Friend of Dorothy
Other connections between Garland and LGBT people include the slang term "Friend of Dorothy", which likely derives from Garland's portrayal of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz and became a code phrase gay people used to identify each other. Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz "mirrored many gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small town life...for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them."
In the film, Dorothy immediately accepts those who are different, including the Cowardly Lion (in a very camp performance by Bert Lahr). The Lion identifies himself through song as a "sissy" and exhibits stereotypically "gay" (or at least effeminate) mannerisms. The Lion is seen as a coded example of Garland meeting and accepting a gay man without question.
In the 2001 documentary Memories of Oz, openly gay cult film director and social satirist, John Waters opined about his perceptions seeing the Wizard of Oz as a child:
| “ | the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions? I never understood it. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Judy Garland As Gay Icon
Famous quotes containing the words friend of and/or friend:
“He is a friend of all just men and a lover of the right; and he knows more than how to talk about the right—he knows how to set it forward in the face of its enemies.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)