Wamego Oz Museum

Many of my KansasKnitters friends who went to the Wamego Wool Fest also zipped over to Manhattan to pay homage at the Wildflowers yarn store. We didn't. After a leisurely lunch at the Friendship Restaurant with Carol and Carla, two of my long standing friends, Lisa, Lala and I toured the Wool Fest and the Settler's Farm yarn shop, then we took in the Oz Museum. The minute we arrived in town L
ala had declared she wanted to go there. We kept our promise that we would see it before we left.

It's a cool little museum. There was a lot more stuff to see than I anticipated. There are life-sized replicas of the characters from the Oz film and a lot of movie memorabilia as well as copies of the book in various editions, English and other languages, as well as Oz spin-offs such as dolls and games. I never knew there was an Oz version of Monopoly! Lala wanted to take home the Glenda the Good Witch doll. It was at least 20" high and fully costumed as Glenda. I'm glad there was a glass case around it or my doll lover would have been checking it out up close and personal.

We asked Lala which was her favorite character. She couldn't decide, so I took her picture with all of them. She likes Dorothy and the ruby slippers (the slippers on display had hundreds of rhinestones handset on them), Tinman, Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow, but she decided the Wicked Witch was scary. The Wizard was temporarily unavailable (or hiding behind the curtains) so we didn't get a picture with him.

Ever since seeing the Oz movie as a child, I have wondered how they got the flying monkeys to fly. I couldn't decide if the monkeys were real people in costume or models. Sometimes they looked one way, sometimes another, but the transition was seamless and it was hard to tell what I was seeing. This was especially true when I was watching on a small screen and was wearing glasses with old prescription lenses.

The mystery is solved! The Wamego museum has two of the last surviving four miniature monkeys used to film the flying scenes. The figures are about four inches high and appear to be made of clay. They are modeled and painted to look like the actors who dressed as monkeys. The flying was done as some version of claymation.

A video clip discussed other movie animation tricks. There were several techniques invented for this movie. It had some of the most intensive special effects of its time, the Star Wars of its day. The video clip was discussing how the tornado scene was done. The funnel cloud was created by making a gauze funnel and attaching the top to a runner across the top of a sound stage while the base was on wheels on the floor. This allowed special effects men to operate top and bottom independently while the film crew got shots of it long distance and coming straight at you. The flying debris was added via blue screen later.

The visit to the museum was enjoyable. Lala just had to have her own Toto from the gift shop. On the drive home she sat in the backseat happily playing with Toto and singing Oz songs.

Yarn crawl, grandkids, a good museum. It was a good day. I'm going to have to take Lala to Sedan next. They have a Yellow Brick Road.