THIS year marks the 75th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s (MGM) Technicolor adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s beloved children’s book, "The Wizard of Oz". And there’s another “oziversary” in 2014: Winkie Con turns 50.
Named after Winkie County, the westernmost region in the Land of Oz ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West, Winkie Con is organised by the International Wizard of Oz Club and is the longest-running Oz event in America. A few decades ago there were a host of such get-togethers, including the East Coast’s Munchkin celebration. But interest began to dwindle and by 2009, Winkie Con had just 40 attendees. The other events had winked out of existence entirely.
This year, propelled by the publicity for the anniversary of the MGM film, Winkie Con moved from the mid-California Monterey peninsula down to San Diego. The relocation was due in part to San Diego’s proximity to neighbouring resort town, Coronado, where Baum wintered and wrote several novels. It was also the first year the usually humble Winkie Con expanded to offer a broad conference-style schedule, with concurrent panels discussing subjects such as the strong feminist characters in Baum's books and the rise of fantasy and sci-fi fan culture. Attendance spiked to over 350; many attendees were newer fans, who had found their way down the yellow brick road via the musical "Wicked" or "Oz the Great and Powerful", the new Oz film released in 2013.
Prospero, a first-time festivalgoer, was shown plenty of “ozpitality” and welcomed into many exclusive but never exclusionary events. On the opening day, Aljean Harmetz, a journalist and historian whose mother worked in the MGM costume department for 20 years, screened "The Wizardry of Oz", a 1979 documentary follow-up to her exhaustively detailed book, "The Making of the Wizard of Oz". On the second afternoon, a tightly packed audience strained to hear a Q&A with Priscilla Montgomery Clark, one of the munchkins in the MGM film, who is now in her 80s. A family reunion-style slideshow gave regular Winkie Con organisers and participants a chance to reminisce about the years of lighter programming and more intimate festivities. “There’s Dan again,” someone murmured as the slides shuttered past. “He was a marvellous Dorothy.”
Nearly two-dozen of Baum’s The Wizard of Oz books are in the public domain in America, as is the 1925 film. This makes for a rich ecosystem of Oz-related fan culture that continues to snatch up new graphic novels and support reinterpretations of the original characters. At the swap table, a Winkie Con tradition, one could pick up or drop off gently used books and artwork, or borrow stapled short stories from a stack of unpublished fan-fiction. Prospero eyed a wind-up Glinda, once included in a McDonald’s Happy Meal, but regretfully left it for a faithful fan to enjoy.
Down the hall, Michael Siewert, a Georgia-based interior designer and an avid collector of Judy Garland memorabilia, displayed a selection of delicate dresses. Garland’s good-naturedly shy son, Joe Luft, even made a rare public appearance, sitting at a table next to the costumes and shaking hands with fans as his mother’s mesmerising contralto played from a laptop.
Elaborately dressed and hopeful Winkies began assembling at 8.30 one morning for one of the highlights of Winkie Con: the costume contest. A boy dressed as a Tinman shuffled around near a girl in a house costume, her legs made to look like those of the crushed Wicked Witch of the East. An adult Scarecrow accompanied his Dorothy, who shifted uncomfortably in her blue and white gingham pinafore in the Southern California heat. When Prospero stopped to scratch Betty, a Cairn terrier who bore more than a passing resemblance to Toto, her tuxedo-clad trainer prompted enthusiastically, “Where’s the Wicked Witch?!” On cue, Betty yapped three times and her wish—a dog treat—was granted.
