Happy Birthday to L. Frank Baum, who would have been 153 today. To honor the man behind the man behind the curtain, I thought we’d check out some details of his rather interesting life.
1. Aspiring novelists who are plugging away at jobs that don’t interest you just so you can pay your bills, take hope: before Oz, Baum was writing exciting pieces like The Rose Lawn Home Journal, The Stamp Collector, Baum’s Complete Stamp Dealers’ Directory and my favorite, The Poultry Record. Although his first book was a non-fiction book about chickens (The Book of the Hamburgs: a Brief Treatise Upon the Mating, Rearing and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs), it was his first step into the book-publishing world. He was 30 when the Hamburg book was published and didn’t publish the first of the Oz series until he was 44. Is it just me, or is young Baum kinda cute under that mustache?
2. He wrote under at least seven different names: L. Frank Baum, of course, but also Edith Van Dyne, Floyd Akers, Schuyler Staunton, John Estes Cooke, Suzanne Metcalf and Laura Bancroft.
3. His mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a well-known feminist (who didn’t like Baum much). She, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony actually wrote History of Woman Suffrage in the Gage home. His close ties to these women definitely influenced his work – his second Oz book had the women of the land revolt, resulting in the men of Oz doing the household chores.
4. Not all of their views matched up, though – while Gage was very much an advocate of Native American rights and was even initiated into the Wolf Clan of the Iroquois under the name Karonienhawi (“she who holds the sky”), Baum published a couple of editorials that basically suggested that Native Americans should be exterminated. With Sitting Bull’s death, he wrote, “the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.”
5. One of his jobs before hitting it big was at the Aberdeen Weekly Pioneer in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Before that, he owned a general store he called “Baum’s Bazaar,” which is where kids in town started to know him for his stories. When he took the job with the newspaper, he would walk from store to store to inquire about ad sales. He would get accosted by so many children asking him to tell them a story, he eventually designated about an hour of his daily rounds to sitting on a curb telling tall tales to kids.
6. Baum was quite adept at predicting inventions of the future. In his children’s book The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale, he wrote about crazy inventions that sound a lot like computers (“I don’t see why one should read newspapers when the Record of Events shows all that is going on in the world,” says the little boy in the story) and televisions and in Tik-Tok of Oz he has some creations that are a lot like cell phones.
7. Before Oz, Baum’s first children’s book success was Father Goose, His Story, illustrated by William Denslow, who would start illustrating the Oz books just a year later. Baum was very proud of the Father Goose success and started adding geese to the family décor anywhere he could possibly incorporate them, including in stained glass windows and stenciled on furniture and woodwork. He carried this habit over after Dorothy and Co. became famous: he named one of their dogs Toto and referred to their house in California as “Ozcot.”
8. He was an avid horticulturalist. As you can tell by his earlier printed works, he always had a penchant for gardening, but his writing success later in life afforded him the time and money to actually tend to it. When he and his wife bought the house in California, he immediately set up a garden in the backyard and had a very specific upkeep routine that he carried out on a daily basis. He won tons of awards for his gorgeous flowers, specifically dahlias and chrysanthemums.
9. He died on May 5, 1919, and uttered these last words to his wife: “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands.” He’s buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, which I am visiting next week, so be sure to look for my cemetery tour post during the last week of May!
10. Despite his death 20 years earlier, Baum may have still been keeping his eye on The Wizard of Oz set in 1939. How’s this for a creepy coincidence? When the costume designers for the movie were looking for a coat for the Wizard to wear, they went to a secondhand shop and bought a bunch, then brought them back to the set for the actor to try on. He tried them all and made his choice, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that he discovered a label inside the coat with the original owner’s name in it – L. Frank Baum. Everyone was understandably skeptical, but the story checked out – the coat was specially-made for Baum by a tailor in Chicago and his widow Maud recognized it from his collection.
This might be a loaded question, but do you prefer the Oz books or the Oz movie (and why?)? I don’t even think I can tell you my preference… I remember very much enjoying the books as a kid, but it has been so long since I read them that I don’t think I could properly compare the two anymore.
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I prefer the movie, myself, but that may be because I never tried to read the books while listening to “Dark Side of the Moon.”
posted by Paul on 5-15-2009 at 4:39 pm
The books are much better, a little darker than the movie. But I’ve always held that I’d rather read the book than watch the movie.
Also, what other flowers did he win awards for? The sentence ends with “dahlias and”.
posted by AmyD on 5-15-2009 at 4:48 pm
In my family that question could cause a riot! My grandmother LOVES the books, has first additions of most I think, and can’t stand the movie. I prefer the movie only because I grew up watching it way before I ever read the book.
posted by KatieP on 5-15-2009 at 5:20 pm
if you are gonna be in southern California cemeteries anyway you should go to Hollywood forever for a film screening http://www.cinespia.org. Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone, Bugsy Siegle and Mel Blanc all in one place and then you get to watch Cool Hand Luke on the mausoleum wall, can’t go wrong with that.
