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Dramatic presentations of Oz
[A word here about video formats: All references to home video in this section, unless otherwise noted, refer to what's been released in North America on the NTSC VHS format, and Region 1 (United States and Canada) DVDs and Region A Blu-Ray discs in NTSC. Outside of the United States and Canada, you will probably have to do some looking on your own. I'd love to include anything you find out in future editions of this FAQ, so please write me if you have information.]
Was The Wizard of Oz or any other Oz story ever performed as a play?
Most certainly! In fact, almost as soon as it was published, there was talk of turning it into a play. Under the guidance of stage manager Julian Mitchell, The Wizard of Oz debuted in Chicago in 1902, and a year later it was playing on Broadway, where it racked up one of the longest runs of its day. Touring productions of the play were on the road as late as 1909, and regional theaters were putting it on as late as 1918, possibly even later. Its original stars, Fred Stone and David Montgomery, who played the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, went on to become successes in other shows. Despite bearing little resemblance to the book — Dorothy's pet dog Toto became her pet cow Imogene, for instance, other characters were added, there was no Wicked Witch of the West, the Lion's part was greatly reduced and he couldn't talk, and many musical numbers that had nothing to do with the plot were thrown in — it was a great success which Baum tried to duplicate twice. His first attempt was The Woggle-Bug in 1905, a dramatization of The Marvelous Land of Oz, which "failed to woggle," as one observer put it. The critics said it was too similar to The Wizard of Oz, but not as good, and it failed to draw an audience. It only played a few weeks in Milwaukee and Chicago. In 1913, Baum tried again with a dramatization of the third Oz book, Ozma of Oz, but he made enough changes to make an entirely new story called The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. Although successful in its Los Angeles and Chicago runs, it never made it to Broadway, and so Baum used the story instead as the basis for his next Oz book, where it became Tik-Tok of Oz.
With the exception of the 1928 Jean Gros marionette show The Magical Land of Oz, which was an adaptation of Ozma of Oz written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, and the Junior League adaptations of several Oz books in the 1920s and 1930s, for the most part that was it for Oz stage shows for some time. The success of The Movie, however, changed that, and in the 1940s the St. Louis Light Opera put on a version of The Wizard of Oz, adapted by Frank Gabrielson and with songs from The Movie. It was successful enough that other regional theaters put it on as well, and are continuing to do so to this day.
In 1974, producer Ken Harper put on a new staging of The Wizard of Oz with all new music and an African-American cast. The storyline of The Wiz stayed fairly close to the original book, and after out-of-town tryouts, it opened on Broadway in 1975, where it picked up seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Director of a Musical. It has been revived, performed in community theaters, and loosely adapted into a movie. NBC also produced a live television version in 2015.
Since then, most of the major stage productions have been tied in with The Movie. A lavish arena show toured much of North America in 1989, and in 1995 a one-time show, The Wizard of Oz in Concert, emphasizing the music, was presented in New York City with an all-star cast to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The latter was recorded and broadcast on American cable channel TNT, and has been released on videotape and reshown on PBS stations and VH1. In Great Britain, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged The Wizard of Oz, a closer adaptation of The Movie than the St. Louis Light Opera show, for several Christmas seasons beginning in the 1980s, and this version has now been performed around the world, and is available for companies to put on. The Wizard of Oz on Ice toured a number of North American cities in the 1990s, and there were also Oz productions in many earlier editions of the Ice Follies and Ice Capades. And a major production, produced by Madison Square Garden and featuring Mickey Rooney as the Wizard, toured throughout the United States and Canada.
In 2003, a new show opened on Broadway after a successful tryout that summer in San Francisco. Wicked, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, is the story of what happened in Oz before Dorothy dropped in, and focuses on the relationship between Glinda the Good and Elphaba, who became the Wicked Witch of the West. It opened to mixed reviews, but the audiences were enthusiastic, and Wicked went on to become one of the biggest recent success stories on Broadway. It won many awards, including one for Best Actress in a Musical for Idina Menzel, who played Elphaba. Also, the cast album won a Grammy. As of October 2010, there are Wicked companies on Broadway, the West End in London, Tokyo, Oberhausen (Germany), two North American touring companies, and one company touring Australia. New productions are also open or in the works in Denmark and Finland.
Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, after the success of his previous talent hunt shows on the BBC, was the guiding force behind Over the Rainbow in 2010. The goal of the show was to find an actress to play Dorothy in a new West End production, which opened in early 2011. The winner was Danielle Hope, and the runner up, Sophie Evans, is Hope's understudy. Michael Crawford plays the Wizard. Sir Andrew and Tim Rice wrote new songs to add to the show, but the show is based on the famous MGM movie version of the story, and includes the original songs as well. You can find out more about this show at http://www.wizardofozthemusical.com/.
There have also been several school, community, and children's theater stage productions of not only The Wizard of Oz, but also The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Glinda of Oz, The Yellow Knight of Oz, Merry Go Round in Oz, and probably other books as well, over the years, as well as the Oz-themed novel Was and new Oz stories written especially for the stage. Some of Baum's non-Oz books have also been adapted for the stage, including The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and Dot and Tot of Merryland. Volshebnik Izumrudnovo Goroda (see the question What's this I hear about a different Oz series in Russia?) has also been performed on stage in Russia.
Our school/local community theater group wants to put on The Wizard of Oz. Where can we get a script and the rights to do it?
The current source for the amateur stage rights of The Movie is Tams-Witmark. You must go through Tams-Witmark and pay their royalties if you want to use the music from The Movie, even if you don't use their script. They have three different versions, one based on the 1940s St. Louis show (http://www.tamswitmark.com/musicals/wizard.html), one based on the Royal Shakespeare Company's adaptation (https://tamswitmark.com/shows/wizard-oz-r-s-c-1987/, and one designed for younger performers (http://tamswitmark.com/musicals/wizardype.html). They can be reached on the WWW at http://www.tamswitmark.com. Music Theatre International also has a musical version of The Wizard of Oz available to theater companies, but the music is not that from The Movie. They are on the WWW at http://www.mtishows.com/, and they have a web page about their version of The Wizard of Oz at https://www.mtishows.com/the-wizard-of-oz-prince-street-players-version. Another version is available through Classics on Stage (http://www.classicsonstage.com/scriptswizardofoz.html), and Pioneer Drama Services (http://www.pioneerdrama.com/) has eight (!) different versions available, and some other Oz shows as well. Yet another version (https://www.samuelfrench.com/p/1061/the-wizard-of-oz-chapman — this is the non-musical Junior League version from the 1920s — along with The Wiz (https://www.samuelfrench.com/p/917/the-wiz) is available through Samuel French (http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/). Still more versions of The Wizard of Oz and other Oz scripts can be found at Dramatic Publishing (http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/). A number of scripts for The Wizard of Oz and other Oz shows are available for sale through (TMOHH) the WWOOW's bookshop, aisle 10 (http://thewizardofoz.info/wiki/Aisle_10), and these generally contain performance and royalty information. If you are willing to forego the famous songs from The Movie, the story itself is in public domain, so you can always write your own script, as long as it's not a direct rip-off of The Movie or any other script. Wicked is not yet available for local productions, and likely won't be for some time. And no, there's no readily-available version of the 1902 stage play, either, and I don't know why.
How can we make sets, costumes, and so forth for our production of The Wizard of Oz?
That's a very big, long question, and difficult to answer in a document of this type. Let's just say that it all depends on your performance area, budget, available materials, what crafts people you have available and what they can do, and what the director wants. You'd be better off looking for information on stagecraft rather than trying to get answers here. Some Oz-specific suggestions can be found, however, at http://www.beyondtherainbow2oz.com/stagethewizard.html. Some sketches, plans, and scene designs used by the St. Louis Municipal Light Opera are available at http://www.trinity.edu/sgilliam/sd/oz.html and http://www.angelfire.com/tx/SLGDESIGN/oz.html. Moonstruck Dramatic Books has pages on their site devoted to both The Wizard of Oz (http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm6.htm) and The Wiz (http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm59.html). Information on Oz costumes and costume patterns can be found in the question Where can I find Oz costumes?. Good lu... — er, I mean, break a leg!
Who are Gloria, Lord Growley, and Tibia? I don't remember them from The Movie. What can you tell me about them?
All three are new characters created for the St. Louis Light Opera's script for The Wizard of Oz. Lord Growley is the prime minister of the Emerald City. He serves the same role in that show as the Soldier with the Green Whiskers does in the book, or many of the characters played by Frank Morgan in The Movie. Gloria is his daughter, who shows Dorothy the sights. Gloria, some of her friends, and Dorothy have a song in the show that is not from The Movie. (This Gloria is not the same character as Princess Gloria, from Baum's The Scarecrow of Oz.) Tibia is a live skeleton who acts as the Wicked Witch's butler and henchman. Since none of these characters appear in The Movie or any other version or adaptation of Oz, actors playing these roles are free to interpret them in any way they care to.
What can you tell me about Wicked?
Wicked is a musical show currently playing on Broadway and on a tour of the United States and Canada, and in London's West End. It has also had successful runs in Japan, Australia, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Brazil, with new productions in Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. It opened on Broadway in 2003, and is still doing well, having now become the fourth longest running show in Broadway history, and the tenth longest running show in London's West End. It is based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire, which is one of those Oz books that's not really written for children. Wicked tells the story of Elphaba, a young woman with green skin and a strong independent streak, how she becomes friends with Galinda (who later shortens her name to Glinda and becomes a good witch), and how she eventually becomes known as the Wicked Witch of the West. The novel is very dark, which has surprised some of the younger fans of the play when they seek it out. The play, while following the basic storyline, is lighter and appropriate for most audiences, although it is not recommended for theatergoers under the age of eight (more for the length of the show and the confusing experience of being at a big time professional show rather than content). For more details about the show, take a look at the Wicked pages on the website of the composer, Stephen Schwartz, at http://www.musicalschwartz.com/wicked.htm. There's even a Wicked-specific FAQ there. You can find out specifics about the Broadway run and North American tour at https://wickedthemusical.com/, and the West End production in Londan at https://www.wickedthemusical.co.uk/. Both sites sell tickets and merchandise.
