- Diana Ross, The Wiz, 1977. Motown bought the rights for Stephanie Mills to reprise her Broadway Dorothy. But Motown’s queen, Diana Ross, pulled rank and grabbed it. Director John Badham quit immediately. ”She’s too old!” Ross was 32, Mills 21, while Dorothy was five in the Wizard of Oz book and 12 in the movie. New director Sidney Lumet moved Oz to New York (quelle surprise!) and made Dorothy a school-teacher aged 24. Ross had promised if she got Dottie, she’d bring Michael Jackson with her as The Scarecrow… Lumet shot Joel Schumacher’s script at the reopened Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens – where he’d made his one and only film as an actor, One Third of a Nation, in 1939! He hated movie acting”a lousy experience… The third eye. It’s going to see something you don’t want seen.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 1