posted by shell on 5-15-2009 at 6:49 pm
In the early 1960s when I was little we’d drive by Forest Lawn quite often. No forest there. That struck me as weird, and I remember several times reflexively asking, “Why do they call it Forest Lawn?” and not getting an answer. We’d go by and I wanted to go in but we never did. Ten years later when I was watching the original Star Trek shows over and over in reruns every day after school, I saw the episode where they land on a planet of little plaster movie-set Parthenon-like gazebos, and I thought, /That must be what Forest Lawn is like./
The sequel to /The Wizard Of Oz/ movie, /Return To Oz/ (1985) is wonderful. Dorothy is considered mentally ill for her refusal to deny Oz (she’s in not exactly but kind of the same situation as Sarah Connor is in the beginning of /Terminator 2/) and they subject her (Dorothy) to electroconvulsive therapy, which, of course, sends her straight back to Oz.
posted by Marco McClean on 5-15-2009 at 7:15 pm
Easy the books. I read the entire series every May. I own the entire Baum collection, and a few of the non Baum, still canon books. I have discovered that if I start on May first and read 3 a week I am done by Memorial Day.
My Grandmother started the tradition a long time ago, I am just keeping the flame going.
posted by fibrowitch on 5-15-2009 at 9:20 pm
I love the movie…but I’ve actually never read the books. I usually prefer books over the movies based on them, so I should get started on these! Oh, and Stacy….Baum grew Dahlias and what else????
posted by Shandi on 5-15-2009 at 10:26 pm
@shell, we’re totally doing that! We’ll be there for To Catch a Thief.
And to everyone else… chrysanthemums. I’ll go fix it. I have a short attention span. :)
posted by stacy on 5-15-2009 at 10:35 pm
My grade school in Chicago was L. Frank Baum. (They have since renamed it Tonti or something close to that) :-(
posted by Paul on 5-16-2009 at 12:08 am
Oh, yes, Fairuza Balk as Dorothy… I do need to see this.
I’ve also been to the now-defunct Land of Oz attraction in Banner Elk, NC
posted by Anon Emous on 5-16-2009 at 6:59 am
I preffer the books, but by a slim margin.. I read and reread the entire series (the ones by Baum, at least), as a kid. I still LOVE the movie, but it’s entertaining in a different way.. definetly more lighthearted and a little less out there. It’s almost a tie between the two, but the hundreds of hours I must have spent reading the books beats out however many times I’ve seen the few movies.
posted by Andy on 5-16-2009 at 7:38 am
i love them both- but the books are better by far.
my favourite is Ozma of Oz- but they’re all wonderful. i can’t tell you how many summer nights i spent reading until the wee hours- grand adventures with the shaggy man, tik-tok, billina the chicken, the gnome king, polychrome, dorothy, and so on.
i’m an adult, and i still love those books to itty-bitty pieces. :)
posted by em on 5-16-2009 at 8:13 am
My wife and I were in California for our Honeymoon back in 2004. We visited San Diego among our many stops in the state. We happened upon Coronado Island and spent the day there taking in the sites, eats, and beaches. During our stay, we were told by some friendly locals that the Hotel Del Coronado (or “The Del” as it was nicknamed) was where Baum wrote “The Wizard of Oz”. We did a little research and apparently he didn’t write it there, but the hotel was the inspiration for Emerald City. But it was an absolutely beautiful location.
posted by Ian on 5-16-2009 at 9:48 am
Easily the film because I’ve had more exposure to it. However, like you Stacy, I loved the books as a kid… I just don’t remember them very well.
Captcha: meddle In
How serendipitous?! I think I shall meddle today!
posted by Frosty on 5-16-2009 at 10:31 am
I love the books. I read them to my daughter several years ago. She was around 5 years old at the time and enjoyed them at her level. I found myself captivated by them on a different level. There were quite a few books in the series. The later few’s quality was not nearly as good as the early ones.
posted by zeens on 5-16-2009 at 10:37 am
I read the first Oz book when I was 7 and have loved them ever since. Of course, the movie appeals to my musical theatre appreciating self. It’s hard to pick, but I’ll go books (though they’re a lot stranger than I remember them being).
posted by Julia on 5-16-2009 at 1:50 pm
Wizard of Oz the movie. Hate it!
…and that is because in our grade school our teacher read us three of the Oz books, including The Wizard…and it is impossible to view that film and not know how much is lost from the original material. If you even think you like the movie, read the book(s),,,so much more texture, color, more interesting characters.
posted by Shelli on 5-16-2009 at 3:04 pm
Books or movie? Not sure. I believe I read the books when I was younger – my dad had the first edition of all of them. I don’t remember them, though.
In my last year of high school, we did the Wizard of Oz musical, and after playing and directing the music for several weeks in a row, I just can’t stand to watch the movie (and it’s been 18 years!).
posted by Dawn on 5-17-2009 at 4:57 am
Both, for different reasons.
I read the entire Baum series when I was 9 or so; our school library actually had them. I suspect those books were the foundation for my Sci Fi book obsession. Ozma, Tik-Tok, Capt’n Bill, and my fav, the Sawhorse. I loved em all.
But the movie had a different meaning for me. It was something my family would sit down and watch together every year; us kids in our pajamas cause it ended well past our bedtime. If I remember correctly, it was run every year for a while around September, after school started. Watching now still gives me warm fuzzies.
Interestingly, my captcha is “east dotes”. East is the land of the Munchkins…
posted by Alli on 5-18-2009 at 9:15 pm