Baum, L. Frank (1856-1919)

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Baum, L. Frank (1856-1919)

With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), L. Frank Baum created a new kind of plain-language fairy tale, purely American, modern, industrial, and for the most part non-violent. He said in his introduction that the book "was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." The Wizard of Oz —"Wonderful" was dropped in later printings—became an institution for generations of children. Reinforced by the 1939 MGM film, the story and its messages quickly became a part of American culture. The belief that the power to fulfill your deepest desires lie within yourself, that good friends can help you get where you are going, and that not all Wizards are for real has offered many comfort through turbulent times.

The hero of the story—young Dorothy of Kansas, an orphan who lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry—is a plucky and resourceful American girl. Yanked by a cyclone into Oz, she accidentally kills the Wicked Witch of the East and is given the witch's silver (changed to ruby in the 1939 movie) shoes. In hope of getting home again, Dorothy, with her little dog Toto, sets off down the Yellow Brick Road—to the Emerald City, of course—to ask the Wizard for help. Along the way, she meets the Scarecrow in search of a brain, the Tin Woodman who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion who is after courage. Following the storyline of most mythical quests, the friends encounter numerous adventures and must overcome great obstacles before realizing their destiny. The Wizard turns out to be a humbug, but after Dorothy destroys the Wicked Witch of the West by melting her with a bucket of water, he provides her friends with symbols of what they already have proven they possess. The book ends with Dorothy clicking her silver shoes together and being magically transported home, where her aunt and uncle have been awaiting her return.

In the Wizard of Oz series, Baum left out the dark, scary underbelly of the original Grimm fairy tales and created a world where people do not die and everyone is happy. He also incorporated twentieth-century technology into the books, and used recognizable characters and objects from American life such as axle grease, chinaware, scarecrows, and patchwork quilts. Although Baum poked gentle fun at some aspects of American life—such as the "humbug" nature of government—The Wizard of Oz goes directly to biting satire. Dorothy is a girl from the midwest (typical American) who meets up with a brainless scarecrow (farmers), a tin man with no heart (industry), a cowardly lion (politicians), and a flashy but ultimately powerless wizard (technology). It presents an American Utopia where no one dies, people work half the day and play half the day, and is a place where everyone is kind to one another. Ray Bradbury referred to the story as "what we hope to be."

Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856 in Chittenango, New York. His childhood, by all accounts, was happy, marred only by a minor heart condition. For his fourteenth birthday, his father gave him a printing press, with which young Frank published a neighborhood newspaper. His 1882 marriage to Maud Gage, daughter of women's rights leader Matilda Joslyn Gage, was also a happy one; Frank played the role of jovial optimist, and Maud was the disciplinarian of their four sons.

Baum worked as an actor, store owner, newspaper editor, reporter, and traveling salesman. In 1897, he found a publisher for his children's book Mother Goose in Prose, and from then on was a full-time writer. Baum teamed up with illustrator W. W. Denslow to produce Father Goose, His Book in 1899 and then The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. The book, splashed with color on almost every page, sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in two weeks. Over four million copies were sold before 1956, when the copyright expired. Since then, millions more copies have been sold in regular, abridged, Golden, pop-up, and supermarket versions.

In 1902, Baum helped produce a hit musical version of his book, which ran until 1911, at which point the Baums moved to a new Hollywood home, "Ozcot." In spite of failing health, he continued to write children's books, producing nearly 70 titles under his own name and seven pseudonyms including, as Edith Van Dyne, the popular Aunt Jane's Nieces series. Inundated with letters from children asking for more about Dorothy and Oz, Baum authored 14 Oz books altogether, each appearing annually in December. After Baum's death, the series was taken over by Ruth Plumly Thompson; others have since continued the series.

The books spawned a one-reel film version in 1910, a feature-length black and white film in 1925, a radio show in the 1930s sponsored by Jell-O, and, in 1939, the classic MGM movie starring Judy Garland, which guaranteed The Wizard of Oz's immortality. Beginning in 1956, the film was shown on television each year, bringing the story to generations of children and permanently ingraining it into American culture.

—Jessy Randall