American Experience (1988) s33e08 Episode Script

1
♪
NARRATOR:
On November 3, 1956,
families all across America
gathered in their living rooms
for the first television
broadcast of "The Wizard of Oz."
45 million viewers tuned in.
Its annual airing on television
would cement the story
in the American consciousness.
GREGORY MAGUIRE:
My parents were dubious
about television.
Once a year they lowered their
inhibitions and restrictions,
and that was when "The Wizard of
Oz" was rebroadcast.
Somewhere over the rainbow ♪
LOUIS WARREN:
When I was a kid,
I saw "The Wizard of Oz"
for the first time on a color TV
and was just stunned
when you made that transition
from the black-and-white
photography
to the color photography.
DINA MASSACHI:
I don't remember
the first time I saw it.
What I remember
is wanting to be Dorothy.
I've got a feeling we're not
in Kansas anymore.
You're off to see the Wizard,
the Wonderful Wizard of Oz ♪
MARIA MONTOYA:
The two images that have stuck
with me my whole life
Now, fly fly!
MONTOYA:
The witch and the flying
monkeys absolutely terrifying.
EVAN SCHWARTZ:
The movie is not only
the most seen movie of all time,
but it's the most
repeatedly viewed movie
of all time.
WIZARD:
I am Oz!
SCHWARTZ:
It's almost impossible
to conceive of American life
without growing up with
"The Wizard of Oz."
I'm melting, melting!
NARRATOR:
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
first appeared
more than half a century
earlier, as a children's book.
Published in 1900,
the story of Dorothy's
fantastical journey down the
yellow brick road
was the brainchild of
L. Frank Baum,
a writer whose penchant for
reinvention
reflected a uniquely American
brand of confidence,
imagination, and innovation.
During a time of rapid change,
he wrote a fairytale that
embraced the values
and direction of a new society.
WARREN:
Baum is at the center of a kind
of culture
of inviting people
to dream of a new life.
PHILIP DELORIA:
"The Wizard Of Oz" is the
quintessential story
of going to another world,
working out issues and problems,
and then returning
and being in a better place
in a world that is challenging.
MONTOYA:
What's underlying this seemingly
easy children's story
is actually a complicated person
who has a complicated story,
and brings all that to
the underpinnings of the book.
DOUGLAS A. JONES, JR.:
His life suggests
a kind of American spirit
on the cusp of a new century,
turning towards what the modern
and the new would be.
(steam hisses)
(train rumbling)
♪
NARRATOR:
On a chilly evening
in January 1894,
a determined Lyman Frank Baum
wrote his mother
from a small rail town west
of Chicago,
rejecting her offer of support.
"I shall somehow manage to
provide
for those dependent on me,"
he told her.
A tall order for the impractical
man who throughout
his adult life had quit work
where he found success
and pursued his passions
into near-ruin.
(train rumbling)
♪
NARRATOR:
To support his family
in the midst of a crushing
economic depression,
37-year-old Baum,
who went by Frank,
had accepted a trial position
as a traveling salesman.
Working on commission,
he hauled heavy trunks of
breakable glassware and dishes
to store owners across
the Midwest.
Even though he's barely
getting by
selling crockery on the road,
he's determined
to support his family on his
own, on his own terms.
He was always looking for the
next best thing,
where he might,
might make some decent money.
Baum was trying to find a way
that he could stay at home
and be with his family,
not be on the road.
That was his ultimate goal.
SCHWARTZ:
He started to reconnect to his
original childhood dream
of being a great writer
and started writing poems
and stories on any scrap
of paper he could find.
(indistinct chatter,
bell ringing)
NARRATOR:
As he journeyed from town
to town,
Baum bore witness to a nation
in transition
a country of shifting tastes,
increasing population,
and growing industrial might.
He traveled across a land
in which vast fortunes
were being made;
at the same time,
millions lived
in extreme poverty.
♪
PHILIP DELORIA:
Baum sits at the cusp of the
changes of the 19th century
as it gives way to the 20th
century, and Americans are
forced to think
self-reflectively about
what's happening to their
country
thinking about what was,
and what will be.
♪
BOB BAUM:
He would be meeting new people,
going to new places,
hearing new things,
seeing new things
All of these could be
food for his imagination.
MICHAEL PATRICK HEARN:
Frank Baum was always aware
of the importance of the
imagination.
(train whistle blares)
He basically nurtured his
imagination and he trusted it.
(train rumbling)
KENT DRUMMOND:
The imagination could
sometimes be fueled
by the,
the travails of the world,
into imagining places where
want and depression
were not a possibility.
NARRATOR:
Baum channeled his keen
observations into magical tales,
the most famous of which
would become
"America's First Great
Fairy Tale,"
a story about an almost
unbelievable journey
that projected the sentiments
of its author,
a man who wanted to find his
place in the world
and to make his way back
to his family.
"No matter how dreary and gray
our homes are,
"we people of flesh and blood
would rather live there
"than in any other country,
be it ever so beautiful.
There is no place like home."
EVAN SCHWARTZ:
Home was coming back
to your hopes and dreams.
GLENDA:
Tap your shoes together
three times.
And think to yourself,
"There's no place like home."
SCHWARTZ:
It was more than just family.
It was a sense of self as well.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.
(loud crash)
♪
(birds, cicadas chirping)
BAUM:
My great grandfather,
L. Frank Baum,
grew up on a place called
Rose Lawn, which was
his parents' home and farm.
Rose Lawn consisted
of a gorgeous house
with a big library,
lots of books.
There were fields and forests
and streams.
(child playing in distance)
This was a wonderful place
for a child.
NARRATOR:
Born in 1856,
Frank Baum enjoyed
an idyllic childhood
on the outskirts
of Syracuse, New York.
♪
His father,
originally a barrel maker,
had struck it rich in
the oil fields of Pennsylvania,
making him a wealthy man
during a volatile era
of industrialization.
DINA MASSACHI:
Baum grew up reading fairy tales
that were older European
fairy tales
Your Brothers' Grimm
and Hans Christian Andersen.
A lot of them end with very
didactic morals,
and they're dark.
HEARN:
He loved the adventure
of these stories
and also the magic and the
wonder that they possessed.
NARRATOR:
"Childhood," Baum would later
write, "is the time for fables,
for dreams, for joy."
SALLY ROESCH WAGNER:
His imagination was where
he spent much of his time.
He could explore his passions.
And the fanciful world that he
created then
I think stayed with him
throughout his life.
NARRATOR:
At age 19,
when he was old enough
to start earning a living
for himself,
Frank Baum showed
little interest
in following
in his father's footsteps.
(chicken clucking)
After a short stint
as a store clerk, Frank struck
out on his own path.
He decided to ride the wave
of an unusual
national craze
Breeding fancy chickens.
To support this new passion,
his father established
B.W. Baum & Sons
on the family 80-acre stock farm
adjacent to Rose Lawn.
SCHWARTZ:
Frank wasn't content
just to breed chickens for food.
He wanted to breed fancy
chickens that were
going to be shown at various
festivals and shows.
And it was really emblematic
of the way
he approached almost
every endeavor.
He wanted to be the best at it.
NARRATOR:
A leading trade magazine
praised him as
"one of the most active
and enthusiastic fanciers,"
and noted his
"prolific and pleasant" writing
for various poultry journals.
But Baum's interest in the fancy
poultry craze did not last long.
DRUMMOND:
Frank Baum was a restless spirit
and he was always looking
for the next big thing.
There was always something
more and so there was,
there was a quest.
SHARON STROM:
The obsessions of many Americans
in the late 19th century
were to get beyond the small
world of the village;
to change their identities
and occupations;
to imagine a whole new way
of being
in comparison to their parents
and grandparents.
MARIA MONTOYA:
Baum is a middle-class man
of white American descent,
and so he can freely move across
the North American landscape.
And so when something calls
to him,
he has the resources
to be able to do that
and to jump on that dream
and try to make it work for him.
♪
NARRATOR:
24-year-old Frank Baum
headed to New York City in 1881
to study acting.
Frank Baum loved to perform
He was basically a ham.
And this was one profession
that he felt he could
make a name for himself.
But it was not considered
a particularly admirable
profession
to go into theater at that time.
There's a lot of prejudice
against actors.
STROM:
There's a view in proper
American society
that acting is kind of
a low-grade occupation.
But the public loves actors.
It's a way to become popular.
NARRATOR:
Baum soon landed a job touring
with a repertory company.
He played small roles
under the name George Brooks,
and was described as
"a deserving actor"
who had
"genuine dramatic ability,"
but Frank aspired
to something more.
He wanted to write, produce,
and star in his own plays,
and asked his father to bankroll
his new venture.
HEARN:
His father was very indulgent
to Frank's interests.
If Frank wanted to sell poultry,
he would support him on that.
If he wanted to become an actor,
he was the one
who put up the money.
