L. FRANK BAUM'S
story of the
WIZARD OF OZ

BORN: May 15, 1856 at Chittenango, New York Lived with wife and four sons in Chicago, Illinois DIED on May 6, 1919 In Hollywood, California

This image "reprinted by permission, The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial
History, The Wizard of Oz Warner Books NY,NY © 1989, all rights reserved."

The Wizard Of Oz began as a story that Frank Baum told the neighborhood children. One day a youngster asked where these people lived? Mr Baum looked at a filing cabinet. The top drawer was labled A-N and the bottom O-Z. That day Oz was born. We, his audience, will ever be grateful for his genius at story telling.

A MUNCHKIN'S THOUGHTS
ABOUT
L. FRANK BAUM

As one of the original members of the cast of the Wizard of Oz there was a time many years ago that I did not know that the Wizard of Oz was not written by the M-G-M studios. I did not know who L. Frank Baum was. Then my mother explained to me that there were several Wizard of Oz stories and they had been written by Mr. Baum. I wanted to know where he lived and was he still writing books but then my mother told me that the gentleman passed away before I was born. She said that he had died when she and my dad were still very young.

Well, right then I was no longer interested. That was something that had happened in the olden days and did not concern me. This is very typical for a child to dismiss the past as not important. When I grew older my mind was finally able to stretch far enough to include a few people that had lived and died before me.

In this country I think that often our school systems neglect to tie the past to the present. They treat the present as if it is somehow completely unique to anything-even 50 years ago. I am not at all sure that this is the teachers or curriculum's fault. But, this is how the child interupts it. Time is a very hard concept for children and apparently some adults too. I am a firm believer that there should be some kind of time line around the walls of every class room so that children can literally see how connected their lives are to every time period.

So, what does all this have to do with L. Frank Baum? Let me tell you what I did to make this story of his really come alive. I took the date of his birth and looked to see what else happened that auspicious year. In 1856, the year Frank Baum was born, James Buchanan won the presidential election. A future president Woodrow Wilson was born. In the literary field, besides L. Frank Baum being born so was George Bernard Shaw who later won a Noble Prize for Literature in 1925. Another Anglo Irish writer, Oscar Wilde, was also another famous writer that was born in 1856. In Austria a man named Sigmund Freud began his life. He would become the father of the field of psychoanalysis. In Chicago the first baseball unions were organized and the Parliament in England hung their 13.5-ton Big Ben Bell.

By this time of my life I was beginning to see how time seemed to fit together and had real continuity tying it to the threads of my life. The largest factor in this time line is that the people I read about, born in that year, took on a very real significance as my maternal grandfather was also born that year. That was the linchpin that took my existence back 144 years to a time that existed even before the civil war. The older I get, the more I study world history, the more connected I become to the continuum that is all man's history. It is very exciting.

The following will tell you who L. Frank Baum really was and how his life profoundly and forever effects your life too.

WHO WAS L. FRANK BAUM?

Lyman Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, NY in May of 1856. He grew up with a family that was well-to-do but as Frank approached manhood the family fortunes in the Baum Oil business began to change for the worse. Frank Baum tried to make a living at several different professions but nothing seemed to work out. He was an actor, tried writing plays, a store manager, a newspaper editor, and a poultry expert. (Baum did write an authoritative book on this subject.)

Frank Baum for years loved telling his children and the neighborhood children stories. Mr. Baum's mother-in law encouraged him to write down his stories and submit them for publication. At this point in time the Baum's made Chicago their home.

At the age of 44 Frank Baum published his first Oz story. It was published as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This title was changed in 1902 to the Wizard of Oz. The original story was published in 1900 making this year 2000 the 100-year celebration of that event.

In 1902 the musical Wizard of Oz opened in Chicago and then toured several cities ending in New York in 1903 for 293 performances, which by any definition made it a success. It toured again until as late as 1911.

Between 1900-1919, he authored an astonishing 30 books. Beside 14 of the Oz stories Frank Baum also had published books of fairy tales, verse, and lyrics for musicals. He also wrote several adolescent novels and some adult novels too. Frank Baum used several different pen names. These came to include the names of Schuyler Stanton, Floyd Akens and Edith Van Dyne.

When L. Frank Baum died in 1919 the torch of Oz was picked up by numerous writers and illustrators. Today we have forty-Oz books that are accepted as a part of the original series.

The frosting on the Baum cake was really the Motion picture production by M-G-M. This year (2000) it has been 61 years since the release of the Wizard of Oz. It is really a shame that Frank Baum did not live to see this. It was 20 years after his death that his wonderful fairy tale came to life on the big screen. Though this was filmed some 61 years ago, its production, film techniques, costumes and makeup were so avant-garde that it is just as entertaining today as the day it was released.

Frank Baum ended his productive career in 1919 as a result of a congenital heart defect. He and his wife had moved to California in 1910. To Baum and his progeny, we the public have received countless hours of pleasure from the work produced by both Frank and his extended family. His descendants are still providing us with many other books and memories of the man who started it all. Here's to the Wizard himself, L. Frank Baum.

HOMEPAGE