Have there been any Oz movies?
Oh, yes! Thanks to television, and now home video, for many people Oz is a movie, shown annually on American television and one of the most famous, beloved, and watched films of all time. Yet from the earliest days of filmmaking there have been Oz movies. In 1911 the Baums moved to a sleepy little suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood, and Frank got caught up in the fledgling movie industry there, going so far as to organize his own film studio. Here is a partial, annotated list of Oz movies that have been made over the years:
- The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays. This was an elaborate multimedia show that toured the midwestern and eastern United States in 1908, and L. Frank Baum himself presented it. Using hand-tinted films, slides, live actors, and a full orchestra, Baum presented dramatizations of The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, and John Dough and the Cherub, and a preview of his then-forthcoming new book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. No film from this show is known to exist, but the slides and scripts do.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and the Scarecrow of Oz, The Land of Oz, John Dough and the Cherub. When the Fairylogue ran into financial trouble, Baum assigned the film rights to some of his books to the Selig Polyscope Company, which had made the films, and as a result these one-reelers were released in 1910. These are not the Fairylogue films, but new versions. Thought lost for years, the first film turned up at the Kodak Film Archives in Rochester, New York, in the early 1990s. Clips were featured in the made-for-video documentary, Oz: The American Fairyland. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been shown on Turner Classic Movies, and is part of the current DVD releases of The Movie. It was also released as part of the DVD set More Treasures from the American Film Archives. Of course, you can also watch it on YouTube. Nobody has found any sign of the other three films.
- The Patchwork Girl of Oz, The Magic Cloak of Oz, His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz. These were produced by Baum's own Oz Film Company in 1914, and were not terribly successful. They were based on, respectively, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Queen Zixi of Ix (with its location changed from Ix to Oz), and a number of elements of Baum's other books. The latter was written up a year later as the novel The Scarecrow of Oz. The Magic Cloak of Oz was released as two two-reelers in Great Britain, The Witch Queen and The Magic Cloak, and the only prints currently available just give the title as The Magic Cloak; while His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz was later released as The New Wizard of Oz. The Oz Film Company also made some films based on Baum's non-Oz writings, none of which are now known to exist, although parts of The Last Egyptian were recently found. The complete Oz movies are currently available on home video and DVD in several different packages. The Magic Cloak of Oz and His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz are part of the first 3-DVD collector's set of The Movie, and they were joined by The Patchwork Girl of Oz on its 2009 release.
- The Wizard of Oz. This 1925 release, co-written by Baum's eldest son, had a character named Dorothy living in Kansas and a house transported to Oz via cyclone, but the resemblance to the book ends there. This is a slapstick farce that served mainly as a vehicle for comedian Larry Semon, who played the Scarecrow. This film is most notable today for a set of farmhands who later become Dorothy's three friends in Oz, an idea MGM may have borrowed for The Movie; and the appearance of a young Oliver Hardy, somewhat slimmer than when he teamed up with Stan Laurel two years later. Hardy played the farmhand who disguised himself as a Tin Man. Currently available on home video and DVD, and a cleaned-up and restored version is part of current DVD release of The Movie. (This movie and the three Oz Film Company movies are all available on VHS, individually or in an attractive boxed set, from American Home Entertainment, and in a 3-DVD set from Brentwood Home Video.) There are also a few British DVDs in PAL format; one has it as part of a Laurel and Hardy collection (even though Stan Laurel wasn't in it), paired up with the movie Hustling for Health, which featured Stan Laurel but not Hardy.
- The Wizard of Oz. A 1933 cartoon short directed by Ted Eshbaugh, it was originally made in Technicolor. Unfortunately, before it hit theaters, Walt Disney signed an exclusive agreement with Technicolor, thus holding up release of Eshbaugh's short. Black and white copies eventually made it into the hands of collectors, and in the late 1980s it was finally released on home video. An excerpt was included on the 1998 DVD release of The Movie, and the whole cartoon, in color, is part of the most recent DVD releases of The Movie. It was restored and released on Blu-Ray with several other of Eshbaugh's cartoons.
- The Wizard of Oz. This is it, the big one, MGM's 1939 Judy Garland vehicle, the most watched movie in history. For many people, this movie is Oz. There have been so many questions, legends, rumors, half-truths, and speculations surrounding this movie that six (!) sections of this FAQ are devoted to it. Besides its annual television showings, it's been released on home video, laserdisk, and DVD in several versions, and made its Blu-Ray debut in 2009, and was released on 4K in 2019.
- Fantasia...3. A 1966 anthology film from Spain with a segment loosely based on The Wizard of Oz.
- The Wonderful Land of Oz. A 1969 low-budget musical adaptation of Baum's second book, poor acting and poor production values let this one down. It was released on VHS and DVD (the latter paired with Jack and the Beanstalk) by Something Weird in 2002, but it is no longer available in their catalog.
- Ayşecik ve Sihirli Cüceler Rüyalar Ülkesinde (Little Ayse and the Magic Dwarfs in the Land of Dreams), a 1971 low-budget Turkish adaptation that has gained a latter-day cult following. Some have called it the worst film ever made.
- Journey Back to Oz. Released in Europe in 1972 and North America in 1974, this was the first full-length animated Oz theatrical release, and boasted a stellar cast of voices, including Liza Minnelli as Dorothy, Mickey Rooney as the Scarecrow, and Ethel Merman as Mombi, the Wicked Witch. Although loosely based on The Land of Oz, it introduced a number of its own elements, including an army of marauding green elephants. To date, probably the most successful animated Oz film, although it still leaves much to be desired. It has been released on home video, and made its DVD debut in 2006.
- Oz (North American title: Twentieth Century Oz). A 1976 Australian film that transplanted the story of The Wizard of Oz to Melbourne and its environs, with the Scarecrow becoming a dim surfer, the Tin Woodman a greasy mechanic, the Lion a braggart biker, and the Wizard a rock star. It was rated "R" in the United States, so this is not a film for kids! Not available on North American home video, but it has been shown on local television in Canada, and is now available on DVD in Australia.
- The Wiz. The 1977 movie version of the Broadway play, although Oz is transplanted to New York City, and much of what made the play a success is lost. It stars Diana Ross as a rather mature Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, and Richard Pryor as the Wiz. It is available on home video and DVD.
- Os Trapalhões e o Mágico de Oroz. This 1984 Brazilian comedy features the slapstick troupe Os Trapalhões as the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion in a search for water during a drought. Children's television host Xuxa plays the Cowardly Lion's girlfriend (!).
- Return to Oz. This 1985 film was Disney's attempt to get in on Oz. (An elaborate Oz production number, starring the Mousketeers, was shown on the Disneyland television show in the 1960s as a preview for The Rainbow Road to Oz, which was never made.) Loosely based on The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, it was too dark and gloomy for many, and critics unfamiliar with the books made unfavorable comparisons to The Movie. It has been released on home video and DVD, and been shown on the Disney Channel, the Family Channel, the Hallmark Channel, and premium movie channels on cable, and independent television stations around America.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz. These animated films, made by Cinar Films Inc. in Canada in 1987, were released direct to videotape and DVD in North America, but were shown in theaters in several other countries around the world. These were edited compilations of the TV series (see the question Has there ever been an Oz TV show? below), but they've also been shown by themselves on cable.
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), a big budget tale of how circus illusionist Oscar Diggs, the future Wizard of Oz (James Franco) arrives in Oz and encounters the attractive witches Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams) who lead him into intrigue and warfare for the rule of the Emerald City.
- Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014), an animated film based on Roger Baum's book Dorothy of Oz in which Dorothy and friends save Oz from the villainous Jester.
- Guardianes de Oz (aka Guardians of Oz and Wicked Flying Monkeys) (2015), a Mexican-Indian animated film released on DVD in the United States.
- Urfin Dzhus i yevo Dyerevyannie Soldati (Urfin Dzhus and His Wooden Soldiers) (2017) a Russian animated retelling of Aleksandr Volkov's first Magic Land sequel. Released on DVD in English as Journey to Oz.
Oz and Ozian themes have also been a part of other films, most notably Zardoz, Wild at Heart, and Under the Rainbow, a poor Chevy Chase comedy about Nazi spies infiltrating Hollywood during the filming of The Movie. Oz jokes and references, usually referring to The Movie, often pop up in other films, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Batman (1989), Kentucky Fried Movie, Top Secret, and One True Thing, to name but a few. Costumed Oz characters appear in a department store during the Christmas season in A Christmas Story. And if you look carefully, you can see Oz books in Rambling Rose, You've Got Mail, and perhaps other movies. Clips from The Movie itself appear in the first Jumanji movie and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and probably others. One character in Girl, Interrupted is an Oz fan and collector.
With the wide array of video sharing sites, a number of fan made or independent short Oz films are available online, including full length CGI versions of The Tin Woodman of Oz and The Scarecrow of Oz. (Due to the changing nature of these sites, a list may become obsolete.) Some independent studios are even attempting their own Oz feature films.
Why doesn't Hollywood make more Oz movies?
In a nutshell, it's already been done. The Movie is so well known that studio executives are generally reluctant to even consider another movie based on the Oz books. The generally poor reception of The Wiz, Return to Oz, and Legends of Oz: Dorothy Returns only adds to the perception. Plus, Oz just doesn't seem to fit into the current Hollywood movie-making climate, which expects lots of aliens, laser battles, car chases, and the like for a movie — at least one that would cost as much as a live-action Oz film — to be even considered for production. However, the success of Oz the Great and Powerful and, possibly, the Wicked movie, may change some perceptions, and make more Oz movies possible in the future.