(horse trotting, whistle blows)
NARRATOR:
On May 15, 1882,
crowds in Syracuse,
Baum's hometown,
flocked to the Grand Opera House
to see the premiere of Frank's
first theatrical creation,
a musical melodrama titled
"The Maid of Arran."
♪
Written under the name
Louis F. Baum, the play told a
story of adventure and romance.
DOUGLAS A. JONES, JR.:
Baum would be in a tradition
of theater makers
who were trying to make
it respectable.
They were trying to make a
theater that was both popular,
which is to say profitable,
but also respectable
so they could bring in
middle-class audience members,
so they could bring in
church members.
♪
BAUM:
This was Frank's big chance,
this was his play.
He did the scenery,
he did the music,
he did the lyrics,
and he actually sang on stage.
STROM:
Theater is one of the early
forms of make-believe.
As a theater maker,
he was continuing a lifetime
of playing.
It's a way of expressing his
inventiveness
and disappearing
into another world.
NARRATOR:
Among the attendees at the
Grand Opera House that night
was Maud Gage,
an independent-minded
21-year-old student
at Cornell University,
one of the few male colleges
that had begun admitting women.
The couple had been courting
for months.
WAGNER:
When Frank met Maud,
he met a woman probably unlike
any that he'd met before.
She was smart, she was witty,
she was opinionated.
This is a woman to contend with.
BAUM:
Frank saw in Maud
all the things he didn't have.
She saw in him a life that would
be very different and wonderful,
and must have seen his abilities
and talents
and wanting to be a part of it.
NARRATOR:
The young couple faced
resistance from Maud's mother,
Matilda Joslyn Gage.
A formidable figure, Gage was
a nationally known activist
in the growing movement
for women's equality.
She was a founding member
with Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
of the National Woman Suffrage
Association.
Matilda had very definite
thoughts
about her daughter's new suitor.
MASSACHI:
At first she didn't like
L. Frank Baum.
Here is this actor that her
college daughter
is going to drop out of school
to run off with and, no, no,
that's not gonna work.
But Maud was just as stubborn
as her mother and said,
"No, I'm doing this."
♪
NARRATOR:
On November 9, 1882,
Frank and Maud married
in the parlor of the Gage home
in Fayetteville, New York.
"The promises of the bride," a
local paper noted with surprise,
"were precisely the same as
those required of the groom."
WAGNER:
This is at a time in the 1880s
when men expected subordination
and subservience from women.
And it was a unique man
who wanted to be with a woman
who spoke her own mind,
who would not be dominated.
And I think it speaks volumes
about the character
of Frank that he loved a woman
with that kind of strength.
Matilda's biggest fear
about Frank,
he has all these fine qualities,
but, Lord,
he is never gonna be able
to make a living.
(train chugging)
NARRATOR:
After the wedding,
Maud joined Frank
and his company of actors
on the road,
going on a westward tour
with "The Maid of Arran."
But winter in the plains wasn't
kind to the production.
(train whistle blaring)
SCHWARTZ:
The tour of "The Maid Of Arran"
was very successful at first,
but Frank really pushed it,
he kept it going too long.
(train rumbling)
And it ends up going
into Kansas,
and it was really telling
that Maud wrote a letter saying,
"I couldn't be paid to live
here.
This is the grimmest place
I've ever seen."
NARRATOR:
Frank's responsibilities changed
dramatically that spring
when he found out
that Maud was pregnant.
He now recognized a career
in the theater
was not going to pay the bills,
and closed down the tour.
MASSACHI:
You see Baum feeling
the pressure to succeed.
Being a man in that time,
there was even more pressure
because there was really
the expectation
he would provide for his family.
♪
HEARN:
I think it was devastating when
"The Maid Of Arran" failed.
This was the first time
he really had control
of his own life and was doing
something he really enjoyed.
He was building a career
that suddenly was gone.
And then he wrote his father
begging him, basically,
for a job.
SCHWARTZ:
Frank Baum came of age
when America was transforming
from an agrarian, agricultural
society into an urban,
industrial society, and it was
happening at breakneck speed,
with all kinds of new
technologies
the railroad, the telegraph,
the telephone; it
was unsettling for people.
♪
"The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz" was
created out of American parts.
Where do you want
to be oiled, first?
(mumbles)
He said his mouth.
SCHWARTZ:
Frank Baum's talent was turning
these visual symbols
into meaningful
and sometimes spiritual symbols
that worked in the context
of the story.
(jaw squeaking)
My my my my goodness,
I can talk again!
♪
MAGUIRE:
One of the things that Baum
contributed to our understanding
of how the imagination works
in storytelling,
but perhaps also in the
industrializing world
in which he was working, is that
he taught us to take the scraps,
and bits, and shards
and assemble them into
something new.
♪
NARRATOR:
In May 1883, after almost six
months on tour,
Frank and Maud returned
to Syracuse,
where Baum's father set him up
in the family oil business.
Frank's job was marketing
Baum's Castorine Oil,
a new petroleum product used on
horse-drawn carts and buggies.
♪
The young sales superintendent
managed
to conjure the drama in
axle grease.
SUSAN ARONSTEIN:
Baum understood very
instinctively
that one of the ways
in which people
connected to products was
through the idea of narrative.
The Castorine Oil ads in which
you see a dandy in his carriage
looking utterly appalled
that these scruffy children
in a farm wagon and a pony
have just raced past him.
It tells the story about,
you know, "Oh boy,
"I'm gonna be humiliated
by a bunch of little kids
if I don't have the right oil."
He sold that oil in a way that
would catch people's eye.
♪
SCHWARTZ:
Frank Baum was
a natural salesman.
He was always trying to connect
with people, to please people.
He could make up stories
about anything.
Whether it was chickens
or cans of oil,
Frank Baum had a story for it.
NARRATOR:
Sales were good
and Frank was able to support
his growing family.
♪
NARRATOR:
In February of 1886,
shortly after the birth
of his second son,
Frank's older brother
died suddenly.
A year later
after Frank had taken on new
responsibilities
in the Castorine Oil company
His father died.
HEARN:
When his father died that was an
important lifeline that he lost.
SCHWARTZ:
He didn't want to continue
the oil business.
He wanted something greater,
something more in tune
to who he was.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 1888,
after visiting Maud's brother
in Dakota Territory,
Baum decided to move out west.
"I realize how crowded
the East is,
and how competition
keeps a man down,"
he wrote to his brother-in-law.
"In your country, there is
an opportunity to be somebody."
JEANINE BASINGER:
The prairie has two different
effects on people.
It opens them up to their
own significance and importance.
It's a place in which they can
make their mark,
or it tends to crush them,
even drive them mad.
You either use your imagination
and feel capable of handling it
or you don't.
(wind whipping)
(thunder rumbling)
WAGNER:
Cyclones were the terror.
If they struck,
they removed entire buildings.
(wind howling)
Dorothy!
HEARN:
Baum had a great sense
of transformation.
Baum turns the cyclone
into something positive.
READER:
"In the middle of a cyclone
the air is generally still,
"but the great pressure of the
wind on every side of the house
"raised it up higher and higher,
"until it was at the very top
of the cyclone;
"and there it remained and was
carried miles and miles away
as easily as you could carry
a feather."
HEARN:
It should have been something so
destructive, devastating,
and yet that becomes Dorothy's
way of going to the Land Of Oz.
(loud crash)
(train horn blares)
NARRATOR:
Three months after his visit
to Dakota Territory,
Frank, Maud,
and their two young sons
boarded a train heading west,
bound for Aberdeen,
a city just then shimmering
to life.
Aberdeen had already grown from
fewer than 300 people
at its founding
six years earlier
to more than 3,000
and showed no signs of slowing.
HEARN:
These were not people
who came out
in covered wagons.
They came out on the railroad
and they were young,
adventurous capitalists
thinking that they were going
to make it big.
♪
They didn't know what to expect,
they were basically betting
on hope.
NARRATOR:
Built at the crossroads of three
railroads, the Hub City,
as it was known to its proud
new residents, was a boom town.
Aberdeen boasted schools,
a library, an opera house,
a telephone company, banks,
hotels, and restaurants.
The latest modern convenience,
electric lights,
lined the town's dusty streets.
(dog barking)
Eastern transplants like
Frank Baum were convinced
their fair city would be
the next Chicago,
or Minneapolis, or Kansas City.
WARREN:
The West is
so much the subject
of a hard sell
by land agents
for the railroad corporations
and by other boosters
in the region,
who will paint all kinds
of pictures
of what a glorious,
verdant paradise
South Dakota will be.
(rumbling, mechanic squeaking)
SCHWARTZ:
Aberdeen at that time was trying
to position itself as part
of America's breadbasket.
They were building out a town
that was surrounded by farmland.
WARREN:
The railroads would
advertise the land,
promising that this is a place
where middle-class families
will proliferate,
and all of the comforts
of a good middle-class home
will be yours.
MONTOYA:
When people like Baum
and other settlers head out
into the American West
in the 1880s,
they think they're coming into
an empty landscape.
And nothing could have been
farther from the truth.
