Talkin' Turkey with L. Frank Baum

Happy Thanksgiving from Hungry Tiger Press!  Did you know that L. Frank Baum was a champion turkey carver? Well, he was, as you will see in the photo below.  Baum and his turkey are at the far right in the photo.

L. Frank Baum at far right - Click to enlarge.

This undated newspaper article appeared in the Los Angeles Examiner; it probably dates from 1916. This soiree was an event put on by the "Uplifters," a sort rich boy's group connected to the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

You might also note that the gentleman second from left is Byron Gay, who wrote the music to Baum's song "Susan Doozan." And at the end of the article one sees another name Oz fans will be familiar with, Fred Woodward, who played Hank the Mule in The Tik-Tok Man of Oz and the mule and other animals in all the Oz Film Co. movies. It's nice to know Mr. Woodward could kick up his heels with the best of them!

Another cool thing mentioned in the article is that after dinner the group watched some home movies of the "Uplifters Jinks" at Del Mar. Wouldn't it be fun to find those home movies and possibly catch a glimpse of Baum on film!

Read the full newspaper article below. It seems Baum's competitors thought Baum had an advantage having the smallest turkey. But in the end Baum and his carving knife won out!

Read the full text - Click to enlarge.

Up, Up, and Away! Meet the Flying Girl!

In 1910, at the end of The Emerald City of Oz, L. Frank Baum attempted to end the Oz series. Princess Ozma was concerned about the great outside world encroaching on the magical Land of Oz. She was concerned about a new kind of magic. The magic of flight. The magic of airships. The world was going airplane crazy! So Ozma (with Glinda's help) cut Oz off from the rest of the world with a Barrier of Invisibility. No more Oz. At least that’s what folks were saying back in 1910.

During Baum’s two-year hiatus as Royal Historian, 1911 and 1912, he wrote his two best non-fantasy novels, The Flying Girl and The Flying Girl and Her Chum. So let’s sit back, fasten our seatbelts, and see exactly WHAT’S UP with . . . the Flying Girl!

The original idea for the Flying Girl books may have come from Baum’s publisher, the Reilly and Britton Company of Chicago. In 1909 Reilly and Britton published a profusely illustrated five-hundred-page volume called Vehicles of the Air by Victor Lougheed. It was subtitled “A popular Exposition of Modern Aeronautics with Working Drawings.”  The book seems to have sold well. New editions were published in 1910 and 1911. It’s not unreasonable to assume Reilly and Britton might have sent Baum a copy of the book for research purposes.

But Reilly and Britton were publishing lots of other airplane books, too, including several aviation series for children. In 1909 they began The Airship Boys series by H. L. Sayler. And in 1910 they added The Aeroplane Boys series by Ashton Lamar.

In 1911 and 1912 Reilly and Britton issued two beautiful and oversized aviation fairytale novels: The Magic Aeroplane and The Flight Brothers, both by Mrs. L. R. S. Henderson. These are especially interesting, as they look a lot like giant Oz books, even down to the color plates and title page design. Interestingly, the illustrator is Emille A. Nelson, who also illustrated several of Baum’s Boy Fortune Hunters books.

But back to Reilly and Britton's aviation books. With all the interest the general public had in aviation, and the supposed end of the Oz series, you can see why they may have been putting some pressure on Baum to get “on board” for a juvenile aviation book.

On the other hand, the idea for The Flying Girl series may have come from Baum instead. He may have been inspired by meeting Glenn Curtiss or other early aviators during his winters living at the Hotel Del Coronado in southern California.

Whatever the inspiration was, Baum responded with the Flying Girl series. The Flying Girl was published in 1911, and its sequel, The Flying Girl and Her Chum, was published in 1912. Baum wrote both books under his popular pseudonym Edith Van Dyne, author of the highly successful Aunt Jane’s Nieces series. Here we see a copy of an inscription by “Mrs. Van Dyne” to his son, Robert Stanton Baum.

In the contemporary advertisement (below) we can see: “. . . a picture of L. Frank Baum’s home and gardens at Hollywood, California. In the center of the pergola is the little sheltered garden house where Edith Van Dyne, a guest of Mrs. Baum, wrote The Flying Girl.”

Reilly and Britton produced two handsome volumes bound in red cloth, stamped in black and white. You can see the lovely (and very rare) dust jackets still further down the page. The paintings for the jackets are by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens, who also provided four halftone plates for each of the books.

This first book, The Flying Girl, tells the story of how seventeen-year-old Orissa Kane becomes a celebrated aviator. The story opens in Los Angeles, where Orissa works as secretary for real estate agent George Burthon. She is the sole support for her blind mother and older brother, Stephen, who is hard at work designing and building his innovative new airplane. After her brother is injured Orissa flies in his place at an air-meet and proves herself an excellent aviator. After numerous travails the Kane Aircraft is proven a success, Orissa is the darling of popular attention, and everyone seems destined for a brilliant future.