I've heard about a new Oz movie being made. What can you tell me about it?
It looks as if enough time has passed since The Wiz and Return to Oz for Hollywood to think about Oz movies again and the 2013 film Oz the Great and Powerful is the result (see above). Also, Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (originally titled Dorothy of Oz) was released in 2014. This 3D computer-animated musical film is based on the 1989 book Dorothy of Oz by Roger Stanton Baum. It did not do well at the box office.
Over the past fifteen years, several potential Oz movies have been rumored to be in the works. One was entitled Somewhere, and was to feature Elizabeth Taylor playing Dorothy, now a grandmother, returning to Oz. Another project, overseen by Drew Barrymore, was called Surrender, Dorothy, and would feature Barrymore playing Dorothy's great-granddaughter, who went to Oz and faces the Wicked Witch's granddaughter. And Pamela West has been mentioned, which would make the Witch the heroine and Dorothy the evil interloper. One may note that at least some of these projects appeared to be sequels to The Movie, rather than based on the books or any other version of Oz. John Boorman's CGI animated version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had some test footage done, but ran out of funding. It must be emphasized that, as of this writing (March, 2013), none of these films has actually gone before the cameras, and it appears unlikely that any of them will be made, unless Oz the Great and Powerful leads someone to revive them at the studios. Also in the works are a small independent adaptation, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, for which much of the principal photography has already been completed. and Legend of Oz, a contemporary modern update of the story (its website is at http://valleywind.com/legendofoz/). You'll just have to keep watching your local movie listings to see if any Oz movies get made and come to your local theater. For all the latest rumors and updates on Oz movie productions, keep an eye on http://thewizardofoz.info/oznews.html#rumors.
I want to make my own Oz movie. What do I need to do?
Wow, you are ambitious! Unlike writing a book, making a movie is a collaborative process that, to do right, involves dozens, if not hundreds, of people. (Just count the number of names in the closing credits of any current movie and you get the idea.) It also takes money. Even low budget indie movies need producers to supply the funds. And then there's the whole game of Hollywood politics. My advice — as a non-filmmaker, you understand — is to go to film school and get yourself established in the industry. Seriously, that's what it's going to take. There is, at least, some Oz-themed help for you now, in the book Screenwriting in The Land of Oz: The Wizard on Writing, Living, and Making It In Hollywood by Richard Krevolin. And no, you can't just write a screenplay, either, and have it automatically seen by the suits. Again, you have to be established before they'll even see you. (Yes, it's a paradox, but that's how it works.)
Hey, am I missing a scene in the 1914 silent version of The Patchwork Girl of Oz? Where is it? What happens in it?
Yes, you are missing a key scene in The Patchwork Girl of Oz — but so is everyone else, as it's missing from the only known original print. Early film stock was fragile, and could rot or fall apart if not properly cared for, which was the case with the first reel of The Patchwork Girl of Oz. You can see the damage creep in as a white blob on the right hand side of the screen, and it progressively gets worse and worse as the reel keeps going. Finally, the key scene of the Patchwork Girl coming to life, and Unk Nunkie, Margolotte, and Danx turning to stone when the Liquid of Petrifaction falls on them is so badly damaged that I have never seen it intact in any film print or video or DVD release. Oz and silent movie fans around the world would be extremely happy if another, intact copy of the first reel was to ever turn up.
I hear there's a big scene with lots of other Oz characters in Return to Oz. Where is it, and who's in it?
Right at the end of the 1985 Disney movie, once the Emerald City has been restored, there is a joyous celebration that leads up to Ozma's liberation and Dorothy returning home. The makers of Return to Oz paid homage to the Oz stories by slipping in many, many characters from the books into the crowds in these scenes, all based on the original Denslow and Neill illustrations. Sharp-eyed viewers can find the Guardian of the Gates, the Shaggy Man, the Patchwork Girl, Polychrome, the Bumpy Man, the Braided Man, Tommy Kwikstep, the Frogman, Rinkitink, and probably a few others as well. And by the way, those short people with the fur hats? Those are the Munchkins, sporting a new design for this film.
Will there be a film version of Wicked?
It's in production now, so I think that's a pretty emphatic yes! Universal Studios, as one of the entities that produced the play, have the movie rights to the musical version of Wicked, and they have been moving it along. They originally announced a release date of December 20, 2019, but it didn't progress very far, and so the date was given to the film version of Cats instead (for which Universal's rights were running out). Universal then set a release date of December 22, 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed much of Universal's production and release schedule back, and that spot was given to Sing 2. Since no casting or production start date had been announced, it's highly probable that that would have been pushed back again anyway. Universal has finally announced what appears to be a pretty firm premiere date—or to be more accurate, dates. It was proving too difficult to make a movie of the stage show that wasn't either very long or too truncated, so it will now be a two-part movie. The first half was originally announced as coming out on Christmas 2024 and the second a year later, but both dates were brought up to the Thanksgiving holiday period in the United States, so the official release dates now are November 27, 2024 and November 26, 2025. Marc Platt will be the producer (as he was for the play), Winnie Holzman is writing the script (she wrote the book for the musical), and Stephen Schwartz is composing a new song or two to go along with the music he originally created for the play. Stephen Daldry was to be the director, but the continual delays caused him to leave the project in 2020. Jon M. Chu took his place. Elphaba will be played by Cynthia Erivo, and Galinda by Ariana Grande. When there is more confirmed news to share, I will post it here, and on this website's news and events pages.
Was there ever a movie called The Wizard of Oz 2?
Not by that name, no. But there have been several sequels to The Wizard of Oz made as movies, or released direct to video. The one most people seem to be thinking of, however, when they ask me this question is the 1985 Disney movie Return to Oz. See the question Have there been any Oz movies? for more details on Oz movies.
Was there ever an Oz radio show?
Yes. Back in 1933, Jell-O sponsored a fifteen minute Wizard of Oz radio show on NBC's red network, which was broadcast Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. It ran for six months, but then Jell-O decided to switch their sponsorship to Jack Benny instead, so that was it for Oz. The series pretty much followed the books, getting as far as The Emerald City of Oz, with some allowances made for radio, and lots of songs and advertisements for Jell-O thrown in. No copies of episodes are known to exist, but the Library of Congress holds the scripts in NBC's old records.
Also, there exists two episodes of an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz from the same era, broadcast on CBS, but nobody's been able to find out any more about them.
More recently, the BBC produced its own version of The Wizard of Oz for British radio in the 1990s. This is currently available in Great Britain and North America in a two CD set or audio download from the BBC Radio Collection. A second BBC adaptation was played on BBC Radio and the bbc.co.uk website during the 2009 holiday season.
During the holiday season in 2000, many public radio stations in the United States broadcast a new radio adaptation of The Wizard of Oz with an all-star cast, including Michelle Trachtenberg as Dorothy, Harry Anderson as the Wizard, Rene Auberjonois as the Scarecrow, Nestor Serrano as the Tin Woodman, and Robert Guillaume as the Cowardly Lion. This production is available as a four-CD set from many sources.
Mention should also be made here of the Colonial Radio Players' audio adaptations of the first six Oz books. Although they were not initially broadcast on radio, they were originally presented, on ten audio cassettes, as if they were. You can hear some samples at http://www.colonialradio.com/HTML/titles/oz_series.html. They have since been re-edited and broadcast on Sirius XM Radio's now defunct Book Radio. These are also available on CD and audio download at audible.com.
Two Oz-related episodes of radio shows also need to be mentioned here. An installment of the Maxwell House Good News show broadcast in June of 1939 was devoted to a sneak peek at The Movie, which was due to be released later that summer. It featured Judy Garland, Frank Morgan (a regular Good News cast member), Ray Bolger, and Bert Lahr, and was the public debut of the songs from The Movie. It featured many behind-the-scenes vignettes (mostly made up for the show), a "Baby Snooks" routine where her Daddy reads the story to her, and an appearance by Fred Stone, who played the Scarecrow in the 1902 stage play. (A snippet of this show can even be heard in the opening audio montage of the science fiction movie Contact, as it's one of the few examples of radio from that time period that's been preserved.) The CD version of the Good News episode includes the original commercials, and MGM's Wizard of Oz edition of Leo Is On the Air, an extended radio advertisement. Both shows are also available as audio-only tracks on the current American DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Movie.
On Christmas Day, 1950, Judy Garland recreated her role as Dorothy for an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz on The Lux Radio Theatre. Garland was the only original cast member, but her then-four-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli, makes a cameo appearance at the end. Both of these radio episodes have been released on record, audio cassette, and CD, the latter available from Radio Spirits at http://www.radiospirits.com/. The Lux Radio Theatre episode is also available as part of the current DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Movie.
Have there been talking book versions of any of the Oz books?
Yes, quite a few. Most have been adaptations of the story for very young children of The Wizard of Oz, many of which are still available today. One, from Caedmon, was read by Ray Bolger, who also read adaptations of The Land of Oz, Queen Zixi of Ix, and some of the "Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz" comic stories. These are currently available on cassette in a boxed set as The Oz Audio Collection. Another notable version came out from Columbia Records in 1969, with the entire book recorded on seven records, read by George Rose and Mildred Dunnock. More recently, Piglet Press has put out large cast readings of The Wizard of Oz and The Emerald City of Oz on cassette. In the 1960s, Disney put out book-and-record editions of The Wizard of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz (narrated by Ray Bolger), The Tin Woodman of Oz, and a new story called The Cowardly Lion of Oz — not to be confused with the Ruth Plumly Thompson story of the same name, despite the claims of the album notes that it is an adaptation. And there have been many other audio adaptations of The Wizard of Oz on records, cassettes, CDs, and now CD-ROM. Gregory Maguire's novels Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men, and Stuart Kaminsky's Murder on the Yellow Brick Road have been recorded as audiobooks.