What they're actually walking
into is a landscape
that's been inhabited
for hundreds,
and in some cases,
thousands of years.
WARREN:
The land that Aberdeen was
on and most of the Dakotas
had been part of the homeland
of the Western Sioux or Lakota.
For Baum, as for most
western settlers,
Indian people were often
an afterthought
if they thought about them
at all.
(bell ringing)
NARRATOR:
Not long after Baum and his
family had settled in Aberdeen,
a group of Native Americans
arrived in town.
"Crowds of curious white men,"
a local paper reported,
"stared at the delegation of
Lakota leaders
who had stepped off the train
for dinner."
Sitting Bull, famed Lakota chief
and decisive victor
over the U.S. Calvary at
the Battle of Little Bighorn,
drew the most attention.
DELORIA:
Imagine that experience if
you're Sitting Bull
or if you're part of this
delegation,
you're put on display for this
town that sit and gawk at you.
White Americans have always
seen Native people
in contradictory terms.
"They are noble,
children of nature."
"No, they're degraded savages,"
and Baum shows up
at exactly a moment when these
contradictions
are getting really complex,
and changing towards a more
harsh and hostile racialization.
MONTOYA:
Native Americans are being
consolidated,
they're being moved,
and put onto reservations.
WARREN:
For most Americans,
the idea that
Native people had to give up
land
so that white people could
take it,
that was just
the way of the world.
As far as Lakotas were
concerned, it was theft.
NARRATOR:
On Monday, October 1, 1888,
less than two weeks after
moving to town,
Frank Baum dramatically
announcing his arrival
held a much-publicized
grand opening
of a new store called
Baum's Bazaar.
Nearly a thousand people
showed up,
some likely enticed by the
promise of "a box of chocolates,
shipped in from Chicago,
for every lady attending."
♪
ARONSTEIN:
He had a flair
for the theatrical.
And so for him the store
is a stage.
It had to be an experience.
♪
It's like, "Come,
"see the exotic goods,
see it all on display.
"You've never seen so much
in one place before."
NARRATOR:
"On either side of the room,"
raved a local newspaper,
"are cases of pottery,
glassware, toys,
"oxidized brass ornaments,
Japanese novelties,
fancy leather and plush goods."
DELORIA:
He doesn't go to start
a feed store.
He goes to start
a novelty store.
He sells all kinds of things,
many of which are not actually
needed,
but they represent the dreams
and the desires of people
to engage in this new kind of
world of goods and commodities.
♪
HEARN:
Baum wrote all the ads
that appeared in local
newspapers for Baum's Bazaar.
♪
He would have special events
to bring people
into the store.
Baum believed
in entertaining children
and all the kids just
loved going
to Baum's Bazaar because there
were all these wonderful toys.
♪
NARRATOR:
"Mr. Baum has demonstrated
in a very short time,"
wrote the "Aberdeen Daily News,"
"that he possesses
"to an enviable degree the
push and enterprise necessary
to the western businessman."
(bat cracks, crowd cheers)
NARRATOR:
In May 1889,
Baum and a group of local
businessmen put up the money
for the Hub City Nine,
Aberdeen's first professional
baseball team.
The town built a field
and a grandstand
that could seat 500.
Baum's Bazaar supplied the
team's jerseys,
bats, and gloves.
DRUMMOND:
Baum envisions himself
as being really the harbinger
of civilization for Aberdeen,
this potentially great city
on the Great Plains.
So he's imbued with this sense
of transformation
that starts through the
consumption of exotic goods
but leads to so many other
things.
NARRATOR:
Baum planned to start new
clubs
lawn tennis, stamp collecting,
photography, bicycling
And stock all
the necessary supplies
on the shelves of Baum's Bazaar.
SCHWARTZ:
He got really involved in the
civic life of the town
and tried to create a sense
of community around the store.
It wasn't just about selling,
but about bringing people
together.
HEARN:
I think that Baum was hoping
that Baum's Bazaar
would draw people from outside
of Aberdeen
people from the farms,
from the other towns would come
to this new mecca of
South Dakota.
(chickens clucking)
BASINGER:
The Dakota Territory
is a harsh environment.
The winters are very, very cold,
and hard, and long.
The summers are hot, and dry,
and challenging.
WAGNER:
You're out on the prairie,
your nearest neighbor
is a mile away,
you don't see anything
on the horizon but flatness.
♪
DRUMMOND:
Baum envisioned people could
go into this store,
and it would be
a tremendous escape.
It would be one in which they
could completely forget
about the workaday world.
It's very magical
and it's transformative.
WARREN:
What Baum is saying is,
"It's okay to dream
"about having those nice things.
"Why shouldn't you have them?
"There's nothing wrong with it.
"Go ahead, buy them.
Express yourself through
your purchases."
NARRATOR:
Frank's big ideas,
persistent optimism,
and lack of experience
of the vagaries of farming
blinded him to the realities
of life on the Plains.
After years of consistent rain,
a drought hit the region
in 1889.
Wheat fields turned into dust,
and heavy winds blew away
freshly sown seed.
By harvest time,
crop yields had plummeted.
♪
WARREN:
It is one of the worst droughts
in American history.
Many of the farmers fall
on very hard times,
and obviously in that moment
Baum's Bazaar
is not gonna do well.
WAGNER:
When farmers don't have money
for seed wheat,
they are not gonna buy toys
for their children.
And while there was a short boom
when Baum's Bazaar may have made
sense,
by 1890, there was no way
it could succeed at all.
NARRATOR:
Baum's Bazaar closed,
on January 1, 1890
after only 15 months
in business.
Maud had just given birth
to their third child.
"Frank had let his tastes
run riot,"
his sister-in-law later said.
"It was too impractical a store
for a frontier town."
(heavy winds whipping)
SCHWARTZ:
The economic situation
for the Baum family was dire.
He was really
on a shoestring now,
very little money, but he used
whatever money he had left
to take over a newspaper.
And he tried to make a go of it,
falling back on his talent
for writing.
STROM:
Baum was very optimistic
about his own talents.
Whatever situation he's in,
he figures out a new strategy
for selling something
or selling himself.
♪
NARRATOR:
Just a month after he shuttered
Baum's Bazaar,
Frank published
the inaugural edition
of "The Aberdeen Saturday
Pioneer."
WARREN:
Getting into that business is
both a way that he can express
his interest in writing,
but it's also a way
for him to paint pictures
with words
of the future of Aberdeen
and the future of South Dakota.
♪
NARRATOR:
Baum was at pains to set
his weekly apart
from the town's eight
other papers,
and put his faith in his own
distinctive voice.
Under the heading
"The Editor's Musings,"
Baum offered his personal
opinions
on a wide range of topics.
WARREN:
Baum's voice as a newspaper
editor was an interesting voice.
He writes about alternative
religions.
He writes about spiritual
mediums in his newspaper.
These are not topics that every
editor would touch.
NARRATOR:
The issue Baum most strongly
championed in 1890
was women's suffrage.
South Dakota had become a state
the previous year,
and an amendment to give women
the vote
would be decided in the
November election.
Frank's support
of the suffrage movement
stemmed from time he spent with
his mother-in-law,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was
a frequent visitor to Aberdeen.
MASSACHI:
Gage was very involved with
the Baum family,
and she really influenced
L. Frank Baum.
He joined the suffrage movement
because of her.
And you see this play out
in his newspaper writing.
SCHWARTZ:
Frank Baum wrote editorial
after editorial
trying to convince fellow
townsfolks
to vote for women's rights.
NARRATOR:
"We must do away with
sex prejudice
and render equal distinction and
reward to brains and ability,"
Baum argued, "no matter whether
found in man or woman."
WAGNER:
His respect for women, I think,
is strengthened
seeing these western women.
They had already succeeded
in proving themselves
as equals to the men.
If you're homesteading,
you are an active
participant in the process.
MONTOYA:
White women who are moving
out into the American West
are seen as bringing
civilization
to these communities.
This is not possible
without the labor of women,
both the physical labor of women
but the cultural, social,
political labor of women
to build these communities.
HEARN:
Frank was determined to get
the vote in South Dakota.
He believed in progress.
He believed that we were
always advancing forward.
And he generally assumed
that other people
would just agree with him.
NARRATOR:
"This great question,
involving the political future
"of our wives, mothers, sisters,
and daughters will be decided
for South Dakota next Tuesday,"
Baum appealed to his readers.
"The enfranchisement of one-half
of the citizens
of this great state
is in your hands."
(bell ringing,
people chattering)
NARRATOR:
On Election Day, November 1890,
nearly 70,000 men across
South Dakota went to the polls.
Women's equality was
soundly rejected
by a margin of two to one.
"What a reproach
upon our civilization,"
he wrote,
"and upon the people of a state
who have made a pretense
of being liberal and just!"
(bird cawing)
NARRATOR:
The drought that began in 1889
dragged on for nearly two years,
exposing the lie of railroad
promoters and land agents
that the rain follows the plow.
