Caren Marsh-Doll vowed to try again. She was a teen-ager, just out of Hollywood High School, who dreamed of making a living as a dancer. Her mother and father disagreed. They wanted her to go college. Caren decided to audition for a part in "Rosalie," a 1937 film starring Nelson Eddy. Unless she made it, her parents warned, they were sending her to school.
Caren went to auditions at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. She stood in line. She did her best.
She got cut.
While painful, it wasn’t enough to make her quit. Caren went home, changed her clothes and stood in line again. She figured, with so many young women trying out, that no one would remember who she was. She was right. This time, MGM hired her.
"It brought me to the career I always wanted," Caren said. Seventy-four years later, that career put her in the lobby of the Craftsman Inn in Fayetteville, where she checked in Thursday as one of the honored guests of Chittenango's annual Oz-Stravaganza festival.
A year or so after appearing in "Rosalie," Caren was hired as a stand-in for a film that is now an American legend. A young actress named Judy Garland was starring as Dorothy Gale in MGM’s "The Wizard of Oz." The studio needed another actress, of roughly the same size, to do "walkthroughs" while technicians tinkered with the set and lights. Like Garland, Caren stood about 4-foot-11. She weighed around 100 pounds, which is about 20 pounds more than she weighs today.
"I’m shrinking! I’m shrinking!" Caren said Thursday, eyes wide with mock alarm, paraphrasing the classic line from the melting witch at the climax of the film.
As a stand-in, Caren had her own set of ruby slippers. Even so, the yellow brick road hardly seemed to offer a path to movie immortality. "When you’re 19 and working on a film, you don’t really think it’s something that you’ll still be known as a part of when you’re 92," she said.
Not that she matches any stereotype of a woman in her 90s. Earlier this week, she climbed onto a plane in California, ready to make the long trip to serve as grand marshal of Saturday’s Oz-Stravaganza Parade. She was greeted Thursday at Syracuse Hancock Airport by Judy Waite, a festival volunteer who has become a good friend. This is Caren’s fourth appearance here, and she’ll be joined by two actors — Karl Slover and Margaret Pellegrini — who played Munchkins in the original film. The reunion is always emotional, because the veterans of Oz are keenly aware of how few of them are left.
"Caren’s had such a great career on her own, but I think being involved with ‘The Wizard of Oz’ makes special people extra-special," said John Fricke, an Oz author and historian who is in Chittenango for the festival. "Any memories of that film are treasured by thousands and thousands."
As for Caren, she has good reason to see this phase of her career as yet another gift. After Oz, she danced or performed in many films and shows, until that work — for a time — became impossible. On July 12, 1949, she was among 49 passengers and crew members on a Standard Airlines flight from New York City to Burbank. Caren had one foot positioned between the two seats in front of her when the plane smashed into the side of a California mountain.
Her foot was crushed. Another passenger saved her by dragging her through a window. Only 12 other travelers survived. Doctors told Caren she would never dance again, a medical ruling she eventually proved wrong. While she left show business to marry and raise a son, she never gave up on dancing, and she served as an instructor until a few years ago.
"I’ll tell you one thing I learned," she said of the crash. "I don’t let myself get stressed out about anything. I don’t worry about anything. Whatever comes, I just try to go with the flow."
In Chittenango, she will stay busy hugging children, greeting awestruck strangers and signing copies of her book, "Hollywood’s Child: Dancing Through Oz." The one place she won’t go is the dance floor, because even the girl who once wore ruby slippers can no longer make her feet respond to each command. If that’s frustrating, you sense the truth of this observation:
"Everything inside me," Caren said, "is still dancing."
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