The not so ‘wicked’ path from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to the moon landing

Houston, we… are not in Kansas anymore.

“The Wizard of Oz” and space exploration are two topics that by all rights should have nothing in common. But with the 1939 film celebrating its 85th anniversary and “Wicked” landing like a twister-thrown farmhouse into movie theaters this week, we are clicking our heels three times to find the place they both call home.

As it turns out, all you need to do is follow the Yellow Brick Road long enough and you will reach the moon.

“The amazing thing to me is that it was literally there,” said Patrick Labyorteaux in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “At the time I was there, it was the moon, but that was where they shot it.”

Labyorteaux, who teaches acting as the creator and lead instructor at Working Actors School, is perhaps best known for his association with a different farmhouse then the Gale homestead. From 1977 though 1981, he played Andy Garvey on the NBC series “Little House on the Prairie.” It was in that role that he found his own connection to “The Wizard of Oz.”

“There was a guest star … and he was wonderful. All of us kids were really excited that he was there,” said Labyorteaux in a TikTok video. “So, this guest star takes us over to the corner of the stage.”

At the time, workers were in the process of completing renovations to the stage and recently removed a huge oil furnace. In doing so, they revealed a small part of Hollywood history.

“The guest star said, ‘Listen children, there was a movie that was shot here many, many years ago that I was in and you can see part of that movie right here,'” said Labyorteaux in the video.

Sure enough, on the part of the floor where the furnace once sat was yellow paint. It was the last remnants of the Yellow Brick Road. And the guest star? Actor Ray Bolger, who played Toby Noe on two episodes of “Little House on the Prairie,” but was much better known for being the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“When you look at the [1939] film, you see them dancing on these cobblestones and then as [the Yellow Brick Road] goes and winds away, it becomes painted roads so it’s a forced perspective type of thing,” Labyorteaux told collectSPACE, describing the small stretch of the road that he saw more than 45 years ago.

So what does a few feet of flooring have to do with the moon?

Well, decades later, after numerous other roles including a 10-year stint playing Bud Roberts on the Navy-set legal drama “JAG,” Labyorteaux found himself back on the MGM lot (now run by Sony Pictures) to film scenes as Congressman Willie Baron for a third season episode of “For All Mankind.”

“For All Mankind,” created by Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, is an Apple TV+ alternate history series that proposes what might have been happened if the Soviets had been the first to land a man on the moon and the space race of the 1960s never ended. Production on the show’s fifth season is now underway and a spinoff series, “Star City” has been announced.

“Originally, I was cast as Barney Frank and then I guess they couldn’t clear the use of his name so they changed it. But basically, I played it as Barney Frank,” said Labyorteaux.

When the day of filming was over, Labyorteaux made his way over to Stage 15 where “Little House” had been shot.

“It looked like there was lunar regolith [moon soil] all over the entirety of the area where there had been the painted stage,” said Labyorteaux. “I don’t know if they had covered it back up or removed it or what.”

There has been some debate over which stages were used to film particular scenes of “The Wizard of Oz,” but according to “Oz historian” Tori Calamito, in a response to Labyorteaux on Tiktok, Stage 15 was the Emerald City set and the Yellow Brick Road leading up to the Emerald City.

“Though I have never seen any photographic evidence of this, according to the book ‘M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot,’ the Yellow Brick Road also stretched from Stage 15 across the street to Stage 27,” said Calamito.

According to the production staff working on “For All Mankind,” Stage 15 is where they built out their Mission Control set, while Stage 27 was where they recreated the moon, the Apollo lunar landings and the Jamestown moon base (the latter, a fictional invention of the series).

So that is how the Yellow Brick Road stretches all the way to the “moon,” albeit years apart.

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