♪
HEARN:
The great American Dream
turned out to be a nightmare
for these people.
And Frank Baum was out there
witnessing this.
And all of this is expressed
in the opening chapter of
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
♪
READER:
"When Dorothy stood in the
doorway and looked around,
"she could see nothing but the
great gray prairie
"on every side.
"The sun had baked the plowed
land into a gray mass,
"with little cracks
running through it.
"Even the grass was not green,
"for the sun had burned the tops
of the long blades
until they were the same gray
color to be seen everywhere."
WARREN:
I think one of the most telling
moments
in "The Wizard Of Oz" is right
at the beginning
with the description of Aunt Em
and Uncle Henry
as old before their time,
as unable to imagine happiness.
READER:
"Uncle Henry never laughed.
"He worked hard from morning
till night
"and did not know what joy was.
He looked stern and solemn,
and rarely spoke."
WARREN:
Baum in many ways is saying
that this western dream
seems to have hit a wall.
It is a place of great
disappointment
for many of the people who had
invested their lives in it.
NARRATOR:
On the Standing Rock
and Pine Ridge reservations
west of Aberdeen,
conditions were even more dire
for the over 10,000 Lakota
living there.
And with access to only meager
government rations,
many families were on the verge
of starvation.
In the middle of this unfolding
apocalypse,
a new religion known
as the Ghost Dance
began to spread through
many western tribes.
They believed the dance,
which preached a defiant message
of hope,
would wash away
the white settlers
and return the land
to its original state.
DELORIA:
It's a regenerative
religious practice.
It's not people yelling
and screaming.
You do this dance until you sort
of fall into a vision state,
and you fall down out of the
circle, and you have a vision,
and people come
and take care of you,
and other people keep dancing.
♪
White Americans see this and
they think that the Ghost Dance
is the prelude
to an armed uprising.
NARRATOR:
Desperate to keep his Aberdeen
dream afloat,
Frank blasted rival newspapers
for ginning up
a "false and senseless scare,"
fearing that headlines screaming
of "Indian uprisings"
would drive settlers away.
♪
"After two years of successive
crop failures," he wrote,
"comes the Indian scare,
and the consequence is
we are getting a very bad name."
SCHWARTZ:
A lot of businesses
were going under
and the economic collapse
in South Dakota
was threatening
his very concept of home.
He invested so much of himself
there
that it was almost unthinkable
that everything would collapse.
NARRATOR:
President Benjamin Harrison
ordered his secretary of war
to suppress the Ghost Dance,
by force if necessary.
On December 15, 1890,
Lakota Chief Sitting Bull
was shot and killed
on the Standing Rock Reservation
during a botched arrest
for his alleged support
of the Ghost Dance.
When news reached Aberdeen,
150 miles away,
the townspeople feared
retaliation.
WARREN:
It creates a response of panic
among white people.
Newspaper editors begin
to demand federal protection
in case there's what they call
an outbreak.
NARRATOR:
Baum's newspaper ran
wire reports
warning of imminent reprisal.
Caught up in the mass hysteria
and watching his Aberdeen
efforts spiraling into failure,
Frank's usually optimistic
rhetoric changed drastically.
In an editorial,
he praised Sitting Bull,
but described the remaining
Lakota people
as a "pack of whining curs"
and called for
a vicious ethnic cleansing.
"The whites, by law of conquest,
by justice of civilization,
are masters of the American
continent," Baum asserted,
"and the best safety of the
frontier settlements
"will be secured by the total
annihilation
of the few remaining Indians."
STROM:
Baum thinks that
the extermination of
Native Americans is inevitable.
His view of tolerance comes out
of the milieu that he is in.
It's really about middle-class
white people getting along well.
NARRATOR:
The U.S. Army dispatched
troops to disarm
and arrest a group of Lakota,
including followers
of Sitting Bull.
Within days of these orders,
the U.S. Seventh Cavalry
massacred as many
as 300 Lakota men,
women and children
at Wounded Knee Creek.
Frank responded again.
"Having wronged them for
centuries, we had better,
"in order to protect our
civilization,
"follow it up by one more wrong
and wipe these
untamed and untamable creatures
from the face of the earth."
DELORIA:
What Baum says in the editorials
tells us exactly how Americans
are seeing Indian people.
There's no mercy, no quarter,
no sympathy.
It is a definitive
and defining statement
of intense racial animosity.
And I think Baum
is capturing, perhaps,
some of his own ambivalence,
but he is channeling a major,
and important, and deadly
current of American thought.
♪
WAGNER:
I don't know how to understand
Frank's reaction
other than to understand that
an "either-or" interpretation
of history is a lie,
that we're "both-and."
L. Frank Baum carried that
poison of racism in him
that I carry,
that we all carry as settlers.
♪
NARRATOR:
The drought, the despair,
and the foreclosures continued.
Ad sales dropped
and subscriptions dried up,
forcing Baum to abandon
his newspaper
and make plans to leave
Aberdeen.
His western venture had turned
into another failure.
But how do I start
for Emerald City?
It's always best to start
at the beginning,
and all you do is follow
the Yellow Brick Road.
MAGUIRE:
Dorothy goes into a land
in which magic spells
are part of the apparatus
of governance.
DOROTHY:
Follow the yellow brick road?
MAGUIRE:
And most of what she achieves,
she achieves without recourse
to the magic.
She comes with her
true grit.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road ♪
MAGUIRE:
She just puts one foot
in front of another
along the Yellow Brick Road
to achieve
what it is that she needs to do.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road ♪
MASSACHI:
There is a real American value
of being self-reliant,
and you see that with Dorothy.
Dorothy really set the stage
for little girls
getting out of the house
and going on adventures
the way that boys do.
You're off to see
the Wizard! ♪
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! ♪
MONTOYA:
She goes on what is
quintessentially
the great American quest to find
the place
that will bring her happiness,
will bring her the things
that she needs.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! ♪
(crowd cheering)
♪
(horse hooves clomping)
NARRATOR:
Frank Baum next set his sights
on a new home
Chicago, Illinois.
(bell chimes, people chattering)
SCHWARTZ:
Chicago was the most dynamic
and energetic city in America.
It had been devastated
in the fire of 1871
but it had completely
rebuilt itself.
(people chattering)
There was a sense
of hope and optimism
for the future of America.
WARREN:
In many ways, Chicago was the
city of 19th century America.
(bell ringing)
DELORIA:
This massive, large,
industrial city,
is at the center of really
making continental America
at this time.
It is the center of the flow
of commodities.
It is a center for immigration.
African Americans from the
South, immigrants from Europe,
people who give up
on their homesteading
and make their way into the
larger city.
NARRATOR:
Arriving with little money, Maud
set up their growing household,
which now included a fourth son,
in a small rental house in
a working-class neighborhood.
She gave embroidery lessons
to help the family stay afloat.
Frank briefly worked at
a daily paper
before landing a higher-paying
sales position
at a wholesale crockery firm.
(hammering, objects clattering)
The most exciting project in
Chicago when the Baums arrived
was the construction of the
highly anticipated
World's Columbian Exposition,
known as the
Chicago World's Fair.
♪
Conceived as a celebration
of the 400th anniversary
of Columbus' voyage to America,
the exposition was an immediate
sensation
when it opened on May 1, 1893.
♪
Over the next six months,
27 million fairgoers from around
the world descended on Chicago
to witness the spectacle
Frank Baum
and his family among them.
DELORIA:
The Chicago World's Fair is a
place
where America is sort
of proclaiming its own.
It has arrived.
It is a showcase
for modern industrialism,
for technological innovation.
JONES JR.:
It was an attempt in the
white American imagination
of understanding
the United States as being
the leading light
in this new century.
It was a way in which to show
the world in 1893 that America
was at the vanguard of a new,
modern, Western world.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the Electricity Building,
visitors marveled at the 80-foot
tower of light
created by the Wizard
of Menlo Park,
Thomas Edison.
He had patented a mind-boggling
number of inventions
and proved to be a master
of self-promotion.
BASINGER:
Thomas Edison is this great
combination of imagination,
and forward-looking
modern ideas,
and also a businessman
who makes money
from the things that he does.
This would undoubtedly be
inspirational to Baum,
who himself was looking to find
that thing that he could do
that would make him
not so much famous,
but successful, rich,
or at least occupied
in a way that he enjoyed.
SCHWARTZ:
There was a sense of magic
and wonder and splendor
that really appealed to
Frank Baum, that almost anything
was possible if you could
imagine it.
NARRATOR:
The centerpiece of the
Exposition was a gleaming
man-made lake, surrounded
by neoclassical buildings
of monumental proportion, each
with a bright, white exterior.
The White City,
as it was called,
was constructed as a temporary
affair all paint and plaster
But breathtaking.
WARREN:
The White City looks like
a vision of some imaginary place
that is supposed to call
Americans to think about what
their cities could be.
It is a giant space for dreaming
about the American future,
and Baum would've found
that enormously attractive.
