Arts

The Secret Glamour of the Tin Man

How The Wizard of Oz appeals to “dreams of flight and transformation and escape.”

Old Hollywood glamour is Jean Harlow lounging suggestively in a white satin gown or Fred Astaire sweeping Ginger Rogers across a ballroom floor; Rita Hayworth peeling off long black gloves or Greta Garbo staring mysteriously off to sea. It is decidedly not a gingham-clad, jolie laide farm girl and her scrappy little dog. Dorothy, Toto, and their companions may be beloved—familiar family friends introduced by each generation to the next. In our fond memories, however, they do not qualify as glamorous.

But now that The Wizard of Oz has survived its 70th anniversary and is about to get high-definition release in theaters and on DVD, it is time to reassess. The Wizard of Oz is actually one of the studio era’s most emotionally sophisticated explorations of glamour. It does not offer us a luxuriously attired starlet or languid, sexy scenes. Instead, the movie shows us how glamour works. Glamour offers a lucid glimpse of desire fulfilled—if only life could be like that, if only we could be there, if only we could be like them, if I only had a …

In The Wizard of Oz, the principal characters aren’t the objects of glamour. They’re its audience: the dreamers who imagine their lives transformed and who learn, over the course of the film, that even illusions can reveal inner truths.

Start with the most famous accessories in film history: that glittering pair of ruby slippers. Glamour is more than fashion, and much more than sparkle, but these magical shoes deliver on glamour’s fundamental promise: that by adopting the right look or finding the right setting, we might become the people we most desire to be, living the lives we most desire to live. The ruby slippers do for Dorothy what real-world shoppers dream the right shoes will do for them, transforming who she is, or at least how others regard her. Powerless and ignored in Kansas, Dorothy is revered and capable in Oz. She acts. She speaks. She makes friends, who turn to her for guidance. She has adventures. Dorothy in Oz is an ordinary girl’s dream of what a star’s life must be like, and the slippers are the visible tokens of her special status.

The only clear power the shoes ever possess is the ability to garner the attention and respect Dorothy lacks in Kansas. When she and her companions arrive at the Emerald City, the gatekeeper scoffs at their desire to see the Wizard—“Nobody’s ever seen the Great Oz”—and seems about to refuse them entry, until he’s shown the ruby slippers. Suddenly Dorothy’s story is believable and she is worthy of admission. “The right dress,” said MGM star Norma Shearer in 1934, “can triumph over any situation, build any mood, create any illusion, and make any woman into the sort of person which she most desires to be.” That fantastic claim articulates glamour’s alluring promise, and, in Dorothy’s case, the right pair of shoes delivers.

Toward the end of the movie, her friends, too, get new accessories. In lieu of brains, courage, and a heart, the Wizard hands out talismans: a diploma for the Scarecrow, a medal for the Lion, and an oversized pocket watch (a “testimonial”) for the Tin Man. The Wizard’s satirical presentation makes it clear these objects have no real magic. Like all glamour, they are illusions. But to the characters, they represent the fulfillment of the desire that begins with “If I only had a …”

Tags: glamour, judy garland, wizard of oz

Virginia Postrel is the author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style. She is writing a book on glamour and blogs at Deep Glamour and Dynamist Blog.

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