A number of free audiobooks are available from Librivox, including a number of Oz and Baum books, recorded by volunteers. Uvula Audio Books also has a number of Baum titles available for free downloading. And in 2010, as part of the American Library Association's 2010 convention in Washington, D. C., Random House Audio set up a recording studio and let famous authors, attendees, and members of the general public each record a few lines of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for a charity release. It's free to download right here, but they do encourage you to donate to First Book while you're there.
Has there ever been an Oz TV show?
Yes, quite a few now. Again, here's an incomplete checklist of what's been shown:
- Tales of the Wizard of Oz. A series of 130 short (less than five minutes each) cartoons about the adventures of Socrates the Straw Man, Rusty the Tin Man, Dandy Lion, and other characters very loosely based on The Wizard of Oz, with many liberties taken. Produced in 1961, these were probably shown between other cartoons on Saturday mornings or on local independent stations. They seem to have been especially widespread in Canada, as many people have written to me having seen them there. I've heard that some episodes have been released on home video, but these aren't generally available any more. Episodes have also been available on some cable system's digital "on demand" systems, and YouTube. You can find out a little more at http://www.toonarific.com/show.php?show_id=3584.
- Off to See the Wizard. This series was MGM's answer to The Wonderful World of Disney, in that it was an anthology of old movies, short subjects, etc., from the studio's archives. The animated Oz segments were used to introduce the show and as bumpers going into commercial breaks. The animation was done by Chuck Jones, and voices included Mel Blanc, June Foray, and Daws Butler. Some samples are included on recent North American releases of The Movie on DVD and Blu-Ray. More information is available at http://www.toonarific.com/show.php?show_id=2673.
- W krainie Czarnoksiężnika Oza. A 1980s Polish series of stop motion animated episodes based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz. Information (in Polish) at http://www.filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php/425538.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This 1987 animated series, made by Cinar, Inc. in Canada, was the English-language adaptation of a Japanese anime series, オズの魔法使い, (Ozu no Mahotsukai). It was made up of four stories: The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, and The Emerald City of Oz. In the United States the fifty-two episode series has been shown on HBO and other cable channels, but only the edited movie versions have been released on VHS and DVD. It was released in its entirety, uncut, on DVD in other countries around the world. The English version is available for online viewing in a serial format at Jaroo.com and Hulu.com, and often shown on television on the This TV channel. The entire series, in the original Japanese as well as an additional Chinese soundtrack, is available from Yesasia.com.
- From 1987 to 1990, Jim Henson's company produced Jim Henson's Mother Goose Stories, a series of short vignettes that told the story behind several of the classic Mother Goose rhymes. A number of the stories (but not all) were based on stories written by L. Frank Baum in his first published children's book, Mother Goose in Prose. Some of the stories have been released on VHS and DVD.
- The Wizard of Oz. In 1990, to capitalize on the publicity surrounding The Movie's fiftieth anniversary, Turner Entertainment Co. and DIC produced this thirteen episode animated series, based on The Movie. In the Unites States it ran on ABC Saturday mornings during the 1990-91 TV season. Some episodes have been released on VHS. Three DVD collections are currently available, meaning only two episodes have not been released on DVD. More information about the show is available at http://www.toonarific.com/show.php?show_id=3962.
- In 1996, Tokyo Broadcasting Service broadcast twenty four episodes of 少年サンタの大冒険 (Shonen Santa no Daibouken), or The Adventures of Young Santa Claus, an animated adaptation of Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Brief information is available at http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1728 and http://newwwoz.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-adventures-of-young-santa.html. It is now available to watch online.
- La Maga y el Camino Dorado. A 2008 series produced in Argentina for the Latin American Nickelodeon. It is the story of a young woman whose adventures parallel Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz. You can see it's website (in Spanish) at http://www.lamagatv.com/.
- Over the Rainbow, a 2010 talent hunt show to cast an actress to play Dorothy in Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage production of The Wizard of Oz in London. It was shown on the BBC. A Canadian edition, casting for the Toronto and North American touring production, was shown on the CBC in 2012.
- Lost in Oz (2015) an animated series streaming on Amazon.com (not related to other productions of the same name).
- Emerald City. A 2017 adult series in which a 28 year old Dorothy sets out to find the Wizard.
- Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (2017), a cartoon series aimed at younger viewers, shown on Cartoon Network and Boomerang. It's based on The Movie, but takes many characters and plot ideas from the books.
- The Land of Oz. This adaptation of the second Oz book was an episode of Shirley Temple's weekly 1960 NBC series, and featured Temple as Tip and Ozma, Jonathan Winters as General Nikidik, and Agnes Moorehead as Mombi. (It was this role, incidentally, that convinced the producers of the series Bewitched to cast Moorehead as Endora, Samantha's mother, on that series.) In 2005, it was released on DVD as part of a set of Shirley Temple adaptations. More information can be found at http://store.nexternal.com/shared/StoreFront/product_detail.asp?RowID=25&CS=shirley&All= .
- Return to Oz. The producers of Tales of the Wizard of Oz used many of the same characterizations for this 1964 animated TV special, shown on NBC. It has previously been released on VHS, but isn't currently generally available. It was more recently released on DVD, but this is no longer available new. You can find out more about this special, and Susan Conway, who provided the voice of Dorothy, at http://www.rankinbass.com/schome.html.
- The Making of The Wizard of Oz. Aljean Harmetz, author of the book of the same name, hosted this short 1979 documentary, shown on PBS in the United States, about the making of The Movie. Includes interviews with Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Margaret Hamilton, among others.
- Thanksgiving in Oz (AKA Dorothy in the Land of Oz, Christmas in Oz, Dorothy and the Green Gobbler in Oz, or just plain Oz). Animated holiday special first shown in 1980. Very loosely based on Ozma of Oz. It has previously been released a number of times on VHS, and on DVD in 2007 (coupled with Peter and the Magic Egg with Ray Bolger).
- The Whimsical World of Oz. 1985 documentary about the Oz phenomenon, partly used to publicize Disney's film Return to Oz, and shown on PBS stations.
- The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985). Another holiday special, this one was made by Rankin-Bass and faithfully adapted from Baum's book of the same name. The animation uses stop-motion puppets, like other famous Rankin-Bass specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It is available on VHS and DVD (the latter coupled with another old Rankin-Bass special, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey), and shown during the Christmas season on the ABC Family Channel.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Making of a Movie Classic. As part of The Movie's fiftieth anniversary, Angela Lansbury hosted a documentary about the history and making of The Movie, shown after the movie's TV broadcast in 1990 and 1996, and in conjunction with many of The Movie's recent cable airings. It has also been shown on its own on PBS stations, and was released on video as part of The Ultimate Oz collector's set of The Movie, and the 1999, 2005, and 2009 DVD (and Blu-Ray) reissues of The Movie. The home video version is a bit longer, featuring more material.
- The Dreamer of Oz. This 1990 TV movie was a biography of L. Frank Baum, starring John Ritter as Frank and Annette O'Toole as Maud. While some of the details are inaccurate, this was, overall, a faithful telling of Baum's early life and career and how he came to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was never released on VHS in the United States, but it was in Australia. It finally made its home video release in 2009 as part of the new DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Movie that year (see the question Where can I find The Dreamer of Oz on home video? for more details.)
- Geltonu plytu kelias ("Yellow Brick Road") a musical version of The Wizard of Oz was broadcast on Lithuanian television in 1993.
- In Search of Oz. In 1994, the BBC's Arena documentary series produced this examination of Oz, which concentrated more on the books than most others. Shown in the United States, with a few cuts, on A&E.
- The Wizard of Oz in Concert. This 1995 concert, filmed for television, was a benefit for the Children's Defense Fund, and shown on TNT. It is available on home video, and has since been shown on VH1 and some PBS stations. Performers include Jewel as Dorothy, the Harlem Boys Choir, Joel Grey as Professor Marvel and the Wizard (predating his portrayal of the Wizard in Wicked on Broadway), Jackson Browne as the Scarecrow, Roger Daltrey as the Tin Man, Nathan Lane as the Cowardly Lion, Natalie Cole as Glinda, and Deborah Winger as the Wicked Witch of the West.
- The Wizard of Oz on Ice. This 1996 production, shown on CBS, was an abbreviated version of the touring production of the same name, with Oksana Baiul as Dorothy and Viktor Petrenko as the Scarecrow (neither of whom appeared in the touring show), and narrated by Bobby McFarrin, who does the same on tour. McFarrin also played the Wizard in this production, the only non-skater in the cast. It was released on VHS, but is no longer available.
- Lion of Oz. This animated movie was made by Sony in 2000, and is based on the book Lion of Oz and the Badge of Courage by Roger S. Baum. It's a prequel about how the Wizard and the Lion came to Oz. It was shown on the Disney Channel and Toon Disney, and released on home video and DVD.
- The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (2000). This is a different animated version of the Baum story, produced by Sony, released on VHS, and shown on Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel.
- Being Dorothy, a Canadian documentary, shown on the CBC, about life in small-town America. The town they chose was Liberal, Kansas, home of the "Dorothy's House" tourist attraction, hence the Oz theme.
- The Muppets' Wizard of Oz was a 2005 TV movie shown on ABC. It featured Ashanti as Dorothy, Pepe the King Prawn as Toto, Kermit the Frog as the Scarecrow, Gonzo as the Tin Thing, Fozzie as the Cowardly Lion, Miss Piggy as all four (!) witches, Jeffrey Tambor as the Wizard, and a cameo by Quentin Tarantino as himself. It was later released on video and DVD with additional footage and extras.
- Tin Man, the 2007 SciFi Channel miniseries, features Zooey Deschanel as DG, a Kansas waitress who turns out to be the lost princess of the O. Z., a land overrun by a wicked witch named Azkadellia. Believe it or not, this show turned out to be both a sequel and a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. It is available on DVD and Blu-Ray.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The True Story, a British documentary presented on BBC Four in 2011. This was a look at the life and careers of L. Frank Baum, how he came to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Oz books, and also how they translated the work to make the famous film version.
