the earth and its colors ascended, fading into the clouds, and she, along with the bow, were gone.”

  “Let me see that!” Maud said.

  Judy dropped the brittle scrap of paper into Maud’s palm. Maud’s knees were shaking. She recognized her husband’s distinctive back-slanted hand.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “In the pocket.”

  “The pocket?”

  “Of the jacket. Remember when you found me in the wardrobe room, wearing the jacket? I stuck my hand in the pocket, and there was a hole in it. I reached down inside the lining, and I felt this little wad of paper. And when I read it, I knew it was her.”

  “Who?” Maud asked, her voice trembling.

  “A girl from the other side of the rainbow. That’s how I knew how to sing the song. When I sing it, I can bring my daddy close to me—he’s looking down at me. He’s just on the other side of the rainbow.”

  Maud gazed at Judy with wonder. She reached out and drew her into an embrace, then held her at arm’s length and regarded her anew.

  “I think that somewhere,” she told Judy, “there is a little boy or a little girl who is feeling sad and hopeless right now, and when they hear you sing, they are going to dream of a better world. And that—that is magic.”

  * * *

  —

  BACK IN THE LOT, Maud found her car parked aslant. She looked around for the security guards, but they appeared to have given up the search. As she was driving home, it started to rain. Approaching her house, she was so startled that she almost crashed her car. All of a sudden, a giant rainbow had appeared in the sky. It seemed to end in the garden behind Ozcot. She blinked and it was gone. But it didn’t matter. Frank, at last, had sent her a sign.

  CHAPTER

  28

  HOLLYWOOD

  August 15, 1939

  Brighter than celestial bodies, the giant letters of the marquee lit up the sky above Hollywood Boulevard, casting stripes of gold across the faces of the crowd. Four deep, they lined the street, crowding the velvet ropes. In the sultry August night air, the scents of Tabu perfume, sweat, and floral-scented powder twined together, the essence of hope and yearning.

  Black Packards glided up, uniformed chauffeurs whisked open polished car doors, and the crowd sucked forward, pulled as if by planetary force. As elegantly clad men and women stepped out onto t
he red carpet, an explosion of photographers’ lights flashed and popped, as if each star were followed by a comet’s blazing trail.

  * * *

  —

  MAUD COULD HAVE WALKED the five blocks from Ozcot; nonetheless, the studio had insisted that she arrive at the theater in a chauffeur-driven limousine. In 1910, Maud had finally used her inheritance to build their family home in Hollywood. When they had arrived here, it had been just a sleepy town, and look what it had become—a modern land of enchantment, the most glamorous place on earth. Folding her gloved hands in her lap, Maud reminded herself that she was not picking up the tab for any of this. She had never stopped counting pennies, tallying up expenses. Force of habit. She was too old to change.

  Such a crowd had gathered at home to see her off—the boys, their wives, the grandchildren. She pictured Kenneth, her baby, grown so like his father, with his erect bearing and twinkling eyes, fussing over her, helping her to the limousine, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, and whispering in her ear, “Father is certainly loving all this fol-dee-rol.” But Maud was traveling to the premiere unaccompanied—only a single ticket had been allotted for her, the other seats given away to Hollywood luminaries and the press. Just as well, she thought. This was something she needed to do alone.

  Maud had seen the marquee before, in the light of ordinary day, the giant letters spelling out M-G-M’S AMAZING “THE WIZARD OF OZ.” She passed it on her way to the market and the pharmacy. Over the past few days, she had watched as workers assembled rows of bleachers on the street, backed by an additional neon sign on a large scaffolding that loomed over the boulevard. Even now, with the electric lights transforming the night sky, Maud perceived the artifice that lay behind all this—the scaffolding where the neon was affixed, the false-fronted opulence of the grand cinema palace. To see the ordinary, to avoid being bedazzled by spectacle—this was her gift. Each time she passed, she hoped to find Frank’s name spelled out in lights. Each time, as she noted its absence, she felt a whisper of disappointment.