♪
HEARN:
They created this ideal city,
and in some respects it's very
much the same metaphor
that we see in
"The Wizard Of Oz."
♪
Who rang that bell?
ALL:
We did.
♪
READER:
"The streets were lined with
beautiful houses
"all built of green marble
and studded everywhere
"with sparkling emeralds.
"Even the sky above the city
had a green tint,
and the rays of the sun
were green."
HEARN:
The Emerald City is not really
as green as we think it is.
It turns out that everyone
has to wear green glasses
so they think the Emerald City
is far greener
than it really is.
♪
DELORIA:
One of the things that happens
in the Emerald City
is the realization that all
of this may just be a charade.
The world that seems
so alluring, and so true,
and so desirous
may all just be a fraud.
♪
And the White City gives us
that as well.
♪
(water splashing)
NARRATOR:
The exhibition halls of the
White City were reserved
for high art, high culture,
and advanced science.
♪
But the real energy of the fair
was on the outskirts
a mile-long, open-air boulevard
known as the Midway Plaisance.
♪
Thousands of fairgoers paid
to see Egyptian belly dancers,
dwarf elephants,
Hindu jugglers, snake charmers,
and a young entertainer
named Harry Houdini.
Towering above the crowds
was the first-ever Ferris wheel.
At over 250 feet,
a ride to the top provided
a birds-eye view
of the city and beyond.
A New York entrepreneur ordered
a Ferris wheel for his park
in Coney Island,
telling a reporter,
"We Americans want either
to be thrilled or amused,
and are ready to pay well
for either sensation."
DRUMMOND:
At this moment in
American history
entertainment was becoming
commoditized.
There were vaudeville shows.
There were Wild West shows.
There were amusement parks.
MONTOYA:
What we're now seeing is
entertainment for the masses.
Anybody can participate in it.
People are beginning to work for
wages in the cities.
They have money at the end
of the day
that they will spend not only on
the things that they need
to feed themselves
and clothe themselves,
but now they have money to spend
on entertainment.
DRUMMOND:
There were all sorts of
theatrical experiences
that had to do with experiencing
someone else's imagined world
that they beckoned you to
enter into.
(trolley bells ringing,
horses trotting)
NARRATOR:
The clangorous urban life of
Chicago, and its World's Fair,
fed Baum's penchant for novelty,
in all things.
For some time, Frank had
been drawn
to an emerging philosophical and
religious movement
called theosophy.
"Its followers," he described,
"are simply
"searchers after truth.
"They are the dissatisfied
of the world,
the dissenters from all creeds."
♪
WARREN:
There's a dissatisfaction
with conventional Protestantism
and Catholicism.
There are people searching for
new ways of relating
to their creator
and to the cosmos,
and theosophy was for
many people
a very attractive alternative.
♪
SCHWARTZ:
Theosophy was appealing because
it combined
Hinduism, and Buddhism,
and Western science.
♪
It was a way of introducing
Eastern religions to America
for the first time.
♪
Frank Baum learned about this
new amalgam of spirituality
from his mother-in-law,
Matilda Gage,
who really embraced it as a way
of calming her own mind.
WAGNER:
The parts of theosophy I think
that most resonated with Matilda
Joslyn Gage
were the idea that that which
is scientifically provable
is not necessarily the
only reality,
that that which is considered
supernatural, the occult,
that's just simply a reality
that hasn't been tested and
measured yet.
♪
SCHWARTZ:
Theosophists believed in
projecting
your body and your mind
into another realm of
consciousness
that they call the astral plane.
(thunder rumbles)
Some of the concepts that later
showed up
in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
might have been inspired from
theosophy,
especially this idea of
traveling
to a new plane of imagination.
NARRATOR:
Escape from the daily reality
was at a premium
by the turn of 1894.
The American economy had tumbled
into the most punishing
depression in its history.
A quarter of all working people
lost their jobs,
and their paychecks,
with no government safety net
to soften the fall.
Just months after
the exposition closed,
two fires swept through
the fairgrounds,
leaving much of the recently
radiant White City in ruins.
(train clacking, chugging)
Baum tried to remain optimistic
as he scraped out a living for
his family
as a traveling salesman.
BAUM:
He was beginning to get tired
of the extensive traveling.
The more he aged,
the more he realized he needed
to find something
that he could that would
really support him.
(train rumbling)
NARRATOR:
While on the road, Baum found
time to start writing again,
and began submitting
short stories and poems
to writing contests and
local newspapers.
SCHWARTZ:
He kept a record of failure,
literally logging the rejections
he was receiving
from magazines and publishers,
and the occasional success.
You could see Baum was
persevering.
(train horn blares)
NARRATOR:
Sometimes Frank spun
fantastical tales
to entertain his boys when
he got home
from a long week on the road.
HEARN:
L. Frank Baum loved being a dad.
He was so indulgent of
his own children.
When he was home with them
he would spend as much time as
he could with them
and he would create these
elaborate little stories.
And one night Matilda happened
to overhear them.
WAGNER:
Matilda is a well-published
author at this point.
She knows the publishing world
and she knows what could sell.
She tells Frank to write the
stories and publish them.
She is challenging him.
There is
a powerful intellectual
relationship between them.
♪
NARRATOR:
Gage had recently published what
she described
as her "chief life work."
Titled "Woman, Church
and State,"
she called for a more just
and equal society,
one that returned to earlier
civilizations
where women wielded
the same power as men.
More radical, however, was her
indictment of religion
for its role in women's
oppression across the world.
♪
She explored the history of
witchcraft
and argued that women were
accused of being witches
because the Church found their
intellect threatening.
WAGNER:
Women were burned as witches to
remove the knowledge of women,
the power of women,
the authority of women,
and to really place women in
a subordinate position.
One of the things she
talks about
is that women defined as witches
were wise women.
They had voice.
They had power.
SCHWARTZ:
Matilda as a role model to Frank
was essential.
And I think he really took
to heart
some of the ways that people
viewed his mother-in-law.
People called her satanic
and a heretic,
yet he saw that she was
very kind.
♪
He developed this dual notion
of witches,
that there could be a good witch
and a bad witch.
♪
Are you a good witch or
a bad witch?
I'm not a witch at all.
Witches are old and ugly.
(giggling in background)
What was that?
It's all right.
MAGUIRE:
The phrase "good witch" doesn't
really come into the culture
until L. Frank Baum.
Witches from European and
English fairy tales
were old and gnarled.
How brave and thoughtful
it was of Baum
to take those two words
that seemed to have
magnetic pulls in opposite
directions,
the word "good" and
the word "witch"
and to hinge them together
so that they could mean
something new.
WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST:
You stay out of this, Glinda,
or I'll fix you as well!
HEARN:
One of the important aspects
of Oz
is the real power is with
the witches,
both the good and the bad.
They're the ones who have
the power.
♪
I'll get you, my pretty!
And your little dog, too.
(cackling)
♪
(explosion, frightened yelping)
♪
MAGUIRE:
Before the end of the
19th century,
books provided for children were
almost entirely for instruction.
Their aim was to educate.
♪
What happened in the
United States
is that there began to be
a population of middle class
children.
They were children who did not
have to work
in the mines, or the mills.
There was enough prosperity
that kids could be a little bit
more childlike
for slightly longer.
♪
And that allowed for a growth
of an industry to help
entertain them.
Now we have time to go
to the gym of the mind,
as it were,
to make ourselves strong
in our capacity to imagine
new things.
♪
(children laughing)
ARONSTEIN:
This is a period where there
is a sense
of children as a special class,
that have a vivid world of
imagination and play
available to them
that gets lost with adulthood
and that that time should
be valued.
♪
NARRATOR:
In late 1897,
41-year-old Baum published
"Mother Goose in Prose,"
inspired by the stories he had
been inventing for his boys.
"Now that I am getting old,"
Frank wrote his sister,
"my first book is
to amuse children."
HEARN:
He wanted to make children
feel good.
He wanted them to know the joy
of reading
and the joy of wonderful
stories.
MASSACHI:
Baum was the eternal boy.
He never really grew up.
If you leave behind your
childhood
and really are firmly grounded
in the adult world,
it's hard to think of that rich,
fertile, imaginative way
that children think and play,
and I don't think Baum ever
left that.
NARRATOR:
"Mother Goose in Prose"
was a critical success,
but did not bring the fame
or the financial reward
Baum desired.
"I have been more worried
than usual
over business matters this
summer,"
Frank confessed in a letter to
his sister,
"and have scarcely spent time to
sleep and eat.
"I have wanted to find some
employment
that would enable me to stay
at home."
STROM:
He's a willful person,
but he's also a strategist in
his own life,
of finding a way out of
a situation he doesn't like
and then using his talents
to create a new one.
(horse hooves clomping)
DRUMMOND:
If you were walking down
State Street in Chicago,
you would be offered a cavalcade
of sights, and sounds,
and sensations.
(people chattering)
One of the most important of
which would be the shop windows,
and the most effective
store windows
would be like the soul of
the store.