- The Witches of Oz (2011), a four-hour miniseries, was first broadcast in Europe (most notably the Syfy channel in the United Kingdom), and made available on DISH Pay-Per-View and On Demand in the United States in September 2011, along with showings at select theaters. Dorothy, having forgotten about Oz, is all grown up and living in New York City, making a living as a children's book writer. But when the wicked witches come looking for her, she is forced to remember Oz and confront them. Fortunately, her old friends from Oz, the good witches, and the Wizard have come to help her. It has been released on DVD in Europe and Australia.
- For its annual holiday live musical in 2015, NBC broadcast The Wiz Live with an all-star cast.
Numerous Oz references have made their way into any number of TV series, movies, and specials, and some shows have even had special Wizard of Oz episodes, such as Superfriends, Fame (which is now available to watch on Hulu.com), Alf Tales, Beetlejuice (the cartoon), The Guiding Light, That 70s Show, Life with Bonnie, a segment of Futurama, That's So Raven, and Phineas and Ferb, to name but a few. A 1970 episode of Death Valley Days entitled "The Wizard of Aberdeen" featured L. Frank Baum as a character, dramatizing an incident that took place while he was editing a newspaper in South Dakota. The soap opera Passions devoted an entire week to a Wizard of Oz-themed storyline in the summer of 2002. The HBO series Boardwalk Empire featured readings from The Road to Oz in an episode of its first season. And in Russia, television versions of Volshebnik Izumrudnogo Goroda have been shown, one live-action (which may have also had a theatrical release), one a hand puppet show, one stop-motion animation, and one (a Baum-Volkov hybrid) cel animation. The last mentioned film was followed by a version of The Marvelous Land of Oz. The Wizard segment has been dubbed by British actors and released in the United Kingdom on DVD as The Haunted Journey to Oz.
I remember an Oz cartoon, can you tell me more about it? It had a catchy theme song that started out, "They're three sad souls, Oh me, oh my..."
"No brains, no heart, He's much too shy..." Yes, I'm familiar with that song. That's the theme song for Tales of the Wizard of Oz (see the question Has there ever been an Oz TV show? for more information). Despite what many people think, it's not a Canadian show, but American, produced by Rankin-Bass in the United States in the early 1960s. The voice recordings were done in Toronto with Canadian actors, however, which presumably makes the show eligible for Canadian content regulations, thus explaining why it played so much in Canada. The complete theme song lyrics are:
- They're three sad souls
- Oh me, oh my,
- No brains, no heart,
- He's much too shy.
- But never mind you three,
- Here's the Wizard as you can see.
- He'll fix that one, two, three
- In that funny place called the world of Oz.
- Oh the world of Oz is a funny, funny place
- Where everyone has a funny, funny face.
- All the streets are paved with gold,
- And no one ever grows old.
- In that funny land lives the Wizard of Oz.
More information about Tales of the Wizard of Oz can be found on the WWW at http://www.toonarific.com/show.php?show_id=3584. Several episodes are now available to watch online. Or if you just want to watch it right now…
Where can I find The Dreamer of Oz on home video?
The Dreamer of Oz was available as a VHS rental in Australia, but was never released in North America. In 2009, it was finally made available as a special feature on certain editions of the 2009 DVD and Blu-Ray release of The Movie (The Ultimate Collector's Edition, the Emerald Edition, and a special 2-disc set made exclusively for Wal-Mart). It should be noted, however, that the video quality is far from pristine, and the Blu-Ray only contains a standard definition version.
Have any Oz productions been released directly to home video?
A few animated versions of The Wizard of Oz, and one of Ozma of Oz, have been released straight to video. These are of varying quality, from so-so to all right, with some being straight adaptations and some a little more irreverent. One of the most notable of these is a Japanese version of The Wizard of Oz, which was released on home video in North America with a dubbed English soundtrack, featuring Aileen Quinn as Dorothy and Lorne Greene as the Wizard. A series, The Oz Kids, was also released straight to VHS, although it has been shown on television in other countries. The main characters are the sons and daughters of the familiar Oz characters (Dorothy's children Dot and Ned, Scarecrow Jr., Tin Boy, and so on), but the stories are based on Baum's books, including some of his non-Oz writings. Characters from later books — or rather, their children — appear, such as Jackie Pumpkinhead, Nome Prince Otto, and the Patchwork Baby. The videos were distributed through Paramount Home Video, and the titles are Toto, Lost in New York, The Nome Prince and the Magic Belt, Virtual Oz, Who Stole Santa? Christmas in Oz, Journey Beneath the Sea, Underground Adventure, The Monkey Prince, and The Return of Mombi. The two Christmas stories were also released on DVD in Great Britain. A play was recorded and released on video, the 1981 Minneapolis Children's Theater production of The Marvelous Land of Oz. Also, two documentaries were released on video in 1997, Oz: The American Fairyland and Charles Santore Illustrates The Wizard of Oz. Both were produced by Leonard A. Swann and released by Sirocco Productions, Inc., which no longer appears to be in business.


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Home » ReR Label » PERE UBU: London Texas
PERE UBU: London Texas
A great live recording of the sadly short-lived version of the band that existed between the arrival of Eric Drew Feldman and the departure of Chris Cutler. By far the best recording of the Scott, Cutler, Maimone rhythm section, I think, and the whole band is on intense concert form: David racked up to 11, Eric working equally on foundations and fine details as to the out-there manner born and Jim Jones somewhere in the stratosphere. Coming back to it, this was a pretty great band. The songs are economical, tightly arranged and take no prisoners. And there's that live energy - the closest we can get to being when and where we weren't. Studio recordings can't do this. Mastered by Bob Drake, and it stings like a bee - with a beret. Play it loud.L
Only available at this price as part of the ReR Sale Offer (minimum) 4 titles)
Code: ReRPU01
Price: £5.00


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WASHINGTON — Reports of sexual assaults by members of the military rose 50 percent after the Pentagon began a vigorous campaign to get more victims to come forward, prompting defense officials to order a greater focus on prevention programs, including plans to review alcohol sales and policies.
But officials are still unhappy with the low number of male victims who reported sexual assault, and they say there will be a greater emphasis in the months ahead on getting men to come forward and seek help. Final data obtained by The Associated Press show that about 14 percent of the reports filed last year involved male victims.
Defense officials said Wednesday that encouraging more men to report sexual assaults is a difficult challenge because male victims often worry that it will make people think they are weak and trigger questions about their sexual orientation. In most cases, however, sexual orientation has nothing to do with the assault and it's more an issue of power or abuse.
"There is still a misperception that this is a women's issue and women's crime," said Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's sexual assault prevention office. "It's disheartening that we have such a differential between the genders and how they are choosing to report."
The Pentagon planned to release its report Thursday. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was expected to call on the military services to step up efforts to encourage troops to intervene in assault situations and work with military bases and local communities to better train bar workers and promote more responsible alcohol sales. According to officials, alcohol was a factor in as many as two-thirds of the cases.
Under the military's definition, a sexual assault can be anything from unwanted sexual contact, such as inappropriate touching or grabbing, to sodomy and rape.
While the number of reported assaults shot up sharply in 2013, defense officials said that based on survey data and other information, they believe the increase was largely due to victims feeling more comfortable coming forward. Overall, there were 5,061 reports of sexual abuse filed in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, compared with 3,374 in 2012, for a 50 percent gain. About 10 percent of the 2013 reports involved incidents that occurred before the victim got into the military, up from just 4 percent in 2012.
"There is no indication that this increase in reporting constitutes an increase in crime," said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. "We assess that this unprecedented increase is consistent with a growing confidence in the response systems."
Over the past two years, the military services have increased awareness of the problem and treatment programs to instill more confidence in the system and get victims to come forward. Phone numbers and contact information for sexual assault prevention officers are plastered across military bases, including inside the doors of bathroom stalls. And top military officers have traveled to bases around the world speaking out on the issue.
Officials said prosecutions also have increased. Galbreath said the military was able to take some action against 73 percent of the accused perpetrators who were subject to the military justice system. In 2012 it was 66 percent. Some cases involve perpetrators who are not in the military so are not subject to commander's actions or military courts.
Sexual assault has been a front-burner issue for the military, Congress and the Obama administration over the past year, triggering Capitol Hill hearings and persistent questions about how effectively the military was preventing and prosecuting assaults and how well it was treating the victims. Fueling the outrage has been a number of high-profile assault cases and arrests, including incidents involving senior commanders, sexual assault prevention officers and a number of military trainers.
At the same time, the military has long struggled to get victims to report sexual assault in a stern military culture that emphasizes rank, loyalty and toughness. Too often, victims have complained they were afraid to report assaults to ranking officers for fear of retribution, or said that their initial complaints were rebuffed or ignored. A 2012 anonymous survey found that about 26,000 service members said they were the victim of some type of unwanted sexual contact or assault.
A key finding in that survey was that, in sheer numbers, more men than women said they had been assaulted. About 6.8 percent of women surveyed said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of the men. But there are vastly more men in the military; by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men.
The military, Galbreath said, needs to get the message out that this is not just a women's problem.
"It's not the damsel in distress; it's your fellow service member that might need you to step in," he said, adding that troops need to treat it like any other need for aid, just like on the battlefield.
As a result, Hagel was expected to order the military services to improve reporting by male victims and encourage them to seek assistance. In addition, he was to press for a renewed emphasis on prevention and the need to take some of the programs various services have been conducting and use them across the military.
Those include programs that urge troops to intervene when they see a buddy in trouble or being harassed. And there now may be a move to work with bars and stores that sell alcohol around the bases to educate their employees, offer menus when they serve drinks and review hours of liquor sales.
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How about misspelling your correction of a misspelling?
Ouch. Nothin' like messing up a good rant over the fact that someone else messed up, is there? (And yes, I *do* know that from personal experience. Heh.)
Taking team unity to a whooole new level.