In 1912 the second Flying Girl book was published. Suggested titles for  book were: The Flying Girl of Castaway Island, The Flying Girl’s Adventures, The Flying Girl’s Runaway Aeroplane, The Flying Girl’s Best Record, and The Flying Girl’s Exploits. In the end Baum and his publishers agreed on The Flying Girl and Her Chum.

In The Flying Girl and Her Chum, Orissa and her “chum” Sybil Cumberford are testing Stephen Kane’s new experimental Hydro-Aeroplane, which can land in the water. They take of from a bluff in San Diego, but when the aircraft is damaged, they’re forced to crash land near an isolated island in the Pacific. Their struggles to stay alive on the deserted island add quite a bit of realism to the book, although the cheerful demeanors they exhibit throughout might not have such a counterpart in real life. Meanwhile, a rich heiress, Madeline Dentry, sets out on her yacht with Orissa and Sybil’s friends in a dangerous attempt to find the lost girls. The book alternates between the girls on the island and the rescue party that’s trying to find them - a double-plot line device that Baum was very fond of. When the rescue party finally reaches the island, the entire group is threatened by a Mexican bandit and his band of cut-throats. Of course, the bravery of the Flying Girl and her chum saves the day and the story ends with the entire party sailing to Hawaii on the Dentry yacht. In this book Baum deals less with the world of aviation. Steve’s new Hydro-Aeroplane serves merely as entrance and exit to what is essentially a straight adventure story.

Baum's publisher, Reilly & Britton, seems to have really promoted the new series, arranging for both books to be serialized in newspapers around the country.

Newspaper serialization of THE FLYING GIRL AND HER CHUM.

Original dust jacket for the book.

The Flying Girl and Her Chum presents themes and devices found in other books by Baum, too. Baum-scholar Michael Patrick Hearn has pointed out how Glinda of Oz repeats the basic plot of The Flying Girl and Her Chum. Both books feature two girls becoming stranded on isolated islands and a second plot-thread is introduced when the girls’ friends form an expedition to rescue them.

The Flying Girl and Her Chum also has similarities to Baum’s Sky Island. Both stories begin in the San Diego area. In Chum an airplane carries Orissa and Sybil over the Pacific and beyond the island they intended, while in Sky Island a magic umbrella carries Trot, Cap’n Bill, and Button-Bright far beyond their Pacific island destination to an island in the sky.

Baum’s The Boy Fortune Hunters in the South Seas (1911), published under the pseudonym Floyd Akers, features a ship tossed onto the shore of a Pacific island, a near duplication of the beaching of the Dentry yacht in Chum. Furthermore, hostile forces threaten both vessels and an airplane takes off from the deck of each boat.

The famous California resort, the Hotel Del Coronado, where Baum himself stayed during winters from 1904 until 1908, appears both in Chum and in Baum’s Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John (1911).

The Hotel Del Coronado first opened in 1888 and is still today a functioning hotel and a National Historic Landmark, just across the bay from downtown San Diego.

Original dust jacket for the book.

From the tone of the Flying Girl books and the real people and incidents mentioned in them, we know Baum did do some first-hand research on aviation as he was writing them. In the guise of Miss Van Dyne, Baum thanked two of the most famous American aviators of his time in his short foreword to The Flying Girl:

The author wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness to Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss and Mr. Wilbur Wright for courtesies extended during the preparation of this manuscript.

Baum is well aware of aviation’s potential. He goes on to say:

These skillful and clever aviators, pioneers to whom the Art of Flying owes a colossal debt, do not laugh at any suggestion concerning the future of the aeroplane, for they recognize the fact that the discoveries and inventions of the next year may surpass all that have gone before.

If fact, Baum seems so aware of the leaps and bounds of early aviation that he places a caveat into his forward. It’s almost as if he fears that Orissa’s accomplishments may be eclipsed by the time his book sees publication when he states:

So the story of Orissa Kane’s feats has little exaggeration except in actual accomplishment, and it is possible her ventures may be emulated even before this book is out of press.

At that time the history of modern aviation was only eight years old. The Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, occurred on Dec. 17, 1903. But it was not until around 1909 that the public at large became enthused by airplanes. Newspaper headlines trumpeted each new aerial record achieved. Crowds flocked to aviation meets to watch the amazing new machines mount to the skies.

Despite Baum’s declaration of indebtedness to Glenn Hammond Curtiss and Wilbur Wright in the foreword to The Flying Girl, and whatever he might have gleaned from his research, his knowledge of the technicalities of heavier-than-air flight seems lacking.

In his attempt to make Stephen Kane’s invention distinct from other aircraft, Baum describes the Kane Aircraft as a biplane whose upper plane is placed at a right angle to the lower. In the Hungry Tiger press reprint of The Flying Girl, illustrator Eric Shanower draws what Baum describes, with the upper plane running perpendicular to the lower plane.

