“We think that song makes the picture,” LeRoy said. “I remember walking across San Francisco, right after the earthquake. It never seemed that the world would ever be made right.”
“And when I was a kid,” Harburg said, “some days, my pop came home without enough to feed our family, and the view from our tenement window was just more tenements, as far as the eye could see.”
“My father was a headmaster at a school for boys in South Africa,” Langley added. “The only thing the mates cared about was rugby. They were cruel. I was always getting beat up by the older boys, and my father hated me for being weak. How can you escape from a prison that is made by your own father? And somehow you hear all that when Judy sings…”
“All of it,” Harburg said.
“Every bit,” LeRoy said.
“It’s all in there,” Maud said.
“So, can you go to Mayer and ask him? We’ve been screaming at him and slamming doors—but it’s not getting through to him.”
* * *
—
BACK HOME, MAUD CALLED the studio and said that she needed an appointment to see Louis B. Mayer—and, as usual, she got nowhere. So she climbed into her Ford and drove to Culver City. But when she got to the front gate, a new guard was on duty, and he didn’t recognize her.
“Name and business at the studio?” he asked in an officious tone.
“Mrs. Maud Baum.”
He spent a long time perusing the paper in front of him.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re not on the list.”
“Baum. B-A-U-M,” Maud said impatiently.
“Ma’am,” he said louder and more slowly, “I can’t find your name on the list.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find my name? I’ve been coming here for months!” Maud said.
“On what business?” the guard asked, his tone making it clear that he could not imagine on what business this old woman could have been coming.
“Production 1060, The Wizard of Oz.”
He leafed through his log, then smirked.
“That one’s already in the can,” he said. “Better luck next time. You need to get in line with the rest of them,” he added, jerking his head toward the line of people that snaked down Washington Boulevard.
“I have a one o’clock with Mr. Louis B. Mayer.” She might as well lie, she figured. She had nothing to lose.
“Nope,” he said. “You’re not coming in today, lady, not unless you get in line.”
Maud wanted to cry. She had only twenty-four hours to fix this problem. The men had told her that the final cut of the movie was going to be on its way to theaters the next morning.
“I’m sorry, I misspoke. I have an appointment with Ida Koverman at one o’clock.”
“Nope. You’re not on her list. You need to leave or I’m gonna call over those fellas and tell them to make you leave.” He jerked his head toward a couple of uniformed guards.
“Tell Mrs. Koverman I need to speak to her urgently about Miss Judy Garland.”
Horns sounded up from cars behind Maud in line.
“You’re blocking traffic,” the guard said. “You need to move out of the way.”
Maud realized she was stuck. There was nothing she could do. She put her car in reverse. But when she looked in her rearview mirror, she realized that the car behind her was a giant Rolls-Royce.
“Oh, dear me,” Maud said, affecting a frail old-lady voice. “I don’t want to back up. My husband never taught me how. I’m afraid I’m going to hit that lovely limousine right behind me.”
The guard looked exasperated. The honking from behind started up again.
“Oh, all right. Pull forward and make a U-turn, then pull out the out gate.”
As if to demonstrate her poor driving skills, Maud pushed down on the gas too fast, making the car lurch forward.
Maud glanced in the rearview mirror. The guard was looking at the next car. Now was her chance.
She gunned it, then careened around the corner to the back lot. Jumping out of the car, she ran across the parking lot as fast as her seventy-eight-year-old legs would carry her and turned onto the studio’s main street, where she was immediately lost in the profusion of workers, costumed actors, folks carrying pieces of sets, and several grooms leading saddled horses.
She heard a commotion behind her—guards shouting—but she had reached the entrance to the Thalberg Building. She slowed her steps to a walk and tried to calm her breathing and the pounding of her heart as she entered the lobby.
Facing her was the same receptionist she’d encountered the first time she arrived at the Thalberg Building, almost nine months previously. She was blond again, and pretended not to recognize Maud.
