QUESTION: Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve enjoyed the story of the Wizard of Oz I looked forward every Spring to the televising of the award winning 1939 film. As an adult, I ran across a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at a book sale. I had no idea that the author, L. Frank Baum, wrote so many books about the Land of Oz. So I began to collect Wizard of Oz memorabilia, including copies of Baum’s books. Can you tell me where Baum got his idea for the Wizard of Oz? And how collectible is Oz memorabilia?
ANSWER: Most people associate the Wizard of Oz with the 1939 movie of the same name. But the character goes back even further in the works of L. Frank Baum.
Children looked forward to birthdays and Christmases when they could unwrap their favorite gift—a L. Frank Baum book recounting magical places, especially the Land of Oz. Children couldn’t get enough of them.
Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in Chittenango, New York. A prolific writer who wrote under six different pen names as well as his own, his first published book was a guide to raising fancy Hamburg chickens. When Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898, no publisher would accept it. He insisted on color illustrations and publishers didn’t want to take a chance on the expense of that. In 1900, Baum finally paid the firm of George M. Hill in Chicago to publish it.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz filled the fairytale niche in American children's literature. Baum worked with the book's illustrator, W.W. Denslow, composer Paul Tietjens and Julian Mitchell to create a traveling musical stage play based on the book. Debuting in 1902, it brought its two leading men instant stardom. People flocked to see Fred Stone as the Scarecrow and David Montgomery as the Tin Man, in this production that featured chorus girls and songs about football. Imogene the Cow replaced Dorothy’s dog Toto.
After The Wonderful Wizard of Oz succeeded, children begged for more Oz books. Baum wrote at least one Oz book a year from 1904 on, at the same time completing other juvenile series. In 1910, he tried to end the Oz series with its sixth book, The Emerald City of Oz, by ceasing communication between Oz and the 20th-century world. Fortunately, the silence didn’t last. Baum published a new Oz book in 1913 and every year after until his final book appeared posthumously in 1920.
Despite success during his lifetime, Baum was unable to keep money in his pocket. He made a few bad business choices, including backing several Broadway flops, running a failed newspaper, and going bankrupt while working as a shopkeeper at his own Baum Bazaar in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He understood people having a hard time and gave everyone credit.
Following Baum's death in 1919, his publisher commissioned Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue the story of Oz from 1921 to 1939. The illustrator for the series, John R. Neill, wrote three Oz books, and more appeared off and on until the 40th book in 1963.
The 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, was a huge success and generated enough collectibles from 1939 to the present to keep the most ardent Oz collectors happy. The variety of Oz collectibles included such items as a metal lunch box with original Munchkin signatures, sets of playing cards, Tarot cards, movie posters, cookie cutters, bookmarks, character glasses, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, Oz T-shirts, dolls, nesting figurines, books, buttons, paper ephemera, records, games, Japanese Hallmark Christmas ornaments, collector plates, jewelry, and handmade tiles.
There’s even edible Oz----a can of funnel cake mix bearing the Tin Man's face and a bag of rainbow-colored marshmallows.
Wizard of Oz so ingrained itself in popular culture, memorabilia can be found everywhere, almost every day. It appears in live and online auctions, on eBay, in antique shops and flea markets, or in one of several Oz-themed shops.
Some Oz collectors with unlimited budgets vie to own a piece of the historic movie. The dress worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film, auctioned at Bonhams in London in 2005, sold for the equivalent of $267,000 to a British collector.
In August 2005, a thief stole one of four pairs of ruby slippers used in the 1939 film from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The slippers, on loan from a private collection in California, had an insured value of $1 million.
One of the hottest collectibles is a little jewel box given out at the 100th showing of the movie that features a picture of the Cowardly Lion.
Learn more about the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz by reading "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in #TheAntiquesAlmanac.
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