And if you could look in
those windows
and be captured, and be enticed,
then maybe it would be enough
to go in.
(din of a crowded street)
WARREN:
The American economy turns
more and more
to a dynamic that relies on
selling goods to consumers,
and merchants have
to invent new ways
of getting people
to want things,
which is one of the big
transitions that's happening
in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
And Baum is at the center
of that transition.
NARRATOR:
"I conceived of the idea of
a magazine
devoted to window trimming,"
Baum explained to his sister,
"which I know
is greatly needed."
The first issue of
"The Show Window,"
a trade journal that instructed
merchants
in the art of window display,
appeared in November 1897.
ARONSTEIN:
Baum is very aware
of the tricks of advertising.
He's very good at using them.
He had a talent for
and interest in technology,
a talent for and
interest in sales.
He knew how to present and
frame things
and he knew how to tell a story.
♪
And "The Show Window" called on
all of those things.
NARRATOR:
An executive
at Marshall Field's
the gold standard of retail
in downtown Chicago
hailed "The Show Window"
as "an indispensable organ"
for department stores.
♪
Circulation took off,
gaining thousands of subscribers
in a few months,
and Baum was finally able to
quit his traveling salesman job
and spend more time at home.
For the first time in his life,
Frank Baum was making
a solid living.
♪
Not long after the start of
his new venture,
Matilda Gage died of a stroke
while visiting the Baums
in Chicago,
leaving Maud inconsolable
and Frank without one of
his most stalwart supporters.
♪
(printing presses clacking)
NARRATOR:
For a writer and magazine editor
like Baum,
Chicago was an ideal city.
It had become a major center for
commercial printing,
second only to New York.
(printing pressing humming)
MASSACHI:
Chicago at that time
was really booming
with writers, artists,
and publishers.
Baum was a very charismatic,
likable kind of guy
who seemed to make friends very
quickly and easily.
And one of the connections
he made
was William Wallace Denslow.
HEARN:
Denslow was one of the most
important illustrators
in Chicago at the time.
And Baum met him at
the Press Club of Chicago
and the two of them
started talking about possibly
doing a book together.
NARRATOR:
Frank was already at work on a
series of comic rhymes
that was a twist on
Mother Goose,
and Denslow agreed to do
the illustrations.
Their first collaboration,
"Father Goose: His Book,"
became an unexpected
best-seller.
(typewriter keys clacking)
Energized by his success,
Baum threw himself into his next
big writing project.
WAGNER:
The intuitive process of writing
is that you absorb everything
around you
and that becomes fuel
for the process of writing.
And you draw from places
that you don't even know you're
drawing from.
NARRATOR:
Baum set out to tell the story
of Dorothy,
a young orphan girl stranded
in the vast and unforgiving
American landscape.
Dorothy's dreary life on
a Kansas farm
is changed in a flash
when a fierce cyclone drops her
in a strange and wonderful land
called Oz.
The story at the heart of
the book
was Dorothy's quest
to get back home
to her aunt and uncle in Kansas.
The Good Witch of the North
points the way,
which leads down
a yellow brick road,
where Dorothy is to enlist the
help of the Great Wizard of Oz.
♪
"It is a long journey,"
the good witch warns,
"through a country that is
sometimes pleasant
and sometimes dark
and terrible."
BASINGER:
It's a story of a journey
and being given a challenge
by a new world
where you have to learn
what it is,
face its dangers,
find new friends,
and get yourself together in it.
NARRATOR:
Dorothy accumulates a trio
of traveling companions
along the way
A scarecrow,
who wishes he had brains,
a tin woodman,
who longs for a heart,
and a cowardly lion,
who seeks courage.
DRUMMOND:
They want her to fulfill
her dreams
as well as have their own dreams
come true,
and so they set off on this
journey together
that gives them that sense of
camaraderie and community.
Baum did not see gender
the way a lot of people of
his time saw gender.
His supporting scarecrow,
tin man, lion
didn't conform to this
typical male role.
You have the tin woodman,
who is so sensitive
that he cries when he steps on
a beetle.
♪
HEARN:
There are very few girls who are
as assertive as Dorothy is
in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
In every other fairy tale,
the heroine has to marry
the prince.
But Dorothy doesn't have to wait
for her prince to come;
she goes out and solves her
own problems.
WAGNER:
The voice of Dorothy,
the sureness of her,
the confidence,
the figuring out how to solve
problems,
that's Maud, that's Matilda.
♪
NARRATOR:
On October 9, 1899,
Baum declared his new manuscript
complete.
He dedicated the book to
his wife Maud,
who he called his "good friend
and comrade."
Underneath was Denslow's
spritely illustration
of the Good Witch of the North.
The new book began to roll off
the printing press
in the first summer of
a new century.
It is "the best thing I have
ever written, they tell me,"
a nervous Frank Baum wrote to
his brother.
"But the queer, unreliable
public has not yet spoken."
♪
HEARN:
When the book came out in 1900,
it was not typical
of the children's books being
published at that time.
The title was so intriguing,
with this strange lion on
the cover.
No one knew what it was.
♪
And a book with full color,
full-page illustrations
but also all these other
two-color illustrations
that changed as
the story progressed
from one episode to another.
There was nothing on the market
quite like it.
MASSACHI:
Baum says in his introduction
that he wants to create
a modernized fairy tale
full of wonderment
where the heartache and
nightmares are left out.
BASINGER:
It's not like the fairy tales
that come to us from Europe.
It's a more optimistic,
less grim and dangerous world.
It's a world
of solving problems.
♪
MAGUIRE:
What he did in
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
was harness his great idea
of a child going out and
coming back home
in strict, plain,
American prose.
♪
He let the characters move about
the landscape
and speak with a sincerity
with which America was
then known
and for which it was often
much mocked.
But it was a genuine tone.
That what you say means
something.
NARRATOR:
Reviews praised Baum for writing
a story that
"never insults childhood
intelligence
by writing down to it,"
and for his ability to make
"the little girl's odd
companions seem very real."
"Delightful humor and
rare philosophy
are found on every page."
♪
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
speaks specifically
to a kind of American
understanding
of the modern period
technology, expansion,
self-invention of
the individual.
At the center of that is
adventure and dreaming.
♪
SCHWARTZ:
It was about finding your place
in the world,
about identity and,
"Where do I fit in?"
Frank Baum was really pioneering
a new literature
for American children.
MASSACHI:
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was
an instant bestseller.
Everybody wanted to get their
hands on it.
It was wildly popular.
NARRATOR:
Overwhelmed by orders,
the publisher went back to press
four times.
♪
In the first Christmas season
of the 20th century,
it became the best-selling
children's book in America.
♪
On New Year's Eve at one of
Chicago's finest restaurants,
the Baums, with Denslow and
his wife,
toasted their great success.
At age 44, Frank Baum had
achieved the renown
he had dreamed of all his life.
An unflagging belief in
his own imagination
had finally paid off.
♪
"So everything conspires to make
me glad,"
he wrote his sister-in-law,
"and I send you heartiest wishes
for a glad New Year
and century."
♪
(people chattering)
♪
NARRATOR:
On June 16, 1902, a staged
musical adaptation
of Baum's popular book,
now with the shortened title
"The Wizard of Oz,"
opened to a packed house in
Chicago.
(cheers and applause)
Frank Baum took enthusiastic
curtain calls
for this new interpretation of
his cherished story.
The idea of returning to
the theater
and the challenge of adapting
his book for the stage
had thrilled Baum,
but it had been a rocky journey.
HEARN:
When the director
read Baum's libretto,
he wrote across it, "No good."
He then brought in several
script doctors
and completely refocused
the play.
♪
NARRATOR:
By opening night, few of Baum's
original lines
remained in the script.
"The original story was
practically ignored,"
Baum complained,
"the dialogue rehashed,
"the situations transposed,
my Nebraska wizard made into
an Irishman."
♪
HEARN:
There were all kinds of changes.
Toto became a cow named Imogene.
The producer added all kinds of
secondary characters
that had nothing to do with
the original children's book.
And Dorothy became a teenager
who falls in and out of love
throughout the play.
NARRATOR:
In the musical, Dorothy and
Imogene were blown to Oz
along with a waitress from
Topeka named Trixie Tryfle.
The Cowardly Lion was turned
into a bit part
and the Wicked Witch of the West
was removed from the story.
JONES JR.:
If you go back and read reviews,
what they oftentimes latch on to
are not the original parts,
necessarily,
from "The Wizard of Oz,"
but how they were able to
integrate elements
from vaudeville,
from minstrelsy,
from the variety show,
and from the circus into
this musical.
♪
SCARECROW:
Though I appear a
handsome man ♪
I'm only stuffed with straw ♪
JONES JR.:
The musical was incredibly
popular,
particularly in the characters
of the Scarecrow and
the Tin Man.
They kind of have a show
within the show.
What audiences saw in
the dance routines
was a set of movements,
jokes, and gags
that were very popular on the
minstrel stage.
