For release, September 12, 2005 -- Contact Allen
(812) 336-7456 or Marilyn at (219) 926-7048
Popular author/producer returns to Chesterton
Chesterton, IN -- 'John Fricke is one of our most popular Munchkinland Market Days celebrity guests,' says Yellow Brick Road proprietor Marilyn Zengler, 'and we are proud and happy to have him back again this year at The Yellow Brick Road.' The 11th annual Munchkinland Market Days will be held in cooperation with the 24th annual Wizard of Oz Festival on September 16, 17 & 18, 2005. The Wizard of Oz Festival is produced by Lakeshore Festival & Events and held on the streets of historic downtown Chesterton on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Munchkinland Market Days is produced by and held on the grounds of The Yellow Brick Road Gift Shop & Oz Fantasy Museum two miles south of downtown Chesterton and is sponsored by Coca-Cola, Hilton Garden Inn, Jewel-Osco and the Porter County Republican Party. Fricke has participated in Munchkinland Market Days since its inception in 1994 and in the Chesterton Oz Fest almost annually since 1989, and this year he returns as well to the concert/cabaret stage with his special Friday evening musical one-man show at the Waterbird as part of the Garland Gala. He comes to the 2005 Festival direct from appearances in London and at The Deauville Film Festival in France, where he served as corporate spokesman for Warner Home Video and their new digitally restored and remastered print of TheWizard of Oz.
Widely acknowledged as the preeminent Wizard of Oz and Judy Garland author/historian, John's most recent assignment has come as consultant for the new 2005 deluxe dvd set(s) of M-G-M's The Wizard of Oz, to be released by Warner Home Video on October 25. This includes his participation and appearance in several of the accompanying new Oz-related documentaries, as
well as his narration and hosting of the alternate audio track commentary, which is heard throughout the film itself. Most recently, he compiled and annotated the Savoy Jazz CDs, 'That Old Feeling'/Classic Ballads from 'The Judy Garland Show' and Judy Garland and Friends: Duets, both of which he'll autograph each afternoon at the Yellow Brick Road. His 6,500-word profile about the career association of Garland and Oz/A Star Is Born composer Harold Arlen appeared in the April 2005 issue of The Cue Sheet/Quarterly Journal of The Film Music Society. He has also written for TV Guide, People, and Memories magazines, among many others. Fricke's four books include 100 Years of Oz (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1999) -- an overview of the entire Oz phenomenon -- and The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History, most recently reissued in 1998 by Warner Books. He received a 2004 Emmy Award as co-producer of the two-hour, PBS-TV 'American Masters' program, Judy Garland: By Myself. This was his second recognition by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; he won similar honors in 1997 as co-producer and co-writer of the A&E 'Biography' special, Judy: Beyond the Rainbow, which was based on his acclaimed book, Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer (Henry Holt, 1992). His most recent book, Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote, was published in 2003 by Bulfinch Press and includes a foreword by Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft. It was the first such participation in any author's treatise on their mother by one of Judy's children. John will also autograph this book all three afternoons at the Yellow Brick Road. Fricke has discussed Oz, Oz author L. Frank Baum, Garland or all three on hundreds of media outlets, including the NBC-TV 'Today' Show, the A&E cable network 'Breakfast With the Arts,' the syndicated 'Entertainment Tonight,' CNN, and National Public Radio.
Fricke received a Grammy Award nomination for 'Best Album Notes' for the compact disc, Judy Garland: 25th Anniversary Retrospective (1996), which he produced for Capitol Records. In 2004, he served as dvd on-camera host for Warner Home Video, writing and delivering introductions to three classic Garland films (Love Finds Andy Hardy, Ziegfeld Girl, In the Good Old Summertime); he also recorded complete historical commentary for the alternate audio tracks of two of other Garland titles in their dvd debut, Meet Me in St. Louis and For Me and My Gal, and is similarly heard throughout Easter Parade, which was released on dvd in March 2005. Earlier, he was co-producer of the highly acclaimed laser disc box sets, The Ultimate Oz (1993) and Judy Garland: The Golden Years at M-G-M (1995).
Between 1995 and 2002, Fricke wrote the extensive booklets for the Turner Classic Movie Music/Rhino Movie Music series of Garland Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soundtrack compact discs, thus providing detailed histories of The Wizard of Oz, Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Girl Crazy, The Harvey Girls, The Pirate, Easter Parade, In the Good Old Summertime, and Summer Stock. Fricke provided similar notes for the 2004 Sony compact disc of Garland's A Star is Born. Associate producer and writer for the two sold-out 1998 concerts, Carnegie Hall Celebrates the Music of Judy Garland, Fricke was also, respectively, associate producer and creative consultant for the CBS-TV documentary, The Wizard of Oz: The Making of A Movie Classic (1990) and the PBS-TV 'Great Performances' program, Judy Garland: The Concert Years (1985), both of which received Emmy nominations. He was consultant to virtually all production departments for Life With Judy Garland/Me and My Shadows (2001), the multiple Emmy Award-winning ABC television motion picture. John also wrote, hosted, and co-directed the Telly Award-winning home video documentary, We're Off to See the Munchkins in 1992.
The Yellow Brick Road Gift Shop & Oz Fantasy Museum is at State Route 49 and the Indiana Toll Road. The Oz Festival Committee provides free shuttle bus service to and from the downtown Wizard of Oz Festival and Munchkinland Market Days at The Yellow Brick Road. Patrons can park free at the Indiana Toll Road parking lot where the shuttle stops every half hour on
Saturday and Sunday. The shuttle does not run Friday.
The Yellow Brick Road can be reached by calling (219) 926-7048 or at their website www.yellowbrickroadonline.com.
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