Lectures

Lecture 4: L. Frank Baum and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was born May 15, 1856, in Chittenango, New York. His father was originally a barrel-maker, but he made his fortune in the oil fields of Pennsylvania and became a wealthy man. Frank was one of 10 children; their home was happy and filled with laughter. As a child, Frank began making up his own fairytales to entertain other kids; his tales were less frightening than those traditionally told to kids.

Baum went away to military school as a teenager, but wasn't suited to the harsh physical conditions, and returned home before long. He took up creative writing, and his father got him a printing press; he published his own newspaper for several years.

In 1881, Frank went to New York to study theater; he also managed an opera house belonging to his father. He wrote a number of plays and performed, and then left the theater to pursue a career in business. After a number of failed business ventures, he finally became successful as a writer when he published, in 1897, Mother Goose in Prose. Father Goose was published in 1899 and was a bestseller. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published the following year and became an instant success. Eventually, Baum declared himself "the historian of Oz" and wrote 17 additional Oz books.

Baum moved to Hollywood, California in 1910 and built Ozcot, his Hollywood home, at 1749 Cherokee Avenue.

Baum loved Hollywood. In an article called "Our Hollywood," written in 1916, he wrote:

Life in Hollywood isn’t utopian, by any means; it has its drawbacks. The city is overtaxed, neglected by its Los Angeles guardians, saddled with undeserved assessments, reviled by Los Angeles real estate agents and regarded with disdain by the bored and hapless denizens of ultra-rich Pasadena. Pasadenans don’t like us because we haven’t any gilded palaces back East to go to during the magnificent Hollywood summers. If we had, we’d rent them cheap to the Pasadena folks. The Hollywood people--God bless ‘em!--wouldn’t live anywhere but in Hollywood even if bribed, threatened by the Black Hand, or kidnapped by the British conscriptionists. As soon as we come here we shoot a tap-root into the earth, so to speak, and that holds us. The place has its defects, but also it has qualities of excellence that cannot be matched by any known locality. Our hills are glorious; the hours of sunrise and sunset are gorgeous beyond description; our flowers, trees and shrubs are remarkably varied and supremely beautiful; our houses are homelike, with the latchstrings always out; our climate is unsurpassed.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900. At the time, it was considered a charming children's story. In fact, in the introduction to the 1900 edition, Baum wrote, "The story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written solely to pleasure children of today." But in 1964, Henry Littlefield published an essay in which he proposed that the book was actually a commentary on the Progressive Movement. (The full text of the article can be found here.) Since then, this interpretation has been enthusiastically debated, with some arguing that it is valid, and some arguing that it was never Baum's intent to do anything but write a children's story.

Baum's own disclaimer in the beginning would seem to settle the matter, except that Mark Twain makes exactly such a disclaimer at the beginning of Huck Finn, and it is patently false. Perhaps that was what Baum was doing too.

Quentin Taylor argues that Baum was deliberately inserting political references. Dorothy, he says, "represents an individualized ideal of the American people...'the girl next door.'" The silver slippers represent the free-silver movement of the 1890s. The Witch of the East represents the "Wall Street Bankers and captains of industry, whom they believed engaged in a conspiracy to 'enslave' the 'little people,' just as the Witch had enslaved the Munchkins." The Scarecrow represents the Midwestern farmers, who were often thought to be brainless, but who were in fact quite practical and smart. The Tin Woodman represents industrial workers: "In essence, the Witch of the East (big business) reduced the Woodman to a machine, a dehumanized worker who no longer feels, who has no heart." The Cowardly Lion represents William Jennings Bryan, a Populist presidential candidate. The Emerald City represents Washington, D. C. Dorothy and her companions must wear green-tinted glasses there so that everything appears green to them. In D.C., everything is seen through the lens of money, which is, of course, green. The Wizard himself represents all politicians, deceptive and full of hot air.

There are also interesting autobiographical correspondences in the story. Evan Schwartz argues that Baum's inspiration may have come from his mother-in-law, a fiery and radical suffragist.

In 1881, at a party, Baum was introduced to Maud Gage, a dark-haired 20-year-old who attended Cornell, the first Ivy League college to admit female students.

"Frank Baum," said his Aunt Josephine at the party, "I want you to know Maud Gage. I'm sure you will love her."
"Consider yourself loved, Miss Gage," quipped Frank.
"Thank you, Mr. Baum," replied Maud. "That's a promise. Please see that you live up to it." (Schwartz)

Maud and Frank fell in love, but at first, Maud's mother did not approve. Matilda Joslyn Gage had helped found the National Woman Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and she was not thrilled at the idea of her daughter dropping out of college to marry an actor who was on the road most of the time and didn't seem to be able to make a secure living. But Maud and Frank married anyway, and Frank promptly fulfilled his mother-in-law's worst predictions, failing at a number of business ventures and moving his wife and growing family all over the country.

In 1888, Baum moved to the Dakota territory and opened a variety store called Baum's Bazaar, selling toys and novelties. Naturally, the store was filled with children, and Frank would tell them stories. Matilda Gage came to spend thew winters with them and encouraged him to put the stories down on paper. He was too busy to do so, until the store failed.

When that happened, he started a newspaper; in one of his stories, he reported on a tornado that had carried a buggy, with a pig hiding in it, 300 feet. The buggy landed gently and the pig was uninjured.

But the newspaper failed, too, and Baum went to Chicago to look for work. He and his family lived there during the time when the White City was being built for the World's Fair; it may have inspired the Emerald City. As Baum was moving into his new home there, he wrote a piece in which he said, "...it is the day when the wife...whispers in your ear the beauty of the poet's tip that there is no place like home." The article was illustrated by a picture of four traveling companions carrying their possessions down a road, accompanied by a little dog.

In 1898, Matilda Gage died at the age of 72. She and Frank had become close, despite her initial disapproval of him, and Matilda had never stopped encouraging him to write. The previous year, she had written to him urging him to enter a writing contest: "Now you are a good writer and I advise you to try. If you could get up a series of adventures of a Dakota blizzard...or maybe bring in a cyclone from North Dakota." Frank never entered the contest. But shortly after her death, a story came to him and he felt compelled to write it down. The story began with a Kansas cyclone. Later that year, a 5-year-old niece died of a fever; her name was Dorothy Gage. Frank honored her in the story by naming his main character Dorothy Gale.

Baum had actually walked on a yellow brick road as a teenager on his way to school.

In a rush, the story came together. It was published in 1900 and was a hit. Matilda Gage would have loved Frank's success. Even more, she would have loved the image of a self-confident girl leading a group of hesitant men toward salvation.

If you'd like more information on any of the topics covered in this lecture, go to the Links page. Enjoy!

The information in this lecture is derived in part from the following sources:
~ Barrett, Laura. "From wonderland to wasteland: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Great Gatsby, and the new American fairy tale.(Critical essay)." Papers on Language & Literature 42.2 (2006): 150+. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
~ Schwartz, Evan I. "The matriarch behind the curtain: L. Frank Baum's most surprising source of inspiration for The Wizard of Oz may have been his argumentative, mercurial, suffragist mother-in-law." American History 44.5 (2009): 52+. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
~ Taylor, Quentin P. "Money and politics in the land of Oz.(Wonderful Wizard of Oz )." Independent Review 9.3 (2005): 413+. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.

Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
~ Walter Winchell