Eric Shanower's depiction of Stephen Kane's aircraft from THE FLYING GIRL.

Yet the Wright brothers’ innovation of placing one parallel plane directly above the other was both a key factor in their 1903 success and a safety feature of biplanes. Even Joseph Pierre Nuyttens, the original illustrator of both Flying Girl books, seems to have been confused by Baum’s crossed-plane arrangement; his illustrations show a triplane with the two upper planes crossed.

Joseph Pierre Nuyttens depiction of Stephen Kane's aircraft.

Baum is far more successful in integrating reality into his story by describing actual air meets at Dominguez Field. The Los Angeles International Air Meet was held January 10 to January 20, 1910.

It was among the earliest airshows in the world and the first major airshow in the United States. It was held in Los Angeles County, California, at Dominguez Field in present day Carson, California. Spectator turnout numbered approximately 254,000 over eleven days of ticket sales. The Los Angeles Times called it "one of the greatest public events in the history of the West." Baum was living in Southern California at the time of the Dominguez Field air meets. It remains unknown whether Baum actually attended the 1910 Air Meet, but he surely was aware of the extremely popular event.

Baum populated the background of the story of The Flying Girl with real-life aviators. Wilbur and Orville Wright, Glenn H. Curtiss, Hubert Latham, Archibald Hoxsey, Charles F. Willard, Philip O. Parmalee, Eugene Ely, Walter Brookins, and James Radley, all international figures in the history of flight, appear—albeit briefly—in the pages of The Flying Girl.

Baum continued his research into aviation for the second Flying Girl book. Baum’s letter on Jan. 23, 1912, to his publishers states, “I’ve been working on The Flying Girl and Her Chum, and my attendance at the present aviation meet was in furtherance of that plot. I’ve got aeroplanes down to date, and it will all help me in this volume.”

No female aviator—except Orissa Kane—appears in the first book, and the concept of an American female aviator is presented by Baum as unique. While this serves to heighten Orissa’s importance in the story, it deviates from reality.

Although in 1910 a French woman, Raymonde de Laroche, was the first woman to qualify as a pilot, Harriet Quimby was the first licensed and most celebrated American female aviator of her day.

Harriet Quimby with the Moisant monoplane.

Quimby's rise to prominence at the same time Baum began the Flying Girl series sparks the question: to what extent may Orissa Kane have been based on this real-life counterpart? The Delineator magazine of November 1911 reports that Harriet Quimby “is young, good-looking, energetic, ambitious and has lots of just plain, everyday nerve. . . . As she stands at the helm of her bird-craft . . . , it is a question whether the blue of her eye and the rose of her cheek call forth less cheering from the crowd of interested spectators than the fact that the little sky pilot represents the first type of buoyant young American womanhood.” This description could easily fit Baum’s own heroine. On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby was the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

Only weeks later, on July 1, 1912, she died while flying in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts. William Willard, the organizer of the event, was a passenger in her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane. At an altitude of 1,500 feet the aircraft unexpectedly pitched forward for reasons still unknown. Both Willard and Quimby were ejected from their seats and fell to their deaths, while the plane glided down and lodged itself in the mud.

In the Flying Girl and Her Chum, Baum finally acknowledges the existence of other American female aviators: Blanche Scott, the first American woman to fly an airplane, and Matilde Moisant, who trained at her brother’s New York aviation school with Harriet Quimby.

Blanche Scott in her biplane.

The site of the Kane Hydro-Aeroplane’s launch may have a contemporary counterpart.

Baum’s text states that Stephen Kane’s aircraft hangar is near Glenn Curtiss’s aviation camp on a low bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In reality Glenn Curtiss’s aviation camp was on North Island in San Diego bay. But there are no bluffs on North Island. However, a location near San Diego closely resembles Baum’s description of the Hydro-Aeroplane’s launch area.

The bluffs at the Torrey Pines Gliderport as they look today.

The Torrey Pines Gliderport perches on the bluffs north of San Diego, adjacent to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Here on clear days, modern enthusiasts launch gliders, paragliders, and sailplanes to soar high above the Pacific coast. It’s tempting to see in this activity a continuity with Orissa’s fictional flight. At the base of the sandy bluff is San Diego's "clothing optional" Black's Beach.

Unfortunately the Flying Girl series ended after only two titles, though the fault was clearly not in Baum’s writing. The two books are arguably the best non-fantasy novels Baum ever wrote. They are almost completely free of the ethnic stereotyping and slurs that mar his other young adult novels. And Orissa is a strong female character - like Dorothy. Perhaps the books were too ahead of their time. Maybe boys wouldn’t read about a girl hero; and girls weren’t terribly interested in aviation? Reilly and Britton seemed to be carefully trying to find a balance.