Thanks to Wreckporters Christine A., Lindsay W., Monique R., & Jaclyn S.!
- Related Wreckage: Maximum Irony Has Now Been Achieved


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As a journalist, I've known Katherine Bouton for over 30 years. I first met her on a trip to Antarctica in 1979. A famous picture of me interviewing penguins was taken by Ms. Bouton. But I was never fully aware of the extent of the private battle she has been fighting, an invisible condition that affects 50 million Americans, I'm talking about hearing loss.
If you think hearing loss is something only older people have to worry about, you may be surprised to find out, as I was after reading her book, that 50 million people suffer from some degree of hearing impairment, and it can happen at any age. Ms. Bouton went deaf at the age of 30. Today she has help from a cochlear impact and hearing aids, but it's still a struggle.
In her new book she describes how she learned to cope with hearing loss and why we need to do more to address this widespread but misunderstood problem. Katherine Bouton is author of "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." It's going to be on bookshelves next week on February 19. She joins us here in our New York studio. And if I'm speaking more clearly today than normal, it's because Katherine Bouton can't hear me, and she is mostly lip-reading. Is that correct?
KATHERINE BOUTON: I am partly lip-reading, but you have a good voice for me.
FLATOW: That's good.
BOUTON: Your voice is at a frequency level that is one of my better ones.
FLATOW: Finally, something good with my voice.
FLATOW: But you don't call it lip-reading anymore, do you?
BOUTON: You're supposed to call it speech-reading.
FLATOW: Because?
BOUTON: I think - I don't know why the hearing profession wants that. But, in fact, it is reading not only the lips, but body language, facial expression, so speech-reading is more accurate.
FLATOW: Our number is 1-800-989-8255 if you'd like to talk to Katherine Bouton. And if she can't hear what you're saying, I'll relay the question from my reader here.
This is a really interesting story. You discovered when you were 30. What - tell us what happened in that...
BOUTON: Well, I was sitting at my desk, writing. I don't remember what I was writing. I think I was writing a piece for The New Yorker that was published before I went to Antarctica with you. And my phone rang. I could hear the phone, and I picked it up. I always used to pick up the phone with my left hand and put it to my left ear so that I could take notes with my right, and I couldn't hear anything.
And I said, hello? Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? And then I switched to my other ear, and somebody said, yes, I'm trying to reach Katherine Bouton. So that was alarming. But then after I hung up on that call, which I listened to with my right ear, I made various other calls. In those days you could call the weather, and you could call time. And so I made various calls to see whether I can hear out of both ears, and I couldn't hear out of my left ear.
I wasn't initially that alarmed because I, like all children of the '60s and '70s, had gone to my share of rock concerts and had lost my hearing temporarily before, and I thought maybe this was a temporary loss.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And then it spread to your other ear.
BOUTON: It didn't spread to my other ear for a couple of decades. I spent most of my 30s and 40s hearing with one ear, hearing with my right ear, and I did pretty well with my right ear. Around the time I turned 50 - my hearing loss was progressive, so the left ear was going down, down, down, down. And around the time I turned 50, the left ear was so far down and the right ear was so basically nonfunctioning that I finally gave in and got hearing aids, which I should have done long, long, long before that.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. You talk about so many things in your book. Is there a central message you want to give people about hearing loss?
BOUTON: Yes. There are a couple of messages I want to give people. One is that if you suffer from hearing loss, don't suffer alone. There are a lot of people out there like you. I spent a good number of years not acknowledging my hearing loss. I cut off a lot of my friendships. I antagonized a lot of people. I eventually lost my job. I was - I talk about it in the book.
And I really thought this was something that was happening only to me. After I left the Times, where I worked for 22 years, I went to the annual meeting of the Hearing Loss Association of America. That year, it was in Washington, and that was a complete revelation to me. There were so many people there, and they were so interesting, and the talks were so interesting, and everybody was going through the same thing I was.
So that's my first piece of advice is get out there. There are other people like you. Acknowledge your loss and talk to other people. My second, I want to just add this, is to - we need to do something about noise...
FLATOW: Yes.
BOUTON: ...because it's by far the largest cause.
FLATOW: We'll get into that. I'm talking with Katherine Bouton, author of "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You" on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.
And the title of this book, "Shouting Won't Help," is symptomatic. People just scream at you, don't they?
BOUTON: They either scream at you or they lean way in and talk very close to your ear. And just to go back to speech-reading for a minute, if somebody does that, I'm at a total loss. I need to see their face to hear them talk. So don't shout. Don't lean in and whisper.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. I have partial hearing loss in one of my ears due to a - an experiment on television with a firecracker that went bad. And I - so I have tinnitus in my ear. It's been ringing for over 30 years. So I can - you know, one thing I'm very conscious of is the noise around me because I want to protect the good ear, you know? And there is so - and you write about this in your book, how we worship noise, basically.
BOUTON: Yes. Mostly in recreational activities. Concerts, stadiums are incredibly loud. The whole dispute about guns and hunting. Nobody ever bothers to mention the effect on hearing, but hunting is a major cause of hearing loss, usually only an ear next to the gun.
But even just walking down the street to the studio today, I have an iPhone with a decibel reader on it. And between Times Square and Fifth Avenue, where this office is, the decibel meter jumped between 80 and 90 the entire time, which is pretty loud.
FLATOW: Right. Know where I saw one of the worst offenders? The bathroom in airplanes, that little flush toilet that makes a f-f-f. I took my decibel reader in there. It was over 110.
BOUTON: Wow. I didn't know that. That's amazing.
FLATOW: It is so loud. It's just amazing. Is there anything to be done about this or any, you know, do we tell our kids because my kids have those, you know, they have the - their earplugs in, and I can hear it. And I say if I can hear it, it must be too loud.
BOUTON: It is too loud. It's not - I mean, there's a lot of different scientific opinion on this act of moderate noise over a long, continuous period. So even if your kids turn down their headphones, their iPhone - their iPods, if they have them on 12 hours a day, they may still be damaging their hearing. If they have them on 12 hours a day and you can hear it, they are damaging their hearing. So that's one thing we can do.
But I think we have a lot of noise ordinances in this country, and except in a workplace, we don't enforce them. It's - you don't have to have the headphones on to be exposed to noise. All you have to do is go out to dinner in a restaurant or worse, be a waiter in that restaurant. So you're there all day long with that noise blasting around you.
FLATOW: Talking with Katherine Bouton, author of "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." My number, if you can hear me, is 1-800-989-8255. You can also tweet us, @scifri. Stay with us. We'll be right back - excuse me - after this break. I'm Ira Flatow, this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.
FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking with Katherine Bouton, author of the book "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." It hits the bookshelves next week on February 19. Our number, 1-800-989-8255. Let's talk a bit about hearing aids because people always talk about hearing aids. How effective are they? You have - you wear hearing aids?
BOUTON: I wear a hearing aid.
FLATOW: A hearing aid and...
BOUTON: And a cochlear implant in the other ear.
FLATOW: Is there a difference between the two?
BOUTON: Oh, yes. I could not wear a hearing aid in my left ear because my hearing is non-existent. I have profound hearing loss in my left ear. A cochlear implant is surgically implanted. It operates in a completely different way from a hearing aid. It takes digital signals which it sends to the brain, and then the brain interprets those digital signals as words. On the other side, I'm hearing those same sounds in terms of sound waves which are amplified by my hearing aid, and they're going to the same brain pathways (unintelligible) trying to coordinate the two different kinds of signals that are coming and turn that into speech recognition. What was your...
FLATOW: I'll ask it. My mother wore hearing aids until she was 98, passed away, and she never, never got used to them. She never thought they really helped her and sometimes she would say I have to take it out of my ear to hear better. Are hearing aids - do they work?
BOUTON: They should work. I don't know where your mother got hers. But it's very important if you're wearing hearing aids to have them properly fitted. There are - there's a new kind of hearing aid called an open hearing aid which does fits very loosely into your ear and then house it behind the ear component. The fitting in those is not as important and because there's - it's just not so close, but mine are full in-the-ear things. Probably not the same size as your mother wore, but they do fill up the ear canal, and if mine were not properly fitted, it would be painful.
And in fact, if I gain or lose weight, my hearing aid fits better or worse. At one point when I got a new hearing aid, I had, in between, lost about 10 pounds. And they couldn't use my old mold. They had to recalibrate the size of my ear in the shape of the hearing aid. So your mother probably was, and I think a lot of people, even today, are wearing hearing aids that don't fit and that don't really work because they don't wear them for starters or because they haven't been properly programmed or because they're not the right hearing aids for that person.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. When you got your implant, did you - it says in the book that you had to relearn how to hear again. What was that like?
BOUTON: It was very, very hard for me because I always wore my hearing aid. I was still working. I couldn't afford not to hear. I couldn't afford to just wear my implant all the time and not hear out of my other ear. So I didn't give my implant a chance in the first five or six months when - which are the crucial months.
But the way you relearn to hear, you work with the - I worked with a speech pathologist who would go over the sounds that were difficult for me. She would cover her mouth and she would say am I saying fit, fat or fat, fit? And I couldn't really hear the difference between fit, fat, fat, fought, any of those things or between bit, bat, but. So I practiced with her. I practiced a little bit on my computer by myself at home. I put headphones on and listened to recorded books and read along with them and then tried to take my eyes away and see if I could still follow. It's - learning is not quite the right term for it. You're really just training.
FLATOW: And you also said that you call yourself deaf, but that's not politically correct. Please explain that.
BOUTON: Well, deaf with a capital D refers to the deaf community which is a community with a culture and a language, American Sign Language. Even people who wear hearing aids can be members of the deaf community if they choose to define themselves that way, and if they use American Sign Language as their primary language. I and many other people who have hearing loss just got tired of saying I'm a person with hearing loss and so say I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, I'm deaf, small D.
