Remember when “Dorothy” accidentally wacked “Evermean, the Wicked Witch of the East” and freed “Miss One,” along with the pop-lockin’ “Munchkins” in “The Wiz?” One of the best parts of the movie was when “Miss One” – the numbers-running ‘Good Witch’ – looked at “Dorothy” in disbelief, when “Dorothy” asked her “What’s  a Wiz?” “Miss One” replied, “What’s a– what’s a WIZ?!!” Then she and the “Munchkins” started getting their jam-on, singing “He’s the wiiii-iiiiz. He’s the Wizaaaa-aaard!!!” Just describing that scene brings back some beautiful Old School memories, right?

Now that we’ve refreshed your memory on the “Miss One” character, let us fill you in on who she actually was in real life. Check out the interesting facts below…

1. “Miss One” was played by actress/jazz singer, Thelma Carpenter. She’d been singing since the age of 7. However, her big break came during her high school years in 1939, when she was discovered by the same record exec’ who discovered Billie Holiday and Count Basie.
2. Carpenter passed away in 1997 at age 77, after suffering a massive heart attack. She was never married and didn’t have children. She said this about her lack of having a husband: “Yes, I’ve never married, though you might say, that I’ve done lots of heavy rooming and light housekeeping in my time. Honey, I like life.”

   

3. Thelma Carpenter fell on hard times after her Mother passed away in 1962 leading her into a deep depression that left her bedridden for about a year. She then couldn’t find work, and her career kinda faded throughout the rest of the ’60s era. Her career’s decline forced her to live as a regular civilian again, working as a file clerk for the Mott’s Apple Sauce Corporation. Thelma said this about how she handled that downfall in her career: ”My grandaddy taught me something I’ve never forgotten. What you need is so much more important to you than what you want. Anyway, I’ve never aspired to be a superstar. You talk about stardom, well, your nose bleeds up there. I got close enough to know. Suddenly there were people I’d never seen, telling me I owed them something. Listen, I’ve given my money away, where I thought it would help, but I don’t want ‘yes’ people around me. Basically I’m a loner.”
4. Aside from The Wiz film in 1978, Ms. Carpenter performed at the Apollo Theater, in many popular Broadway plays and she’s also had roles on “The Cosby Show” and in the film, “The Cotton Club” in 1978.

Thelma Carpenter is one of our unspoken gems in the entertainment industry. Stars like her, unfortunately, oftentimes go unnoticed in mainstream media, but to us she is someone who made a great impact on the Old School culture through roles such as her phenomenal performance in a an iconic CLASSIC like The Wiz. So, for Ms. Carpenter’s many contributions to entertainment we wanted to properly salute Ms. Carpenter and then her after a job well done here on earth.

-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, Old School news with a new point of view
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Nonetheless, we think that every last one of those actors deserve their props for a job well done:
Stephanie Mills is a helluva actress and needs to be doing many more movies from here on out. She was so natural it was incredible!

Singer, Neyo, shocked the hell out of me! I had no clue he was going to be such a good actor and of course his singing and dancing was off the charts as “Tinman.”

The new cat, Elijah Kelly- excellent job! He played the “Scarecrow” and it was great to see that he was able to not get stuck into imitating Michael Jackson-the originator of that role, but that he was able to bring his own flavor to it. His singing was also the bomb.

David Allen Grier PLAYED that scary “Lion” role! For a minute I actually forgot I was watching Grier, he was that good…but then when he popped through with this one word he said like only he can “Boo-Yah!!!” I knew it was him, LOL.

Mary J. Blige did her thing too. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen Mary’s acting skills a couple times and I personally thought she was going to be not so great with her “Evilene” role, but I was wrong, she held her own against some of these heavyweights.
Who could forget about Dorothy, played by newcomer, Shanice Williams? She was the perfect person for the job, she had a natural ability to tap into that innocence of the “Dorothy” character.