In fact, the first-draft manuscript of The Flying Girl and Her Chum proved far too thrilling for the publisher. Sumner Britton in a letter to Baum on May 9, 1912, wrote,"We don’t need to have the second book any more daring than the first—which was very exciting. I read that myself and felt that it carried all the thrills we could possibly stand in a book of this kind. We are shooting at boys and girls from eleven to fourteen and we have to pass muster with their parents, teachers, and librarians.” Baum altered the manuscript.

A third volume in the series, to be titled The Flying Girl’s Brave Venture, was planned, but never appeared. Chum’s year of publication, 1912, brought both Harriet Quimby’s fatal air accident and Matilde Moisant’s retirement from flying after her own fiery crash. Fred Erisman, in The Baum Bugle, speculates that publicity surrounding these events may have caused parents to look on aviation as unsuitable for girls, resulting in poor sales for the Flying Girl books.

In January 1912, Baum wrote to his publisher, Sumner Britton, that a letter from Britton had remained unanswered, "Because I’ve been attending an aviation meet. But I’m through with that now. Saw a man killed yesterday and that settles the thing for me."

Whatever the reason, Baum abandoned the Flying Girl series and in 1913 he restarted his popular Oz series.

Although the Flying Girl series ended after just two volumes, it wasn’t the end of at least one of the characters. In Mary Louise Solves a Mystery (1917), the third of Baum’s Mary Louise books (which were also credited to Edith Van Dyne), Stephen Kane turns up as the owner of a successful flying-machine factory. Orissa’s career as an aviator seems to have subsided, but her oft-stated goal of showing the world the merits of the Kane Aircraft has been achieved; Baum states that “Stephen Kane’s aeroplane was now admitted to be one of the safest and most reliable ever invented.”

And it was all due to the bravery and skill of Orissa Kane - THE FLYING GIRL!

Both The Flying Girl and The Flying Girl and her Chum are available in beautiful reprint editions from Hungry Tiger Press! The Flying Girl is illustrated by award-winning illustrator Eric Shanower, who has also provided a new Foreword for The Flying Girl and Her Chum, which proved invaluable in the preparation of this essay.

 

The Flying Girl
by L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by Eric Shanower
Click here to order! 

Original halftone plates by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens
5 1/2"x 8 1/2"  - 188 Pages - Hardcover

From the author of The Wizard of Oz comes a high-flying adventure featuring intrepid girl aviator Orissa Kane. Like Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, Orissa is intelligent, self-reliant, and always persevering.

Circumstances force young Orissa Kane into the air in her brother’s innovative new airplane. But a deadly foe is intent on sending her crashing back to earth. Soar to new heights with the Flying Girl as she braves countless dangers to achieve worldwide acclaim.


 

The Flying Girl and Her Chum
 By L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens
Click here to order!

5 1/2"x 8 1/2"  - 250 Pages - Hardcover
 
In this high-flying sequel to The Flying Girl, a damaged aeroplane strands brave Orissa Kane and her best friend Sybil on a barren rock somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The two teenage girls must use all their wits just to survive. Meanwhile, in the best Oz-book double-plot tradition, Orissa's friends form a search party to find the missing girls. Throw in a ragged band of ocean-going outlaws bent on mayhem, and you have one of L. Frank Baum's most exciting non-Oz adventure stories, The Flying Girl and Her Chum. 

Eric Shanower provides a new Foreword detailing Baum's writing process and the history of women in early aviation including the young female aviator Harriet Quimby, who was likely a model for the Flying Girl!

"Baum had a way of writing juvenile series without writing down to his audience. At his best, his novels are tinged with a certain amount of cynicism--you weren't always sure at first who the good guys were....It can be very refreshing."

-Yellowback Library

Map of Oz Monday - Under Baum's Directions

Next week we will begin our discussion of the Oz Club's set of maps. But before we start on that part of our journey I wanted to revisit, and I hope strengthen, one of my views on the geography and orientation of the Land of Oz: there is no mistake in directions on Baum's original 1914 map of Oz. He fully intended that Oz have a backwards compass, with east on the left and west on the right.

Baum's 1914 Map of Oz with non-standard compass points.

I am not the only Oz fan to prefer Baum's quirky directional sense. Bill Campbell on The Oz Enthusiast blog said of Baum's 1914 map:  "This is unlike any standard map, but Oz is a magical land - perhaps that is simply how things work there! . . . I still like the original map in Tik-Tok with its unique directions - that's how I think the map should be!"

Oz fans long surmised that Baum probably had a hand in drawing the 1914 map and sent it in to the publisher where it was redrawn by a staff artist. Yet there was never any proof that Baum had a hand in the creation of the 1914 map. But a couple years ago I found verification when I was given access to the papers of Louis F. Gottschalk, composer of the 1913 musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz and of the scores to the 1914 Oz Films.

Gottschalk and Baum circa 1913 - Collection of David Maxine.

