The Un-Curious Cottabus

Well, boys and girls, this round of Oz Connection proved either incredibly boring or so stymied you that you didn't even hazard a guess. I will thank Scott O. for his entry connecting Groucho to Mervyn LeRoy through the film At the Circus (1939), the only answer or guess that was posted. Shall we abandon the silly game in the future or shall the next list of names include the likes of Mickey Carroll, Pink Floyd, and Kristin Chenoweth?

OK, enough grumping from me . . . So what are the Baum or Oz connections for Groucho Marx, John Keats, and Farrah Fawcett-Majors?

Let's begin with Groucho Marx. I am sure there are many ways one could make Oz connections for Groucho via his many films and TV shows, but there is one very strong Oz Connection. In 1960 Groucho was to have starred in an NBC television special of L. Frank Baum's The Magical Monarch of Mo. The teleplay was written specifically for Groucho by novelist and historian Gore Vidal (a long time lover of Oz and Baum himself).

Vidal subtitled the Mo teleplay as "A Fairy Tale for Adults." Alas, the show was never produced, though publicity art and Vidal's script both survive. I assumed Groucho would be pretty easy.

I knew romantic poet John Keats would be a lot harder. The clue is in the name Keats. The poet's great great grandniece was named Emma Keats Speed. In 1896 Miss Speed married a man named Henry Aylett Sampson. He was sports editor for The New York Times, and himself a great great grandson of Patrick Henry. Anyway, Emma Speed Sampson became a writer of children's books, including the continuation of L. Frank Baum's Mary Louise series after Baum's death. The Mary Louise books were all published under Baum's pseudonym, Edith Van Dyne.

I threw in Farrah Fawcett-Majors as a random name. I had no special plan for how to connect her to Oz. Here are a few that come to mind:  The red swimsuit she wore in her best-selling poster from 1976 is now at the Smithsonian near a pair of famous red shoes; she also did a voice in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998), which was written by Oz collector Willard Carroll; but I'm going to play connect the Oz connections and mention that Farrah also played Mary Ann Pringle in the film version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970). As you may have heard, Gore Vidal is a Baum enthusiast who published several important essays on Oz in addition to his many novels and histories. He also wrote the teleplay of Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo back in 1960.

Oz Connection

Well, lots of you posted comments that got us part of the way there! But Bill Campbell found a completely different way of connecting Jane Pellew to the Oz series than the one I had been looking for! Hooray! That's what makes it all so fun! Here's a bit more on how Jane Pellew in Kentucky connects to Oz.

As several of you have pointed out, Jane Pellew in Kentucky by Margaret Love Sanderson was published in 1936 by the Reilly and Lee Co. of Chicago. And Reilly and Lee was the publisher of the original Oz series.

But the book's connection to Oz is stronger than just that. Jane Pellew is actually a reprint of The Campfire Girls in Old Kentucky (1919) which was also published by Reilly and Lee and also credited to Sanderson. But the actual author of the book is Emma Speed Sampson who took over the writing of L. Frank Baum's Mary Louise series after his death. Sampson wrote three Mary Louise titles and two Josie O'Gorman titles, all using Baum's pseudonym Edith Van Dyne. And the final link in the chain connecting Jane Pellew in Kentucky to Oz is that L. Frank Baum was also the author of the Oz series.

Sampson also wrote books under her own name, but for the two series discussed here, she wrote under a pre-exisiting pseudonym: Edith Van Dyne for the Mary Louise books and Margaret Love Sanderson for the Campfire Girls series.

But how did we get from The Campfire Girls in Old Kentucky to Jane Pellew in Kentucky? Well in 1936, at the height of the depression, Reilly and Lee decided to repackage a handful of their series books in very cheap editions. They dubbed the new imprint "The Rei-Lee Adventure and Mystery Stories" and they printed the books on crappy paper and sold them for 25 cents a copy. The title change occurred because Reilly and Lee had lost or did not want to renew their license to call the series "Campfire Girls," so they simply retitled the book to omit the "Campfire Girls" trademark.

I think our little game of Oz Connection was a great success! Let's do it again sometime!