They took the new material
of the musical
and they melded it with
popular elements
of American theater culture
and made them anew.
So it's a real transitional
event
in American popular culture.
♪
NARRATOR:
The show was a smash hit in
Chicago,
then at New York's
Majestic Theatre,
and then on a
seven-year nationwide tour.
Given the commercial success,
L. Frank Baum was philosophical
about the changes.
♪
If any one understood the power
of spectacle,
it was the creator of Oz.
"The people will have what
pleases them," Baum concluded,
"and not what the author happens
to favor."
♪
BASINGER:
Here he is at the turn of
the century,
confronting what was really
going to be the main issue
in terms of art and commerce.
If you're going to make a
mass audience piece,
then you're going to have to
have it please a mass audience.
And he makes a decision,
"I want my work to succeed
in pleasing
"a large number of people so
they will enjoy it
and will return to seeing it."
♪
What the success of the show
told Baum about Oz
as a commodity
is that it had endless potential
and that here it was in a
wholly new experience,
a new medium, and it worked.
(cheers and applause)
It meant that so many more
people could see it.
I think he was smitten and
he wanted more of it.
(cheers and applause continue)
NARRATOR:
To capitalize on the
musical's success,
Baum quickly wrote a
new Oz book,
"The Marvelous Land of Oz."
Published in 1904,
it was marketed as a sequel
that featured
"characters already famous
the country over,"
and added new Oz inhabitants,
including Princess Ozma,
the rightful ruler of Oz.
MASSACHI:
Oz is this society run by women,
and Oz itself really is this
utopian version of America.
In Oz, there's plenty of
everything.
Everybody is provided for;
everybody has what they need.
NARRATOR:
Two months after the book's
release,
Baum started publishing a weekly
newspaper serial,
"Queer Visitors from
the Marvelous Land of Oz."
BASINGER:
One of the things
that's so significant
about what Baum is doing here
is he is creating a brand
that's built on his name
and his particular product,
which is Oz.
♪
JONES, JR.:
Baum's work provides a window
onto that which is popular
and dominant
in the American imagination
in this period.
♪
DELORIA:
Racial stereotypes have
been central
to American popular culture.
Those cultural forms are
exploring
how reach larger mass audiences.
NARRATOR:
Like other creations of
popular entertainment,
Baum's Oz universe as well as
other writings
reflected the country's charged
discourse around race
and the related issues of
national identity,
immigration, and colonialism.
♪
JONES JR.:
One of the lessons that I think
Baum wants to teach
in this new century
is how do we deal with
difference?
How do we deal with difference
in the United States
as a multiracial society?
♪
Baum's "Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
books are about characters
consistently encountering
different types of persons,
different types of animals,
different types of objects
and learning something
about them.
NARRATOR:
Even as Baum modeled worlds
where people with different
features and backgrounds
cheerfully interacted,
he incorporated characters
representing widely circulated
racial stereotypes.
♪
MONTOYA:
The way that Baum
characterizes others
or different people in
his writings,
those were things that were just
so embedded in American culture.
Baum is just reflecting
what American society thinks
about these groups of people.
DELORIA:
It's always important to think
about historical figures
in complicated kinds of ways.
The most interesting way to
think about a life
is to grab the stuff
out of the corners
and move it to the center
and ask yourself, like,
"How does this make me
understand
the person differently?"
(ship horn blares)
(boat engine running,
softly splashing water)
NARRATOR:
The musical had made Frank
a wealthy man,
and he and Maud reveled in the
luxuries they could now afford,
including a five-month tour of
Europe and Egypt.
(camel grunts)
Maud had a keen interest
in Egypt,
as much of the teachings of
theosophy
centered on accessing the secret
wisdom of ancient knowledge.
They explored the Temple of Isis
and Frank joyfully watched
as an undaunted Maud climbed to
the top of the Great Pyramid.
"Few women," Maud proudly
stated,
"undertake the feat."
At an oasis, the Baums
met a family
crossing the desert on
a camel train.
BAUM:
And on the back of the camel was
a young girl.
And in this girl's arm on
one side was her doll
and on the other side,
a first edition of "The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
This really surprised Frank,
and he realized the widespread
popularity of his book
and how much the children loved
the story.
(waves lapping)
(distant boat horn blares)
(boat engine hums)
NARRATOR:
The Baums summered at
Macatawa Park,
a resort town on Lake Michigan,
where Frank wrote many of
his books,
and tried to answer the dozens
of letters
that arrived for him each day.
This outpouring of affection
inspired Baum
to keep expanding the world
of Oz.
♪
In each new sequel, he included
an author's note
about his young friends.
"If the little folks find the
story 'real Ozzy, '"
Baum wrote in one, "I shall be
very glad indeed."
♪
ARONSTEIN:
Oz becomes a conversation
between Baum and his readers.
He's very much aware of the
children as his audience
and he's very much aware of
building
a relationship with them.
♪
And he sees them as
co-creators of Oz.
Over and over again, he says,
"I have responded
to your request for more Oz."
♪
HEARN:
Baum was always looking for new
ways of promoting his books,
and what was popular at the time
were these travelogues.
People would go around the
country talking about China,
or their trip to Japan
and it would be a combination of
hand-colored slides and
possibly some film.
So Baum thought, "Well, why
don't we do a travelogue of Oz?"
♪
NARRATOR:
In 1908, Baum created a
multimedia traveling show called
"The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays"
to coincide with the publication
of a new Oz book.
Baum narrated the story
in person
as the action unfolded
onstage
♪
a mixture of hand-colored
lantern slides
of illustrations from
his Oz books
and a series of short,
hand-colored trick movies
that he called "radio-plays."
All accompanied by an orchestra
performing an original score.
DRUMMOND:
It was this extraordinary vision
of artistry, of technology,
of inventiveness,
and ultimately of risk taking.
Now, if you read accounts of
people who attended the shows,
they were absolutely
transported.
♪
There were gasps.
They were completely caught up
in it.
♪
BASINGER:
He understood that
selling things
was about embracing the media.
It was about advertising that
didn't look like advertising.
And that, I think, is something
very forward-looking about him.
He meshed the story
and the creative artistic
product with the sell,
and that's the real magic
of what he was able to do
so effectively.
♪
♪
COWARDLY LION:
Look at that, look at that!
(Cowardly Lion whimpering)
I am Oz, the great and powerful!
HEARN:
One thing L. Frank Baum
deals with is appearance.
Are things as we
first encounter them?
The Wizard of Oz turns out to
be a humbug.
The male leader of the country
turns out to be
not what he claims to be.
OZ:
Pay no attention to that man
behind the curtain!
Who are you?
(stammering):
Oh, I
(boastfully):
I am the great and powerful
(meekly):
Wizard of Oz.
You are?!
HEARN:
The Wizard of Oz turns out to be
no more than a flim-flam man,
a circus performer
from Nebraska.
READER:
"'Really, ' said the Scarecrow,
"'you ought to be ashamed
of yourself
"for being such a humbug.'
"'I think you are a
very bad man, ' said Dorothy.
"'Oh, no, my dear, I'm really
a very good man,
but I'm a very bad wizard.'"
JONES JR.:
Baum does not cast the Wizard as
a villain figure,
but rather he sees the Wizard
as playing
a very particular
kind of function
for this group of people who
want something.
He suggests that if deception
can fulfill one's desires,
there is a need for that.
ARONSTEIN:
If you think about
what the Cowardly Lion,
the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man
all want,
what the Wizard gives them
isn't that thing.
But because they believe
it's that thing,
that actually does magically
transform them.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the early 20th century,
Los Angeles was becoming
the new capital
of American popular culture
and entertainment.
♪
Production companies had
left New York
to take advantage of
the sunny climate
and easy access to a variety
of natural settings.
♪
Film studios began popping up
all over Hollywood,
a sparsely settled village
surrounded by citrus groves.
In 1910, Frank and Maud,
who had spent several winters
in Southern California and
grown to love it,
moved full-time to Hollywood.
(birds singing)
Baum built a comfortable home
that he called Ozcot,
and continued writing.
He penned numerous books and
series,
often using both male and
female pseudonyms.
And he kept up with the demand
for more Oz,
making good on the arrangement
with his publisher
of producing one book a year.
Calling himself "The Royal
Historian of Oz,"
Frank divided his time between
writing
and nurturing his new
flower garden.
He also joined the Uplifters,
a social club of wealthy
businessmen, artists,
and actors, many of them
in the film industry.
Baum enjoyed songs and
lively conversation
with what he called his
"band of good fellows."
BASINGER:
He found a group of creative,
imaginative people
and they decided that making
the Oz books into movies
would be a very good idea.
Everybody loved the books.
They were extremely popular.
They felt that this would be
a successful venture for them.
NARRATOR:
In 1914, the group put up
$100,000 to launch
the Oz Film Manufacturing
Company
with Baum as president.
"I will put all my books
into film,
so that every child in the whole
country may see them,"
Baum told a reporter.
♪
At age 58, Baum threw himself
into this new venture,
building a massive
seven-acre studio.