In 1925 Louis F. Gottschalk wrote his memories of watching L. Frank Baum draw the Oz map that was included as the endpapers of Tik-Tok of Oz (1914). Here's Gottschalk's recollection:

I remember when we were at work on the Tik-Tok Man of Oz, Frank took a day off to answer at least 100 letters that had accumulated during the previous week. One little girl wrote and asked him for a map of the land of Oz saying she wished to follow them in their travels. In my presence he made a map of the mythical country of Oz and in the next Oz book the map appeared. “I do so love the map of Oz” wrote the little girl, “for now I can follow the Scarecrow, Tin-Woodman, and Tik-Tok and Betsy and Pumpkin head when the cyclone picks them up here and drops them down there in another country.”

Gottschalk's full-length memorial to Baum, which includes this passage, was published for the first time in the Winkie Con 50 Souvenir Program which is available here: Order a copy of the Winkie Con 50 Souvenir book.

So we have confirmation that Baum designed the 1914 map of the Land of Oz. To me, knowing that Baum was responsible makes this map the most authentic of all Oz maps. That, of course, does not address why the map has east on the left and west on the right. But it is too deliberate and if it was a mistake, it was too easily fixed. As I said in this previous post:

Neither Baum, nor his wife, nor the artist who redrew it, nor John R. Neill, nor the publisher ever said, "Hey LFB, you got your compass points wrong!" If Baum had some moment of directional dyslexia when he drew the rough map, there are just too many eyes and too many steps, from his sketchy doodles to finished drawing, to making proofs, to printing the book, for this not to have been EASILY corrected. If it wasn't corrected - it wasn't an error - thus, this is how Baum viewed Oz.

Two years after the map was first published we get confirmation from Baum himself that this is how he viewed Oz and that it wasn't simply a typesetting or artistic error. On September 6, 1916, Baum submitted another map along with the manuscript of The Lost Princess of Oz to the publisher and in the accompanying cover letter he stated:

You will find a "Map of the Search for the Lost Princess," which I would like to have redrawn and printed in black-and-white and placed in the fore part of the book. Nothing we ever did made such a hit with the kiddies as the maps of Oz we once used for endpapers, and I think this present map worthwhile on that account.

So Baum confirms that he drew this map (admittedly to be neatened up by a staff artist), but it preserves the Winkie Country "on the right and in the West" orientation and other geographical details of the 1914 map. Baum has even labeled the branches of the Winkie River, which as you'll read below, becomes very important.

Map of Oz from THE LOST PRINCESS OF OZ (1917).

In the text of Lost Princess Baum writes the following:

At the east [border of the Winkie Country] which part lies nearest the Emerald City, there are beautiful farmhouses and roads, but as you travel west, you first come to a branch of the Winkie River, beyond which there is a rough country where few people live, and some of these are quite unknown to the rest of the world. After passing through this rude section of territory, which no one ever visits, you would come to still another branch of the Winkie River, after crossing which you would find another well-settled part of the Winkie Country extending westward quite to the Deadly Desert . . .

And a little later he writes:

In the course of a few hours, however, they had left the tilled fields [around the Emerald City] and entered the country of the Winkies. . . . Long before night the travellers had crossed the Winkie River near to the Scarecrow's tower (which was now vacant) and had entered the rolling prairie where few people live.

Here we have Baum himself using this map in his written text and describing the travelers leaving the Emerald City, moving left to right on the map, and getting to the "East Branch" of the Winkie River before they get to the "West Branch." A careful reading of the text makes it clear that Baum intended the text to reflect the map - including the reversed compass directions.

It seems very clear that this is simply how Baum saw the Land of Oz. Why he never made more of it I can't imagine. Perhaps he just thought it was quaint or magical. At one time I would have suggested that Baum was bad at directions and simply drew the map with the Winkies and Munchkins reversed. And then, rather than start over, he chuckled and fixed it by labeling the compass to suit his drawing. Perhaps that was how it happened. But it must have become a very deliberate choice, as it could have been fixed at any point in the book's production process at Reilly and Britton. So I'm left with the firm belief that this map shows Oz how it was meant to be.

But I am curious what Baum's hand-drawn map of Oz would have looked like. How detailed was it? Was it a scribble or quite precise? Baum's original map does not seem to survive. But I think I can show you a similar map that I believe was in fact drawn by Baum himself.

This is the map included in Baum's Boy Fortune Hunters in Panama (1908) which has been reprinted by Hungry Tiger Press as Sam Steele's Adventures: the Amazing Bubble Car. If you're interested you can order a copy below! In that book's text the map is found in the diary of  the recently murdered Maurice Kleppisch. The map was almost certainly drawn by Baum himself and submitted with his manuscript to Reilly & Britton. We know Baum was artistic and a good craftsman, and I find it impossible to believe that the publisher had a staff artist draw this map for an inconsequential boys series book. This is simply Baum having fun. And since the map didn't need to be as "polished" as the Oz map would need to be, Baum's pen-and-ink skill were totally adequate. Here's that map.

Baum's map from THE BOY FORTUNE HUNTERS IN PANAMA (1908).