“I’ve got an appointment with Mrs. Koverman,” Maud said, still somewhat breathless from her sprint. “Maud Baum.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t see your name here.”
“Call her!” Maud said. “Tell her it’s Mrs. Maud Baum, here to speak to her about Judy.”
“Have a seat.”
“No! I’m not going to have a seat!” Maud said. “Call her now. Tell her it’s an emergency.”
But instead of waiting, Maud kept on walking. A moment later, she was on the elevator. She saw the studio guards entering the lobby just as the elevator doors slid shut.
Ida Koverman was sitting at her desk, guarding the entrance to Mayer’s office like a German shepherd with a taste for red meat.
She barely looked up when Maud came in, but as Maud approached, she stood and jerked her head toward the ladies’ room.
“We meet again,” Ida said, as they stood in front of the mirrors in the bathroom. “What’s going on? Is another one of the gents bothering our girl?”
“It’s not that,” Maud whispered.
“Well, that’s a relief. I try to look after her—but, you know, she’s badly outnumbered. The little-girl-to-creep ratio in this place does not work in her favor.”
“It’s actually something else,” Maud said. She knew that Ida Koverman was fiercely on Judy Garland’s side, but Maud had no idea how she would feel about Maud trying to interfere with creative decisions.
“They’re planning to cut the rainbow song from the picture,” Maud began. “Some of the boys asked me to come up and talk to Mr. Mayer. I’m not sure if it will work, but I told them I’d try.”
“They want to cut the rainbow song?” Ida asked. “But why?”
“The film’s running time is too long, apparently,” Maud said. “And I think it should stay in because—”
“You don’t need to tell me why. It’s because that girl needs that song—it’s going to be the thing that makes her into a star!”
“Okay, so what should we do?”
“Listen, go on in and talk to him. Just remember, he’s a hardhead about business, but he’s as sensitive as they come.”
Maud entered the blinding-white inner sanctum of the M-G-M Studios for the second time. Louis B. Mayer sat at his massive white desk. Just like the last time, he didn’t even glance up when she came in, but continued flipping through a bound script.
“Mr. Mayer,” Maud said.
“Sit down,” he said gruffly, still without looking up. “I’m in the middle of something.”
Maud sat perfectly still and waited for what seemed like a long time.
“Now, Mrs. Baum, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve heard that you are planning to cut the rainbow song from the film.”
“Already done,” he said. “Preview was a big hit, but the song dragged the action down. Too slow. Too sad. Too unbecoming to have a star singing in a barnyard.”
“But can’t it be undone?” Maud asked.
“Can’t be undone. This decision was made at the highest level. Out of my hands. We’re in the business of making money, and the picture was too long.”
“Are you sure?” Maud said. “Because—”
Mayer held up his hand, then returned to perusing his papers.
“Will that be all?”
Maud stood up to go. She turned away and took a few steps toward the door. Defeated. Surely the movie would be good enough without the rainbow song. How had she gotten so convinced that the song was Frank’s voice, alive again, pouring out into the world? Hogwash and superstition—that’s what it was. She was getting soft—she, who had always believed that magic was what you created from hard work and persistence, not something you plucked from thin air.
But an odd sensation, like a hand upon her shoulder, made her stop. She spun around and faced Louis B. Mayer.
“Do you remember when I first came in here?”
He looked up. “Yes, Mrs. Baum, I do.”
“I came because I wanted to make sure that my late husband’s story was in good hands. I told you that many people think of Oz as a real place. That you had a duty to those people to make that place come alive.”
Mayer was still watching her.
“And you know what? I’ve watched your studio create magic using cameras and paint and glue and machines. I saw how you took the miniature house and filmed it dropping from the air, then reversed that film so that the house seemed to be flying up into the air.”
“Clever, wasn’t it?” Mayer said.
“And I saw how you created Munchkinland for real. I walked through it myself and knew that this must have been what Frank himself saw running through his mind when he was writing it. There was magic afoot here in the studio. True movie magic, and you made it, out of giant fans and painted sets and photographic wizardry.”