And it's really just - it's short hand. And it's also a little bit - it gives you just a little sense of triumph of being able to say I'm deaf, you know, speak more clearly to me. So...
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. David from Syracuse, New York. Hi. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
DAVID: Hi, Ira. First-time caller. I love your show. Thanks a lot for taking my call.
FLATOW: You're welcome.
DAVID: I - when I was about four or five years old, I developed the mumps and - in my left ear. I wound up with a 55, 60 percent hearing loss that was diagnosed at the time as what they would call a nerve deafness. Now, I'm just curious - it's gotten worse over the years. And I just would like to know from your guest if there have been any advances, they even still use that term, nerve deafness, and if there have been any other advances other than a cochlear implant that are kind of hanging out there.
FLATOW: Let me see if I can...
BOUTON: I did hear that.
BOUTON: You're asking whether the term nerve deafness is still used. It is. It's a misnomer most of the time. Most hearing loss that people have is sensorineural, which means that your - either your sensory, your auditory nerve or the hair cells in your cochlea are damaged. The only time it's truly, by definition, nerve damage is if it's the auditory nerve. Most of the time it's the hair cells. But that's still called sensorineural hearing loss, and it's the kind most people have.
FLATOW: All right. Thank...
DAVID: I think that - okay. All right. Thanks, Ira. Thank care.
FLATOW: Thank you. You say that what we think as nerve damage or hair cell damage really is not what people really have.
BOUTON: Oh, they do.
FLATOW: They do.
BOUTON: Yeah. Hair cell damage is the kind of damage that's caused by noise exposure. It's caused by exposure to autotoxins like various drugs. Cisplatin, unfortunately, which is a very valuable cancer drug, is an autotoxin. Vicodin is an autotoxin. And they all cause the same kind of nerve damage. They flatten your hair cells so that they can't communicate properly with the nerve that goes to the brain.
FLATOW: Is it possible to re-grow your hair cells? Because every week or so there's a little bit of good news about stem cells or something like that that might stimulate them to re-grow.
BOUTON: In 2010, Stefan Heller, who's at Stanford University, was the first to manage to regenerate hair cells in a mammal. Fish and birds regenerate their hair cells automatically. A lot of work has been done on this at the University of Washington, at Stanford, at Harvard and other places, trying to figure out why it is that fish and chicks can do it and we can't. I spent a lot of time at the University of Washington and at Stanford talking to the various researchers there, and they think that within a decade they may have mastered the techniques.
But that doesn't mean that this is going to be available to humans anywhere in the near future. It's just incredibly complicated work. I think that nobody wanted to estimate how long it would be before this could be applied to humans, but they were willing to say between 10 and 50 years.
FLATOW: So...
FLATOW: Some things are always 30 years away.
BOUTON: Yes.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255. Talking with Katherine Bouton, author of "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." Give us some tips for the correct way to talk to people who can't hear you.
BOUTON: Well, don't shout.
FLATOW: Don't shout. Because no matter how loud you shout, it's not going to help.
BOUTON: Don't lean in and talk into the person's ear because as we were discussing before with speech reading, you need to see the whole face, the body. If you're in a room with a bright light source, let the person who is hearing impaired sit with their back to the light source because otherwise you'll be silhouetted and they won't be able to read your body language. I have a whole list of suggestions about how to talk to people with hearing loss, mostly because I'm constantly telling people how to talk to me. They're in the book. I...
FLATOW: Yeah. One thing you did mention I thought was very interesting is I can't cook and talk at the same time.
BOUTON: I love to cook. I'm a pretty good cook. And I love to have people over for the holidays. I - last Christmas I had 25 people. And, you know, my friends want to be helpful, and they come into my kitchen, which is a New York City kitchen, and it's not very big anyway. And they want to talk to me while I'm trying to juggle about five different dishes at the same time. And it's distracting. I make mistakes in my cooking. Sometimes I spill food on myself, burning food. But I absolutely cannot hear what the other person is saying, and I finally just say, can you leave? This is - I appreciate the thought, but it's not helping.
FLATOW: You also tell people - or people tell you - I think you were saying that your husband Dan used to get tired of hearing you say, what's that? What's that?
Can you find something else to say besides what's that when you couldn't hear it?
BOUTON: Yeah. He says - what I would say is: what? Mostly these days I say sorry. It seems a little bit more important. Sorry, can you repeat that? The original title for my book was "Say What?" And I didn't think enough people in America said say what, but now I have discovered that plenty do. It also helps. This is another tip, actually. When somebody does say what or sorry, don't repeat exactly what you said before. If you can possibly find a way to rephrase it, the person with hearing loss is much more likely to be able to pick it up the second time around.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Let's go to the phones. Susan in Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Susan.
SUSAN: Hi. I'm deaf in my left ear and when people talk on my left side, I can't hear a thing. It's like being completely deaf. And I have a real hard time understanding conversations on TV. I don't know if other people who are personally deaf having that problem, but it's a real problem for me.
FLATOW: Because you are deaf in one hear?
SUSAN: Yes. Sound comes through my head and I can't describe it because I've never had sound in both ears. But apparently when people are on my left side and they start talking to me, I don't hear them at all. If I'm with friends, they know and poke me or answer the question or say look at that person.
FLATOW: Hmm. Katherine, she is saying that she is deaf in one ear and it really is - even though she can hear in the other ear, it doesn't help that much.
BOUTON: OK. Yes. No, I can really relate to that. I was in that position for about 20 years. I always made a point if I possibly could to position myself on the - with the person who is talking to me on my right. I know people talk to me on my left side who I had no idea they were talking to me.
And recently - actually, just yesterday I ran into a man in my building who said, oh, I (unintelligible) your article in the Times on Tuesday about dementia and hearing loss. He said it was so interesting. I had no idea you had hearing loss. But I do remember one time when I was talking to you and you didn't answer me, and I thought maybe I had said something offensive. So yeah, it is a problem and I don't have any suggestions except just to try to always position yourself correctly.
FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.
I'm talking with Katherine Bouton, author of the book "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." One would think that if 50 million Americans have this problem, we'd be more aware of it or that there might be some - more help coming for these Americans.
BOUTON: I think that we're not more aware of it because there a stigma associated with hearing losses. As you said in your introduction, most people think that it's a natural part of aging. If you're getting towards aging, you don't want to add to the impression that you're already there by wearing a hearing aid or acknowledging your hearing loss. So a lot of people do not acknowledge hearing loss.
In studies - accounting(ph) hearing loss, if you ask if the - if the epidemiologist simply asked someone if they have hearing loss, a lot of times they'll say no. They may not be aware of it or they may just not want to admit it. The same thing is true with hearing aid use. If you ask somebody if they use hearing aids, like Ira's mother, they'll say yes, but in fact they're taking those hearings aids out most of the time because they're uncomfortable. So they're not using them properly. And this really, really skews the statistics. It was one of the hardest things in writing my book, was to try to figure out exactly, you know, what number of millions of people in America have hearing loss.
FLATOW: Are there any things that are happening now that help hearing people? Any - does technology help us besides the hearing aid?
BOUTON: Well, cochlear implants are wonderful. And even though I've had a hard time with mine, I wouldn't not wear it for anything. There is a lot of technology that's coming about and I think it's not really intended to help the hearing impaired but it does. For instance, the New York City's subway system has installed LED lighting and messaging for when the trains are coming, what trains are delayed. I, you know, for 40 years could never hear a thing on the subway. And now all I have to do is read like everybody else.
There's also - this is (unintelligible) airports, things are visually displayed as well as somebody talking to that megaphone at you that you can't hear. And, you know, I think there - one of the things that I really want to do with this book if I can is to raise awareness of how difficult it is for people with hearing loss to get around.
FLATOW: Yeah. Does text messaging help? Unintended consequence?
BOUTON: I love text messaging. I love email. I can't imagine what my life would have been like before text messaging and email. I would have been just a completely different person, and really, I think, totally isolated.
FLATOW: Katherine, thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. It's so good to see you again.
BOUTON: Thank you.
FLATOW: Katherine Bouton, author of "Shouting Won't Help: Why I - and 50 Million Other Americans - Can't Hear You." Everybody knows someone with a hearing problem, everybody will certainly benefit from reading Katherine Bouton's book.
That's about all the time we have for today. Before we go, we want to remind you that we are doing our winter photography contest, starts in about three minutes. Take some great photos, send it to us at SCIENCE FRIDAY, we'll put them up there and judge them and come up with some winners. It's our winter season photography contest. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but maybe you just need a few moms in your corner. Every week, we check in with a diverse group of parents for their comments and some savvy advice. We are going to continue our conversation about children and obesity.
It's a big deal. The Centers for Disease Control reports that nearly 1 in 5 school-age children is carrying excess weight. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 32 percent of children and adolescents are overweight or obese; almost 17 percent are obese.] We just heard from mom and author Dara-Lynn Weiss, who wrote about putting her daughter - her 7-year-old - on a strict diet, in the book "The Heavy." Now we want to get the perspective of two more moms. Dani Tucker is one of our regular moms contributor. She mother of two - a son and a daughter. She also works as a fitness instructor.
Anupy Singla is a mother of two daughters. She's a former journalist who's turned her hand to writing cookbooks. She's written two, including "Vegan Indian Cooking." Welcome back to you both. Thank you both so much for joining us.
DANI TUCKER: Thank you.
ANUPY SINGLA: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: So Dani, let me just start with you. What did you think of her approach? I know you're kind of our tough-love mom, and you kind of take no prisoners when it comes to things that you feel are in your children's best interests. What did you think of Dara-Lynn's approach?
TUCKER: I liked her approach. I think it worked for her and Bea. I like the fact that she shared it because everybody's not a tough mom, you know, like I am. So I think she did a great job in, you know, knowing her child and knowing what - what, you know, what she would need to do, too. I think that's important. You've got to know your child, because you can't deal with each of them the same way.