Within two months, he had
started filming
their first production,
"The Patchwork Girl of Oz."
♪
Expectations and enthusiasm
were high.
Would-be chorus girls mobbed
the studio
looking to make their big break.
♪
A huge spread in a
trade magazine
hyped the anticipated release
of the film.
♪
♪
Baum, sparing no expense,
opened "The Patchwork Girl
of Oz"
in the biggest movie theater
in New York.
HEARN:
Not only did they have very
elaborate production values
but also he had an
original score
for each of the films.
But the audience said,
"This is a kid's show.
Why should adults be paying
full price?"
And the films were not
well received.
It was a big disappointment
to him.
NARRATOR:
Baum produced four feature
films,
but the company fizzled out
after only a year.
♪
HEARN:
After the failure of
the Oz Film Company,
Baum pretty much retired
to Ozcot
and just continued writing an
Oz book a year.
He wrote other work as well,
but he was resolved to the idea
that he should stick to what
he knew best,
and that was writing
children's books.
♪
DRUMMOND:
I think in Ozcot, Baum found
his own personal Oz.
♪
It was the perfect bookend
to what Rose Lawn had been when
he was a child.
It was a place to dream.
It was a place to escape.
♪
And in some ways it was a return
to childhood.
♪
NARRATOR:
Ozcot also provided a tranquil
place of convalescence
as Frank had been suffering
from congestive heart failure
for some time.
Gallbladder surgery weakened him
even more.
♪
On May 6, 1919, just before his
63rd birthday,
L. Frank Baum died.
♪
The 13th Oz book was on its way
to press,
and Baum had left one more
completed Oz manuscript.
DRUMMOND:
Here was someone who endured so
many setbacks professionally.
But he was a visionary.
He saw the future.
He saw what things could
look like.
NARRATOR:
Nearly 20 years after
L. Frank Baum's death,
on the studio lot of
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
cameras started rolling on
a new interpretation
of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
♪
HEARN:
MGM was considered the top
studio in Hollywood.
And every year they would
put out
what they called a
prestige film.
And this was a film that would
really show off
what the studio was able to do
better than anyone else
out there.
"The Wizard of Oz" was going to
be the prestige film
for MGM in 1939.
NARRATOR:
There had yet to be
a successful film version
of "The Wizard of Oz,"
and MGM was gambling an
unprecedented $3 million
on a Technicolor extravaganza
to bring the beloved story
to screen,
starring Judy Garland
as Dorothy.
They knew it was a risk
and they poured money
into the promotion.
MGM was very careful to position
the film
and the people involved in
the film
as readers and fans of Baum
The idea that there's continuity
between us
and the Baum books.
♪
(crowds chattering)
(car engines puttering)
NARRATOR:
Over 5,000 fans cheered
the parade of stars
arriving for the film's
Hollywood premiere.
Joining the crush of celebrities
at the lavish event
was 78-year-old Maud Baum.
"One of the greatest thrills of
my life," she proclaimed,
"will be to see the land of Oz
come to life
under the magic of MGM."
(crowd chattering)
NARRATOR:
"The Wizard of Oz" opened in
theaters across the country
on August 25, 1939.
(film projector running)
♪
The story born from
L. Frank Baum's imagination
and the hardships of
the 19th century frontier
would find its most enduring
place in American culture
at the tail end of
the Great Depression.
Aunt Em, Aunt Em!
Now you just help us out today
and find yourself a place
where you won't get
into any trouble.
Someplace where there isn't
any trouble.
Do you suppose there is such a
place, Toto?
Somewhere over the rainbow ♪
Way up high ♪
There's a land
that I heard of ♪
Once in a lullaby ♪
MAGUIRE:
As we were just coming out of
the Depression
and as war was on the horizon,
"The Wizard of Oz" was an
escapist moment.
It was a chance for Americans,
who had been working very, very
hard for a very long time,
to keep body and soul together,
to take a deep breath and
get out of themselves.
♪
NARRATOR:
"There is no cure for
a troubled heart,
or a troubled world,"
noted one review,
"like a swift journey back to
a cherished childhood memory.
"Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 'Wizard
of Oz' is just that:
a memory glorified
on the screen."
Toto, I have a feeling we're not
in Kansas anymore.
♪
SCARECROW:
And my head I'd be
a scratchin' ♪
While my thoughts were busy
hatchin' ♪
If I only had a brain ♪
♪
(Tin Man clanking)
(metallic drumming)
(steam whistle blowing)
ALL:
Lions and tigers and bears!
DOROTHY:
Oh, my!
ALL:
Lions and tigers and bears!
DOROTHY:
Oh, my!
ALL:
Lions and tigers and bears!
Oh, my!
(Cowardly Lion roaring)
(all scream)
(Cowardly Lion snarling)
(snarls)
BASINGER:
The 1939 MGM movie made Oz
a world everybody could see
and experience the same way,
so that it became real to people
and defined collectively as Oz.
♪
(quietly):
There's no place like home
There's no place
Wake up, honey.
NARRATOR:
In 1959, CBS began annual
broadcasts
of "The Wizard of Oz."
The shared national event became
a beloved tradition,
firmly establishing the story as
an American icon.
MAGUIRE:
In the 1950s,
there was an uncomfortable sense
of American certainty.
We knew who we were,
and that we were on top of
the world.
♪
There is a lot of oppression
in that
and there is also a lot
of possibility.
♪
When "The Wizard of Oz"
was rebroadcast,
what it did was provide
those children
who felt emboldened by that
certainty
to seek newness,
to seek otherness.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the years to come,
"The Wizard of Oz" would be
transformed again and again.
(horns honking)
In January 1975,
a new interpretation
of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
opened on Broadway.
("Ease on Down the Road"
playing)
DOROTHY:
Come on and ease on down,
ease on down the road ♪
NARRATOR:
Starring an all-black cast with
Stephanie Mills as Dorothy,
"The Wiz" was a modern retelling
of L. Frank Baum's fairy tale.
Ease on down ♪
The show, subtitled
"The Super Soul Musical,"
gave the story a new cultural
framework.
JONES JR.:
It is Black theater makers
grasping on to something
that's dear to Americans
and saying, "This is ours too."
It's about bringing the
peculiar talents
of these artists together
to make claims
on the American story.
What some might call
the most American of
American stories.
ARONSTEIN:
There hadn't been any real kind
of vibrant Oz moments
for quite a while.
♪
"The Wiz" updates it.
It makes it modern, and new,
and fresh.
♪
NARRATOR:
"The Wiz" was a huge hit,
winning seven Tony Awards,
including best musical.
♪
Three years later, Hollywood
reworked the story
as an urban fantasy set
in Harlem.
The movie featured megastars
Diana Ross as Dorothy,
a 24-year-old school teacher,
and Michael Jackson as
the Scarecrow.
In both the stage and
film versions,
"The Wiz" explored
African American
struggle and resistance,
and celebrated Black liberation.
("A Brand New Day" playing)
ALL:
Can't you feel a
brand new day? ♪
JONES, JR.:
"The Wiz" is injecting themes,
and images, and ideas
of Black liberation,
and celebration,
and what people call Black joy
precisely because these moments
of celebration in the film
allow for and show
the ways in which African
Americans can, and do,
and continue to overcome.
♪
ALL:
Yeah!
I'm ready now.
Think of home.
BASINGER:
This is a story that can be
adapted
to a different time and place
without really losing
the fundamental idea of Oz and
what it means to people.
♪
DELORIA:
Who would've thought that a
failed entrepreneur
would write a little story,
which would get made into
a film,
which would have repercussions
and reverberations
across the whole course of
the 20th century
and into the future.
♪
NARRATOR:
In 2003, 100 years after Baum's
first theatrical extravaganza,
Oz returned to the stage as
"Wicked,"
a hugely popular Broadway
musical adapted from a novel.
This 21st century take on Oz
reimagined Baum's story from
the point of view
of the Wicked Witch of the West.
ARONSTEIN:
"Wicked" focuses on the question
of marginalization about
what is it like to grow up in
a skin that people reject?
What does it mean to have power
as a woman?
The focus on female friendship,
all of those things
revitalized Oz
for a very new audience.
Every generation reinterprets
the story
based upon what their
experiences are.
There is this power in Baum's
imagination, Baum's invention.
♪
JONES JR.:
He was able to create and mold
a set of characters
that are with us across class,
across race.
♪
MAGUIRE:
We carried the meaning of
the story
wherever we went,
which is that the small and
the powerless
can still have agency.
♪
SCHWARTZ:
Baum left an indelible imprint
on the American imagination.
In a way, America has become
a society
of imagination and storytelling,
and myth making.
♪
NARRATOR:
"Imagination," Baum wrote,
"transforms the commonplace
into the great
and creates the new out
of the old."
♪
♪
ANNOUNCER:
"American Experience: American
Oz" is available on DVD.
To order, visit ShopPBS
or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
"American Experience" is also
available with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video.
♪