I think you can see there are many similarities to the 1914 Map of the Land of Oz. The way rivers are drawn, forests delineated by little little "x" marks, the "hash mark" mountains, and indeed even the lettering of the oceans which runs top to bottom in differing directions for each ocean - exactly like the labeling of the Deadly Desert on the 1914 map.

Granted, how many ways are there to draw a map? But if Baum drew as detailed and finished Oz maps as he seemingly drew for The Boy Fortune Hunters in Panama, then I think we can say Baum himself is responsible for the detail in the Oz maps, whether the undulations of rivers or the placement of the Winkie and Munchkin countries.

Next Monday we will begin our discussion of the Oz Club's Maps of Oz.
Click here to go to our next installment of Map of Oz Monday!

---

Would you like to read L. Frank Baum's

Boy Fortune Hunters in Panama?

There is a beautiful reprint available as 

Sam Steele's Adventures - the Amazing Bubble Car

Sam Steele discovers the location of a lost tribe deep in the heart of Panama where diamonds litter the earth! A secret map found among a dead man’s belongings points the way. But to get there Sam will need to maneuver through mountains, marshes, and mayhem.

Luckily, Sam’s partner is the unpredictable inventor Duncan Moit. Moit’s latest invention, the Amazing Bubble Car, can travel over land and water and is impervious to almost any attack! But obstacles abound—cultures in collision, the Indian chief’s beautiful daughter, and a mysterious dwarf’s golden hoard. So come join Sam and his friends on a dangerous journey to riches and adventure in their Magic Travelin’ Machine!

This book was originally published in 1907 under Baum's pseudonym Captain Hugh Fitzgerald as Sam Steele's Adventures in Panama. It was reprinted and retitled the following year as The Boy Fortune Hunters in Panama under Baum's pen-name Floyd Akers. It has been an exceedingly rare book--until now! Beautifully repackaged and reprinted, our Pawprint Adventures imprint will make Baum's adventure series books live again!

Click here to order! 

Talkin' About Tik-Tok

Polychrome, the Shaggy Man, and Betsy assist Tik-Tok.

This year's Winkie Con features a unique program on Saturday evening, August 9, 2014. Clockwork Productions will revive The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, the musical play originally produced in Los Angeles, California, in 1913. The book and lyrics were written by Oz author L. Frank Baum, as a sequel to his 1903 Broadway smash The Wizard of Oz. The music for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz was composed by Louis F. Gottschalk, composer of many early film scores, including Orphans of the Storm by D. W. Griffith, A Woman of Paris by Charlie Chaplin, and Little Lord Fauntleroy starring Mary Pickford.

Oliver Morosco produced The Tik-Tok Man of Oz at the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles, California, where it premiered March 31, 1913. The show then toured the USA and Canada, arriving in San Diego, California, in 1914. Now, one hundred years later, San Diego will once again host a presentation of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. It's appropriate that The Tik-Tok Man of Oz will be performed in San Diego, since L. Frank Baum wrote the earliest drafts of the show in 1907 at the Hotel del Coronado, the famous luxury resort near San Diego.

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz has not had a fully staged production in a century. If you ever wanted to see a fully staged performance of one of L. Frank Baum's stage works, this is your chance. This revival will be presented one night only, on Saturday, August 9, 2014, as the evening program of the 50th annual Winkie Con, the world's longest running Oz event. The Regency Ballroom of the Town and Country Resort, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego, California, will be turned into a theater to present the show.

Sheet music from 1913

All the surviving musical numbers from the original production--more than twenty in all--will be performed. These include the fourteen songs written by L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk, as well as four additional songs by Oliver Morosco and Victor Schertzinger, an overture, an entr'acte, reprises, and dances. The original script by L. Frank Baum has been abridged by award-winning Oz author and illustrator Eric Shanower in order to keep the running time of this production under two and a half hours.

A full-convention ticket to Winkie Con 50 includes guaranteed seating for the Saturday evening performance of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. To register for Winkie Con 50, click here for the Winkie Con website.

Sheet music from 1913

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz features plenty of action, comedy, romance, and suspense. The star of the show is Tik-Tok, the copper clockwork man who must be wound up with a key to move, think, and speak. Tik-Tok is rescued by young Betsy Bobbin and her pet mule Hank who are helping the Shaggy Man search for his long lost brother. They are joined by Queen Ann and her brave Army of Oogaboo, as well as Polychrome the Daughter of the Rainbow and Ozma the Rose Princess. They all must face the magical power of Ruggedo the villainous Metal Monarch and his Metal Imps deep in the underground Metal Forest. The story is similar to the seventh Oz book, Tik-Tok of Oz, because L. Frank Baum based that book on this play.