MARTIN: Anupy Singla, what about you? I know that you, as a journalist - I mean, you've written about this in one of your cookbooks; about the fact that in part, what led you to change careers is you were concerned about what your kids were eating, and you wanted to focus on nutrition and diet, and things of that sort. What's your response to Dara-Lynn's approach?
SINGLA: Yeah, you know, I really liked her approach, and I liked what she had to say about just having to do the difficult thing, as a parent. And sometimes, you have to be the tough one. And there's many days when I go through my days and my kids say, you know, you're the mean mom; or what Dara-Lynn had to say about other people thinking that she's crazy. I get that all the time.
This morning, my husband - when I was prepping for this - said you know, you're a zealot. And I had to say no, I'm just very passionate. And so I agreed with her approach - for her, and it might differ for other folks. But I like the fact that she owned it. She also talked about both sides, the positive aspects as well as the negative. But at the end of the day, she owned everything that she did.
MARTIN: I want to play a clip from a dad named Bob Freedman, who's trying to help his daughter Rachel lose weight. She's in third grade. She weighs 112 pounds. She's now on a complicated nutrition and exercise plan. And her dad recently spoke with WAMU's Kavitha Cardoza; that's our member station in Washington, D.C. And Kavitha's been doing a lot of reporting on the whole question of childhood obesity. And this is from their conversation. Here it is.
BOB FREEDMAN: Just two months ago, we had our first appointment where Rachel lost weight. Lois and I were actually in tears. We were so overwhelmed by four years' worth of work finally showing through.
MARTIN: So Dani, I have to ask you the same question I asked Dara-Lynn earlier; which is, do you think that this is an individual problem, or do you think that there's something bigger going on - no pun intended - with the country, where so many parents are fighting so hard to keep their kids at a healthy weight?
TUCKER: Yeah, I think it is something bigger going on. I mean, you know, you look at any fast food place that they walk into, and everything's super-sized. And you know, when everybody super-sizes - they never thought that, you know, most of the people that were going to take advantage of this was hungry kids, you know, after school or when you're not around your parents.
So I think we've super-sized everything and at the same time haven't taught them how to, you know, say no to super-size - I don't need it. So everything is super-sized, you know. All the wrong things are. And that's why the problem is bigger than, you know, what it should be.
MARTIN: Anupy, what do you think?
SINGLA: Well, you know, I think, too, everywhere you go - regardless of whether it's in America or outside of America - food is equated with love. I mean, food is love. When I feed my kids, I feel like I'm giving them love. And in this country, so much of that love is kind of embedded and baked. And so it's all about, you know, these cupcakes. But the moms at the schools, they give them out, and they think that they're giving their kids love, and other kids as well.
So I don't poo-poo why they're doing it. I just say look - I mean, there's got to be less of it. We're going a little overboard with how much we're exposing our kids to. And the thing is, when you're giving them all of that sugar, you're not balancing it with teaching them good, healthy eating practices at home and also giving them the good stuff.
So it's not about, you know, either/or. It's - I'm not telling my kids on a day-to-day basis, look, you cannot have that cupcake. What I'm saying is well, you can have half of it and then have, you know, a bowl of carrots, maybe some celery, and something to balance it all out. So it's all, for me, about balance.
MARTIN: We are continuing our conversation about "The Heavy." We spoke with author Dara-Lynn Weiss earlier. She's written a book about her efforts to keep her daughter at a healthy weight. I'm joined now by Dani Tucker, mom of two and a fitness instructor, and Anupy Singla, also a mom of two and a cookbook author.
But, you know, one of the things, Dani - I'll just ask you this - one of the things that Dara-Lynn Weiss was criticized for and - is - there are a lot of people think it's not just about the child, it's about her, about worrying that the child's weight somehow reflects poorly on her. And then people worry that the child - well, we talked about this and she talked about this in the book, so we're not talking about her behind her back - but that the child will grow up sort of being obsessed with her weight and with her appearance, and that's kind of not what we want. And I'm just interested in your take on this, particularly as a person who works in fitness.
TUCKER: I think that's a matter of their opinion and we all have them, you know, I mean and leave it at that, because either you obsess with her weight and her fitness now or she dies later. You know, and I think, you know, and when we're giving opinions about it we forget about that because this is a serious problem. You know, young people, the obesity problem in our young people is out of control and they're going into adulthood with serious health problems that we didn't have growing up because we were active, you know. And so I'm proud of her for not, you know, letting other people's opinions affect the way that she, you know - she did the best thing for daughter and to me she saved her life.
Many of our students, one of my biggest things for all 12 of our classes is that the parents work out with their kids 15 and under for free. So they don't have to pay for their 15 or unders to workout. Develop a good habit with them of exercising, working out, doing it together. So I mean, I think what she did was just - I'm really proud of her for what she did.
MARTIN: Anupy Singla, I want to go back to that. You say even your husband called you a zealot...
SINGLA: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...you know, at some point. I hope he was being, I hope he wasn't being mean about that. You know, but what about that? There are people who would say that when you spend this much energy on food and so forth that you're creating kind of its own problem; this kind of obsession with appearance and so forth. What do you say to that?
SINGLA: You know what? I say it's called parenting, you know, I'm teaching my kids how to navigate their day-to-day. And agreed, my husband did say that because, you know, as he grew up he would going get doughnuts on the weekend. And so for him he thinks when I say, well, no, not every weekend. Maybe once a month that I'm limiting your childhood somehow or I'm somehow taking the fun out of their day-to-day because he equates, you know, the doughnuts with the fun. And what I have to say is we have to start to replace the sugar treats with something else. We need to be rewarded with something that's different than just sugar on a day-to-day basis. And so he sees when I pull those things out of our day-to-day that somehow I'm making a statement about the way he was raised or the way his parents raised him.
I mean I had the same thing in my house. My parents just didn't know. They were immigrants to this country, but the balance in both our homes was that we always got a home-cooked meal. In the evening it was always Indian, it was always very healthy. So we had those guidelines. Many kids are growing up these days, in America especially, don't have that second part of the equation, so when you take that part of it out it so much harder for them to navigate as well. And I have to say I fight every day against same thing that Dara-Lynn was talking about. We go to parties and I really do take that soda can, that little even that small one out of my kid's hand and go, you know what? It's just not appropriate for you to be drinking soda at a birthday party. And I get the looks and the moms say things to me and guess what? I call it parenting, at the end of the day.
MARTIN: OK. Dani's giving you big ups for your...
MARTIN: ...she's like look, Dani has no problems with no. But, Dani, I have to ask you though, because you have a boy and a girl - a young man, I should say, and a young lady - was a different? Was it different trying to figure out the whole diet, nutrition, fitness piece for the boy versus the girl?
TUCKER: Oh, most definitely because, you know, Devon(ph) always did his own thing. He loved the super athletic body, you know, he was always playing...
MARTIN: He loves sports.
TUCKER: ...sports. Yeah. So he was very active, not an ounce of body fat, you know. And with their birthdays being both in June they would always go for their physicals together. So it would always be the same thing, you know, this guy is an Adonis and Imani(ph) needs to lose five, 10 pounds. So, you know, we always dealt with that.
MARTIN: But why is that? Do you think it was fitness? Or is it just that there weren't as many athletic outlets for her because she just wasn't as interested in it? Why do you think that is? I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in this is they're close in age, raised in the same house by the same mom, presumably feeding them the same things and with one it's a struggle, with one it never was.
TUCKER: Bottom line, I blame her father.
TUCKER: Because he was almost - he was active as I was. We were always doing something and Imani was a little more lazier. And, you know, that's why, you know, she doesn't play the video games because I don't allow it because I want her to be more active. So it was really in their activity. She chose to do the computers and the games, where as he chose to do more of the active things, and that's what do more of what I supported. And to me dad supported more about, let her like chill and let her watch TV and let her...
MARTIN: Oh, I thought you were blaming the genetic component. I thought you were saying it was the genes that...
TUCKER: I'm blaming everything on him right now.
MARTIN: Oh, you're blaming, because he's not here so you can blame him for everything. OK.
TUCKER: 'Cause he's not here to defend himself.
TUCKER: No. But so I had to just....
MARTIN: Just as long as you're honest.
TUCKER: Yes. So I just had to get her a little more active, you know? And now that we've got that balance because, you know, now she's got, you know, working out with mom in a class and then grandma's there too, so she has the family aspect, everybody doing it. Also, she's being more active. Her friends are being more active, she's actually bringing them to class now. So it was just a point about her being a little more active and that helped her start to lose the weight. She's lost 25 pounds. So I'm very - we're very proud of her. But she made the decision to be more active - with a little pushing from mom.
MARTIN: Anupy Singla, a final thought from you? What would you say to people who want to improve their children's diet, maybe their family's diet but just, you know, find it really difficult? As you pointed out yourself, it was kind of hard to get used to cooking, especially when you are working as they journalist, to getting back to cooking that home-cooked meal every day and stuff like that. Any advice there, as briefly as you can?
SINGLA: Sure. Set a good example. You got to start doing it yourself. Pop on my blog on "ChicagoNow," which is the Tribune platform. My blog post today was: "Don't Trouble My Kids with Your Kindness." It's all about replacing the rewards, you know, the sugary rewards with something that is maybe a great salad or a treat to go out and eat a healthy meal at a restaurant when you go out. So, just kind of changing your mindset. Also play games with them, food games. I always did that with my kids when they were little. Have a food encyclopedia close by that you can open up and say, hey, I'm eating this sweet potato but this is why I'm eating it. Explain it to them. Make that connection between food and health.
MARTIN: Anupy Singla is a mom of two. She's the author of two cookbooks, including "Vegan Indian Cooking." She was kind enough to join us from member station WBEZ in Chicago. Dani Tucker is one of our regular contributors to our parenting panel. She's a mom of two and a fitness instructor. She was here with me in Washington, D.C.
Thank you both.
TUCKER: Thank you.
SINGLA: Thanks, Michel.
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