L. Frank Baum became a success with his 1883 production of "The Maid of
Arran" in 1882. He was a dreamer, had a printing press and an amateur
newspaper, "The Rose Lawn Home Journal" and published a coin and stamp
collecting guide. He failed at almost everything through poor business
sense. He had been an actor, though only successfully in "The Maid of
Arran," a newspaper editor ("The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer"), a store
owner (Baum's Bazaar, from which he filed for bankruptcy on New Year's
Day of 1899), and motion picture producer and director. He met
everything with enthusiasm and talent, but things did not work just
right and only became successful again as a writer. Diverse in audience
and subject matter, he is best remembered for his fourteen Oz books and
their subsidiary fantasies. He is said to have singlehandedly created
the fantasy genre out of the Andersen-style literary fairy tale. He
used a variety of pseudonyms for juvenile series made at the publishers
request, the best known and most successful being as Edith Van Dyne,
who was once played by an actress at a luncheon with another publisher
who wanted to meet her. The name was later used by Emma Speed Sampson,
who continued some of his series.
Baum was a kind and gentle family man, who never swore or told dirty
jokes, nor was he able to punish his four sons, whom Maud had to handle
for him. He was born with a bad heart and suffered several minor
attacks, including one induced by The Peekskill Military Academy at age
14. He loved to make fun of the military after that incident, as one
can see in his Oz books. He created and headed The Oz Film
Manufacturing Company in 1914 and directed one film the year later,
after which his son Frank Joslyn Baum
took it over, changing the name to Dramatic Feature Films, after the Oz
name had been cursed as box-office poison, despite excellent critical
reception of J. Farrell MacDonald's
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914).
He continued writing, sitting up in bed long after his health had
failed him, and his final Oz book was published posthumously in 1920.
It was only his second attempt at science fiction. Baum's writing
attracted legions of fans of all ages, both during and after his
lifetime. His work has influenced such writers as
Gore Vidal,
Ray Bradbury, and Terry Brooks. The Oz
series has been continued both officially and unofficially after his
death. Frank Joslyn Baum sold the film
rights of the first Oz book to MGM in 1934, and
Walt Disney soon picked up the rest, unable
to secure the original from them, for he, too, had desired to make a
film version, as had been done before by Baum himself,
Otis Turner,
Ray C. Smallwood,
Larry Semon,
Ethel Meglin,
Ted Eshbaugh, and many subsequent to 1939.
Ironically, Baum moved to Hollywood at Ozcot to have a quiet place to
write, which, of course, resulted in the OFMC. One other notable work
by Baum is Tamawaca Folks, a spoof of his vacation town of Macatawa
Michigan, taking the name of Michigan author John Esten Cooke and
changing it to John Estes Cooke. Baum himself has a supporting role
(under a different name) in the novel, which was based on all the
vacationers. Baum's health problems limited his life to 63 years, but
his literary output was remarkable, though mostly forgotten. An episode
of the television series
Im wilden Westen (1952)
features him and Maud as characters.