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz Kickstarter Campaign
A Kickstarter campaign for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz has launched. Won't you consider becoming part of this fascinating project by making a pledge? To contribute, click here to go directly to Kickstarter. We're offering some cool rewards for contributors, including a DVD of the performance, a book reprinting all the surviving sheet music from the original production, artwork by Eric Shanower, VIP seating at the performance, posters, and more--you could even have a walk-on role in the show! Some of these rewards are exclusive and won't be available anywhere else. Watch our Kickstarter video to hear music from The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

Auditions and Open Dance Call
The cast will have about twenty members to bring The Tik-Tok Man of Oz to life. Auditions are April 4 in the San Diego area. Open Dance Call is April 6. For details, see the Audition Notice here.

Behind the Curtain
The creative team for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz is already in place, and here they are:

Chrissy Burns, Director: Chrissy has directed such productions as 42nd Street, Sweet Charity, Nunsense, and Chicago. She has acted on many San Diego stages, including Lambs Players, Diversionary Theatre, Starlight Theatre, and more. She was recently seen in miXtape, the hit 1980's musical at the Horton Grand Theater. She teaches Musical Theater and Voice at Infinity Dance Arts in El Cajon, California.

Joseph Grienenberger, Musical Director: Joseph has been Musical Director for productions that include Man of La Mancha, Pacific Overtures, Blood Wedding, and The Wizard of Oz. His credits include stage direction, singing, acting, and orchestrating for the Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego Repertory, and more. Joseph is a voice and acting coach and is a core chorister at San Diego Opera .

Jennifer Solomon-Rubio, Choreographer: Teaming with director Chrissy Burns, Jenn has choreographed such stage musicals as 42nd Street, Ruthless! the Musical, and Chicago. Her stage experience includes fashion shows, trade shows, and choreographic work throughout the San Diego region. She is studio director and an instructor at Infinity Dance Arts in El Cajon, California.

Christopher Boltz, Lighting Design: Chris worked on the television shows Third Rock from the Sun and That 70's Show. He coordinated lighting and sound for the pre-Broadway workshop of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. He has designed lighting for productions including Mirror Mirror, Epic of Gil, and The Rocky Horror Show. He teaches in the Theatre Arts department of Fresno City College.

David Maxine and Eric Shanower, Set and Costume Design: David has designed productions including Sweeney Todd, Oklahoma!, and The Baltimore Waltz for theaters such as Skylight Opera, Yale Rep, Trenton State College, and Bard College. He was Associate Designer for ABC News, Production Designer for the film Ready? OK!, and Scenic Artist at San Diego Opera and La Jolla Playhouse. Eric is a cartoonist whose comics projects include the ongoing series Age of Bronze, the story of the Trojan War, and scripts for New York Times best-selling comics adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Oz books with art by Skottie Young. He has illustrated numerous other comics and books.

If you want to be in the audience for this historic performance of L. Frank Baum's The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, be sure to register for Winkie Con 50 as soon as you can.

To see many aspects of Tik-Tok and his friends, see the gallery of images on The Tik-Tok Man of Oz website here.

Baum's Bazaar

In the center of this photo is the location where Baum's Bazaar once stood. Baum's Bazaar was the fancy dry goods store L. Frank Baum opened at 406 South Main Street in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on October 1, 1888. Baum stocked it with all sorts of exotic goods he thought the citizens of the burgeoning town of Aberdeen might want. According to Don Artz's A Tour of L. Frank Baum's Aberdeen, the establishment even featured Baum's Ice Cream Boudoir, an "elaborate soda fountain." Unfortunately Aberdeen's economy took a downturn. Baum's Bazaar closed on January 1, 1890. Baum's sister-in-law, Helen Leslie Gage, took it over as Gage's Bazaar for a few years, while L. Frank Baum moved on to newspaper publishing.

These days the location is the southern part of the County Community Health offices.

Big Little Judy

I'm not much of a Judy collector. While I am a fan,  the Garland/Oz connection is too weak for me to think of that stuff as Oz material. My Garland LPs are just in with the records - the DVDs are just in the shelf in alphabetical order. But a very few things have made it into the Oz collection, including this - another neat find on the great summer road trip!

As you see, it's a "Big Little Book" just like Frank J. Baum's The Laughing Dragon of Oz (1934). Thus the book is tiny - measuring only 3 3/4" x 4 1/2". You may have noted, too, that the book is actually called a "Better Little Book" on the cover, reflecting Whitman's renaming of the series in 1938.

I'm unsure what the actual title of the book is. On the front cover it just says Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. On the spine it says Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and how they got into the Movies. And on the title page we get the even bigger mouthful Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, The Story of their Rise to Fame and Fortune in the Movies.

Whatever the actual title is, the book was written by Edward J. Gruskin and published in 1941. Like other BLBs it is profusely illustrated. At least a third of its 425 pages contains illustrations. The illustrator is uncredited, but at least one BLB checklist credits the illustrations to Henry E. Vallely. The pictures are quite handsome, and most seem to be based on actual photos of Judy and Mickey.

