Reviewed by Karen Chutsky
America’s most beloved tale, “The Wizard of Oz”, had a much beloved author, L. Frank Baum. At a time when European authors Grimm’s and Anderson’s tales and their winged fairies reigned supreme in children’s books, Baum became the father of the American Fairytale.
His adoring legion of young fans circa 1900, kept him writing sequel after sequel, almost trapping him in a snow-globe world of Oz. Unbeknownst to them, and the public at the time, he secretly escaped the yoke by writing near eighty adventure novels under assumed pen names- most for older boys and girls, and a smattering for adults.
Biographer Rebecca Loncraine introduces us to what made “The Real Wizard of Oz”- Baum tick and most vividly the truly amazing times he lived in, thus the subtitle of the book; “The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum.
And oh what amazing well stocked times it was, spanning from 1848-1919, that fed his imagination. This epic book is a rich amalgamate of American History, jam-packed with big events; from the Civil war, to the end of the Wild West frontier, to the 1890’s depression, to the Woman’ Suffrage movement, to decades of innovative inventions such as; kerosene for lamps, the first x-rays, Electricity, the Model T Ford, the birth of the cinema, and everything in between such as; mass marketed bicycles and cameras, the phonograph, the rise of visiting dead relatives through mediums, the tensions of assimilating Indians into euro-American culture, the invention of the elevator and engineered steel, the Brooklyn Bridge, P.T. Barnum’s traveling Circus, the Chicago World’s Fair, the popularity of rides in Hot Air Balloons, and the list goes on.
All of it had a profound influence on Baum’s writing, which he compulsively began as a youngster once he got his hands on the newest home printing press kit. He was cranking out newspapers from the age of fourteen and would find newspapers to be a valuable constant outlet for his words and thoughts throughout the rest of his life, most often a vehicle through which to vent emotions, mostly periodic outbursts at the popular attitudes of the times. For he was a man always fully engaged with every aspect of society. He also used humor in his stories to discharge the power of what frightened him…or as in some of his serialized characters- what annoyed him.
Loncraine manages throughout the book to sum up the most poignant times of his life with her most wonderfully English turn of the phrase:
“His experiences as a child and as a man, his extensive reading (including Charles Dickens) through which he’d absorbed the oldest archetypes from folktales, had all jumbled together in his mind to make a brilliant cocktail, which surfaced intuitively in his brilliant hyper-real stories.”
Kindergarten magazine said it this way, “his knack of writing realistic yet fantastical characters was one of his greatest strengths.” This ability was said to stem partly from the fact that ‘Baum’s reality’ accommodated the invisible life force he saw inherent in every object following the basic tenants of the Theosophical- or Metaphysical philosophy he ascribed to. He also believed there was an immortal presence of the spirits of those no longer with us. A belief born of the high child mortality rates of the times. In truth- there was a blurred line for Baum between the story and the physical world, a boundary Baum hardly recognized at all.
Surprisingly it was only in mid-life when he began to pen the children’s stories that flooded his mind and were mostly used to entertain his own children. The first ones were written on scraps of paper or napkins while sitting on trains and staying in hotels during the years he was employed as a traveling salesman. To make up for his harbored feelings of guilt over being away so often, he would arrive home not with what he saw as empty trinkets, but his own unique imaginative stories he believed would be more of a cherished memory for his brood of children. They would gather round and soak up his words with as much glee as there was love behind the telling of them.
I fell right into the trap of reading his life like a treasure map, searching for clues and origins of the original seeds of his ideas for “The Wizard of Oz.” And without much work they pop up from the pages at every turn, his inspirations for the spinning twisters ripping across the open prairie farmlands of Kansas, the yellow brick road, the tin man, the scarecrow, Dorothy, the wizard himself and of course…Toto too. You will have to read the biography to discover them for yourself for I don’t wish to ruin those ‘ahah’ moments.
But I will reveal some surprising twists in the Wizard of Oz saga. It became a smash hit extravaganza musical in 1901 and the proceeds from its off and on run over the years was the real money maker for Baum. Book royalties may have sustained him, but those monies allowed him in his later life to live like a king, moving between stays in lush hotels in California, an expensive apartment in Chicago and extensive European and American travels in the “newest touring cars”(thanks to Ford) motoring around the west. He even started a small movie studio, though, unfortunately, he never lived to see the day MGM presented their 1939 golden version of his story, which has and probably always will have a hallowed place in everyone’s childhood memories.
“The Real Wizard of Oz” is a wonderful smorgasbord of our unique American history and the ripening age of American ingenuity while it pays homage to L. Frank Baum, a man who spun it all into the web of his Fairytale worlds.
Karen Chutsky is a Lucerne Valley-based Author/Editor/Illustrator/Production Designer. Her works include The Boy From Tennessee/Young Davy Crockett, Oji/Spy Girls At The Gate, Annabelle’s Rescue. To read her movie reviews, visit www.themovieladyreviews.com.