{"id":15351,"date":"2017-08-25T21:51:11","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T21:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/08\/25\/otis-ferguson-the-man-who-panned-oz\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T05:43:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T09:43:31","slug":"otis-ferguson-the-man-who-panned-oz","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/08\/25\/otis-ferguson-the-man-who-panned-oz\/","title":{"rendered":"Otis Ferguson: The man who panned ‘Oz’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n

The working-class kid from Worcester championed the nobility of the little guy in films<\/p>\n \r\n\r\nRenowned film critic and historian Andrew Sarris once wrote of Otis Ferguson ’33, “I think a claim can be made for Ferguson as the writer of the best and most subtly influential film criticism ever turned out in America.” High praise for the Jazz Age writer with a rebellious streak that first showed itself when he reviewed James Joyce’s “Ulysses” for a Clark student publication at a time when the book was still banned in the United States. The ever-cheeky Ferguson, when asked about his future plans in the 1933 yearbook “Pasticcio,” responded: “None.”\r\n

‘The story of course has some lovely and wild ideas—men of straw and tin, a cowardly lion, a wizard who isn’t a very good wizard—but the picture doesn’t know what to do with them.’\r\n\r\n