Was I the only one shocked to find out that actress, Uzo Aduba (a.k.a. “Crazy Eyes” from Orange Is The New Black) could sing? Uzo gets much respect from me because not only did she show that her versatility as an actress was on point (let’s face it, the good witch, Glenda, is a far cry from that orange jumpsuit we typically see her in), but she also showed that she can sing!

Queen Latifah will kill everything she touches, so we expected nothing less when she played “The Wiz” role and she most definitely delivered.

Amber Riley (the actress who starred in the TV series, Glee) was another one who was so natural and brought her own personal flavor to that “Good Witch of the North” role. I tip my hat to her too.

Common’s role as the “Wiz’s bouncer” was a trip telling folks they needed to back up to the end of that invisible line, LOL. He carried his role well too.

Overall here’s what we think about The Wiz Live: Was it as good as the original movie The Wiz? No, but that’s an extremely hard feat to accomplish with a live version of a stage play and that’s okay. BUT was The Wiz Live a phenomenal piece of work? ABSOLUTELY! The cast, the crew, the costume designers (those costumes were off the chain by the way), the producers and writers ALL deserve an Old School high five, fist bump, and a big hand clap for doing a superb job.

The post U Won’t Believe The Tweets Slamming The Wiz Live For Excluding Whites! appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

Okay family, here’s the thing: whenever you have a bunch of big names involved in the same production, you can pretty much guarantee there will be some egos clashing in a major way and that it did all throughout the creation of the classic film, The Wiz. It just so happens that there was WAY more tension and drama going on behind the scenes that we never knew about back then.

The Wiz is one of our favorite movies here at ILOSM, so we’re just glad that none of the bad tension was translated onto the Wiz scenes.

Turn the page to see who was allegedly causing knives to be shoved in folks backs left and right…

The post Wait ‘Til U See Who Caused Backstabbing & Betrayal On Set Of “The Wiz” appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

Okay ILOSM fam’ here’s an Old School fun fact for you that you probably couldn’t have called in a million years…at least I know I couldn’t have.

The film the Wiz was one of the greatest films ever created in my opinion and the entire cast did an amazing job with bringing the film to life but get this: Michael Jackson was the SECOND CHOICE for the role of the “Scarecrow.” Can you believe that? There was actually a very popular actor who was supposed to play the character at first and let’s just say he is probably the last person many of us would have expected.

HE Was Supposed To Be The “Scarecrow?!!

It is Jimmie Walker! Was he your first guess? Yeah that’s what I thought, he wasn’t our’s either, but it’s a fact, Jimmie Walker was originally supposed to play the role of the “Scarecrow”…he explained how the director for The Wiz (who was also Lena Horne’s son-in-law) tried to get him for the role. Jimmie talked about this in his book…here’s an excerpt from it:

Jimmie also went on to say why he’s glad he didn’t do the film.
Hmmm….can’t quite say i agree with Jimmie’s “biggest bombs in movie history” statement. While I understand he’s referring to the dollars that The Wiz lost at the box office, it was by far a “bomb” to the millions of us Old Schoolers who loved the film…and still do. The Wiz has become an old school cult classic, so I wouldn’t necessarily say it was “bomb” because sometimes there are certain elements that are bigger than just a dollar amount.

The Wiz helped to immortalize many of those actors and their careers, as a result of their work on that film: Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, Tedd Ross, Lena Horne, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Mabel King, the list goes on. Not saying that this film shouldn’t have done much better at the box office, I’m just saying that this is definitely not a film that tarnished any of those actors’ resume’…in fact, it helped them.

On the other hand, many us would probably agree that there wasn’t a better actor to play “J.J.” on Good Times, other than Jimmie Walker. He owned that role all the way, but maybe that character was so dominate, that it makes it harder to imagine him not saying “Dy-no-mite!” in the role as “Scarecrow.” This is all just my humble opinion though.

So tell us ILOSM family, do you think Jimmie Walker would have played a great “Scarecrow” in The Wiz?

By the way, check out this classic “Scarecrow” scene, turn the page and reminisce…

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