1987 passings: Ray Bolger

A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.

But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Ray Bolger.

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Ray Bolger was an American actor, dancer, singer, vaudevillian, and stage performer (particularly musical theater) who started his movie career in the silent-film era.

Bolger was a major Broadway performer in the 1930s and beyond. He is best known for his roles in The Wizard of Oz (1939) as the Scarecrow and in Walt Disney’s holiday musical fantasy Babes in Toyland in 1961 as the villainous Barnaby. Bolger was the host of The Ray Bolger Show on TV from 1953 to 1955, originally titled Where’s Raymond? 

His entertainment aspirations evolved from the vaudeville shows of his youth. He began his career in a vaudeville tap show, creating the act “Sanford & Bolger” with his dance partner. In 1926, he danced at New York City’s legendary Palace Theatre, the premier vaudeville theater in the United States. His limber body and improvisational dance movements won him many leading roles on Broadway in the 1930s. Eventually, his career also encompassed film, television, and nightclub work. In 1932 he was elected to the theater club, The Lambs and performed on opening night at Radio City Music Hall in December 1932.

Bolger signed his first cinema contract with MGM in 1936, and although The Wizard of Oz was early in his film career, he appeared in other movies of note. His best known pre-Oz appearance was The Great Ziegfeld (1936), in which he portrayed himself. He also appeared in Sweethearts (1938), the first MGM film in Technicolor, starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. He also appeared in the Eleanor Powell vehicle Rosalie (1937), which also starred Eddy and Frank Morgan.

Bolger’s MGM contract stipulated that he would play any part the studio chose. However, he was unhappy when he was originally cast as the Tin Woodman in the studio’s 1939 feature-film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. The role of the Scarecrow had already been assigned to another dancing, studio-contract player, Buddy Ebsen. In time, the roles were shuffled around. Bolger’s face was permanently lined by wearing the Scarecrow’s makeup.

Following The Wizard of Oz, Bolger moved to RKO Pictures. In 1941, he was a featured act at the Paramount Theatre in New York, working with the Harry James Band. He would do tap dance routines, sometimes in a mock-challenge dance with the band’s pianist, Al Lerner. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Bolger’s performance was interrupted by President Roosevelt’s announcement of the news of the attack. Bolger toured in USO shows in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and appeared in the United Artists wartime film Stage Door Canteen (1943).

In 1946, he returned to MGM for a featured role in The Harvey Girls. Also that year, he recorded a children’s album, The Churkendoose, featuring the story of a misfit fowl (“part chicken, turkey, duck, and goose”), which teaches children that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it “all depends on how you look at things”.

Bolger’s Broadway credits included Life Begins at 8:40 (1934), On Your Toes (1936), By Jupiter (1942), All American (1962) and Where’s Charley? (1948), for which he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and in which he introduced “Once in Love with Amy”, the song often connected with him. He repeated his stage role in the 1952 film version of the musical.

Bolger appeared in his own ABC television sitcom with a variety show theme, Where’s Raymond? (1953–1954), renamed the second year as The Ray Bolger Show (1954–55). He continued to star in several films, including Walt Disney’s remake of Babes in Toyland (1961) and smaller cameos throughout the 1960s and 1970.

Bolger made frequent guest appearances on television, including the episode “Rich Man, Poor Man” of the short-lived The Jean Arthur Show in 1966. In the 1970s, he had a recurring role as Fred Renfrew, the father of Shirley Partridge (Shirley Jones) on The Partridge Family, and appeared in Little House on the Prairie as Toby Noe and also guest-starred on other television series, such as Battlestar Galactica, Fantasy Island, and The Love Boat. In the late 1970s, Bolger played in a commercial for Safeway Supermarket’s “Scotch Buy” brand, in which he popularized the jingle, “Scotch Buy – ‘taint fancy, but its shore is good.” His last television appearance was on Diff’rent Strokes in 1984, three years before his death.

In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. In 2016, the City of Boston commissioned a mural in Ray Bolger’s honor in the Codman Square section of the Dorchester neighborhood

In his later years, he danced in a Dr Pepper television commercial, and in 1985, he and Liza Minnelli, the daughter of his Oz costar Judy Garland, starred in That’s Dancing!, a film written by Jack Haley, Jr., the son of Jack Haley, who portrayed the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz.

Bolger was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1986, and at the end of that year, his health deteriorated and he left his Beverly Hills home to live at a nursing home in Los Angeles, where he died on January 15, 1987, five days after his 83rd birthday. He was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.

At the time of his death, Bolger was the last surviving main credited cast member of The Wizard of Oz. At Judy Garland’s funeral, Bolger was the only one of her Oz co-stars who attended. He joined Harold Arlen, the composer of “Over the Rainbow”, and his wife, Anya Taranda. They were reported as among the last remaining guests at the conclusion of the service.

Whenever asked whether he had received any residuals from telecasts of The Wizard of Oz, Bolger would reply: “No, just immortality. I’ll settle for that.” Bolger’s Scarecrow is ranked among the “most beloved movie characters of all time” by AMC and the American Film Institute.

For his contributions to the film industry, Bolger received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. It is located at 6788 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 2019, the first comprehensive biography of Bolger, More Than a Scarecrow by Holly Van Leuven, was published.