May 6, 1919—L. Frank Baum, 63, who failed at multiple careers before creating The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and more than a dozen sequels, died following a
stroke in Hollywood, Calif.—a community that, two decades later, would
introduce his work to a whole new generation of fans with a musical adaptation
of his fantasy starring Judy Garland.
Over the last century, Baum’s creation has expanded
beyond even the veritable cottage industry he managed to maintain in his last
two decades. Millions of movie fans, TV viewers and playgoers learned the story
of Dorothy and her companions and what they encountered on the way to Oz in a
host of different takes on that material—not just the Garland classic, but also
Return to Oz, the African
American-cast stage and screen musical The
Wiz, the 1960 Shirley Temple TV adaptation of Land of Oz, as well as Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked and its current long-running Broadway musical adaptation.
It’s also a safe bet that only a fraction of the audiences
for these works knows much, if anything, about the man at the center of all
this.
Baum would have felt delighted to be recalled in any
way at all. Yesterday, I posted about the quintessential “Renaissance man,” Leonardo da Vinci. Baum tried his
hand at a number of pursuits, too— actor, playwright, salesman, chicken farmer,
lecturer, department store window-dresser, journalist, and movie mogul. Yet, to
one degree or another, he failed at all of these.
At the urging of his wife, Baum began writing
children’s books in 1897. Though these were popular enough to induce his
publisher to request more, the success he enjoyed with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was of an entirely different magnitude.
Not only has that title been in print continuously
since then, but Baum followed it up with 13 sequels (with, after his death,
another 19 by Ruth Plumly Thompson, and seven more by other authors, producing
a grand total of 40 Oz books) along with a 2002 stage adaptation.
Oh, about that play: Even though it replaced little
Toto with a cow, it ran on Broadway
for two years and remained on tour until 1911. It was successful enough for
Baum to try his hand on the stage again in 1908, this time with “The Fairylogue
and Radio-Plays” combining a lecture by him with live actors, a movie, and
projected slides.
It sounds not just innovative but even avant-garde,
since neither radio nor film had advanced far as vehicles for narrative art
yet. In a way, it was the same type of technical breakthrough that the movie
musical represented three decades later. And, like that classic, it was also a
bit ahead of its time.
Because its costs exceeded its revenues, Baum went
financially aground again. This time, however, his bankruptcy had to hurt more
than before, because he was now forced to give up his rights to the early books
that had secured the series’ reputation.
Still, Baum being Baum, he didn’t let this latest
failure keep him down for long, even starting The Oz Film Manufacturing Company
in 1914. The venture only lasted a few years, but it can be accounted a mild
success, with its several Oz productions keeping the brand name before the
public and Baum himself not losing his shirt this time.
I’ve written that Baum created a virtual cottage
industry surrounding Oz, and a cottage industry has also developed surrounding
the writer’s sources of inspiration. Some have speculated that it’s a veiled
political commentary on the politics of gold and silver in the McKinley Presidency;
others cite the peculiar politics of Chicago at the time; still others have
looked to contemporary accounts of cyclones in Kansas, and where a yellow brick
road might have impressed itself on Baum’s imagination (one possible source: 19th-century
West Point), in tracing the germination of this tale that transports readers
far beyond their everyday lives.
If you’re like me, your interest in Oz stems from
the 1939 film, which was as notable for its visual splendor as for its musical
brilliance. I pursued my interest in it--including a spectacular appearance by Judy Garland and MGM co-star Mickey Rooney promoting its New York premiere-- in this prior post.
But there have been authors whose interest in the
book derived from the books first, notably Martin Gardner, Ray Bradbury, and
Gore Vidal. When I first read the latter’s essay on the Oz books nearly 40
years ago as part of his collection The Second American Revolution and Other Essays 1976-1982, I did not wonder why he wrote about it. (Indeed, the
editors of The New York Review of Books rightly considered this was within his
bailiwick, given his elegant style and his past screenwriting activity).
At the same time, I did question why the frequently waspish novelist wrote at such
length on the subject, given what I felt to be the series’ relative lack of
literary merit or importance. But, at least on the second count, I think now
that I was mistaken.
Like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling,
and George R.R. Martin, Baum constructed an alternate universe, a fantasy world
filled with its own characters and even geography. Countless fantasy readers
over the years have found something in those worlds that allow them an escape
from their own lives, and even a way of reimagining them.
Vidal claimed that, in defying expectations of
traditional gender roles, Baum implicitly taught readers how to be "tolerant,
alert to wonders." Although such a perspective appealed to gays such as
Vidal and young girls pining for strong heroines, Baum’s sympathy for the
marginalized only extended so far. In the 1890s, a newspaper he edited ran two
editorials (allegedly written by Baum) calling for extermination of Native
Americans. (A century later, two of his descendants apologized to the Sioux
Nation.)
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