I have only skimmed the book thus far. The narrative is divided into four sections. The first few chapters are about Judy and Mickey together, their friendship and working on the MGM lot. Then we get a long section on Judy's life, another long section on Mickey's life, and finally another section about them together and life at MGM. And in that section, beginning on page 378, we get:

"The biggest thrill of her life, however, was the day Mervyn LeRoy, the famous producer, called her on the 'phone. "Judy," Mr. LeRoy asked, "Have you read 'Wizard of Oz?'"

"Oh yes," Judy said. "Often. It's one of my favorite stories."

"Well, we've just bought it for a Technicolor picture."

"Gee! You mean you're going to make it just as it's written with the Land of Oz and the Emerald City and the Munchkins and - and everything?"

"Everything, Judy. Just as Frank Baum wrote the book. And who do you think is going to play the part of Dorothy?"

Judy held her breath, hardly able to wish for what she hoped he would tell her.

"You - You tell ME, Mr. LeRoy."

"You, Judy. You're going to play Dorothy."

To this day, to anybody who will listen, Judy will sit for hours to relate the wonderful experiences she had making the picture; of the thrill she received each morning when she came to the set and found a real "land of make believe."

For her sensational performance in this picture, she won a special Academy Award.

The next chapter is all about Judy and Mickey planning for the premiere of The Wizard of Oz at the Capital Theatre in New York. But I'm gonna save it for a future blog-post.

It's a very neat little book. I mean a Big Little Book, uhh . . . a Better Little Book . . . it's Ozzy!

I am also just happy to have another BLB to keep my Laughing Dragon of Oz company along with my other Oz-related BLB Little Miss Muffet. If you don't know why Little Miss Muffet is Oz-related you can read about that in this previous blog-post by clicking here.

The three Oz-related "Big Little Books."

Gage Graves

Last month on our cross-country trip we spent a day in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where L. Frank Baum lived from September 20, 1888, until about May 1891. A major impetus for Frank and Maud Baum to move from New York state to what was then the Dakota Territory was that Maud's siblings, including Helen Leslie Gage and Thomas Clarkson Gage, already lived there. Frank and Maud Baum spent less than three years in Aberdeen, eventually moving to Chicago where Frank would find fame as an author of children's books. But Maud's Aberdeen, South Dakota, siblings resided there for the rest of their lives.

The Riverside Memorial Park on the southwest side of Aberdeen, South Dakota, has a Gage plot where these folks were buried. We went to see it late in the day and took these photos.

Thomas Clarkson Gage (1848-1938), a founding settler of Aberdeen, was Maud Gage Baum's brother. He remained prominent in city affairs until his death.

Sophie Jewell Gage (1855-1945) was Thomas Clarkson Gage's wife, and thus sister-in-law to Maud Gage Baum and L. Frank Baum.

Helen Leslie Gage (1846-1933) was the eldest sister of Thomas Clarkson Gage and Maud Gage Baum.

Charles Henry Gage (1818-1892) was the husband of Helen Leslie Gage. Although he had the same last name, he doesn't seem to have been related by blood, at least not closely.

Matilda Jewell Gage (1886-1986) was the daughter of Thomas Clarkson Gage and Sophie Jewell Gage, and thus the niece of Maud Gage Baum and L. Frank Baum. Matilda was named after her maternal grandmother, Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage, the prominent women's rights activist. Matilda Jewell Gage visited her Uncle Frank and Aunt Maud often, preserved many artifacts related to Frank, and in her later years proved to be a valuable source of information about her famous uncle.

Leslie Gage (1882-1966) was the daughter of Helen Leslie Gage and Charles Henry Gage, and thus another niece of Maud and Frank. This previous posting features a newspaper photo of Leslie Gage.

It was near sundown when we stopped at the cemetery and the sky was spectacular. Who knew that Aberdeen, South Dakota, could be so beautiful?

Haldeman!

While on our great summer trip, Eric and I made our first visit to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where L. Frank Baum lived in the late 1880s and early 1890s. I will blog in more depth about Aberdeen in the coming days, but I mention it here as it makes for an easy connection to this month's Hungry Tiger Tale - the little-known Baum lyric "Haldeman."

Eric and I spent the afternoon at the Alexander Mitchell Library in Aberdeen, which houses a very interesting Baum collection. One of the things I was happy to be able to examine was a copy of the Uplifters Hymnal, a song book for the Uplifters Society that Baum helped form within the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

I had long wanted to look at a copy of the "hymnal," hoping it would contain the music by Louis F. Gottschalk to go with certain of Baum's lyrics that were known to survive. Alas, the hymnal contains only more lyrics and no printed music. One of the lyrics is the song "Haldeman," about Harry Marston Haldeman, Baum friend and co-founder of the Oz Film Manufacturing Company. His grandson H. R. Haldeman was Richard Nixon's White House Chief of Staff who was eventually convicted of conspiracy in the Watergate Scandal.

The song is meant to be sung to the tune "I'll Get You" by Will Cobb and Gus Edwards. So click here to go read "Haldeman."