Everything about The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz totally explained
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a
children's novel written by
L. Frank Baum and illustrated by
W.W. Denslow. It was originally published by the George M. Hill Company in
Chicago in
1900, and has since been reprinted countless times, sometimes under the name
The Wizard of Oz. The story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy in the
Land of Oz. Thanks in part to the 1939 MGM movie
The Wizard of Oz, it's one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the popular 1903 Broadway musical Baum adapted from his story, led to Baum's writing and having published thirteen more
Oz books.
Baum dedicated the book "to my good friend & comrade, My Wife," Maud Gage Baum. In January
1901 the publisher, the George M. Hill Company, completed printing the first edition, which probably totaled around 35,000 copies. Records indicate that 21,000 copies were sold through 1900.
The original book has been in
public domain in the
United States since
1956. Baum's thirteen sequels entered public domain in the United States from 1960 through
1986. The rights to these books were held by the Walt Disney Company, and their impending expiration was a prime motivator for the production of the
1985 film
Return to Oz, based on Baum's second and third Oz books.
Historians, economists and literary scholars have examined and developed possible
political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Plot summary
Dorothy is a young girl who lives on a Kansas farm with her
Uncle Henry,
Aunt Em, and little dog Toto. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy inside, is caught up in a
tornado and deposited in a field in the country of the
Munchkins. The falling house kills the
Wicked Witch of the East.
The
Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy and gives Dorothy the shoes that the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing when she was killed. In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she'll have to go to the "
Emerald City" and ask the
Wizard of Oz to help her.
On her way down the
road paved with yellow brick to the Emerald City, Dorothy frees the
Scarecrow from the pole he's hanging on, restores the movements of the rusted
Tin Woodman with an oilcan, and encourages the
Cowardly Lion to journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, courage. All are convinced by Dorothy that the Wizard can help them too. Together, they overcome obstacles on the way.
When the group arrives at the Emerald City, the
Guardian of the Gates provides them with special green spectacles that will keep the brilliance of the Emerald City from blinding them.
When each traveler meets with the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them, but one of them must kill the
Wicked Witch of the West who rules over the Winkie Country.
As the friends travel across the
Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and then her Winkie soldiers to attack them but they manage to get past them all. Then, using the power of the Golden Cap, the Witch summons the
Winged Monkeys to capture all of the travelers.
When the Wicked Witch gains one of Dorothy's silver shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch, who begins to melt. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of the witch's tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. The Winkies love the Tin Woodman and they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas.
Dorothy uses the Golden Cap to summon the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her companions back to the Emerald City, and the King tells how they were bound by an enchantment to the cap by
Gayelette.
When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Toto accidentally tips over a screen in a corner of the throne room, revealing an old man who had journeyed to Oz from Omaha long ago in a hot air balloon.
The Wizard persuades the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion that what they lack are not brains or a heart or courage, but faith in themselves. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he'll have to take them home with him in a new balloon, which he and Dorothy fashion from green silk. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Dorothy chases Toto after he runs after a kitten in the crowd, and before she can make it back to the balloon, the ropes break, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away alone.
Dorothy turns to the Winged Monkeys to carry her and Toto home, but they can't cross the desert surrounding Oz. The
Soldier with the Green Whiskers advises that
Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. They, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda's palace in the
Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, dodge the Hammer-Heads, and tread carefully through the China Country. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant
spider, who is terrorizing the animals in a forest, and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas--the
biggest of the tigers ruling in his stead as before. Dorothy uses her third wish to fly over the Hammer-Heads' mountain.
At Glinda's palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it's revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Silver Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. She tearfully embraces her friends, all of whom will be returned, through Glinda's use of the Golden Cap, to their respective sovereignties: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman to the Winkie Country, and the Cowardly Lion to the forest. Then she'll give the Cap to the king of the Winged Monkeys, so that'll never be under its spell again. Dorothy and Toto return to Kansas and a joyful family reunion. The Silver Shoes are lost during Dorothy's flight and never seen again.
Sources of images and ideas
Baum acknowledged the influence of the
Brothers Grimm and
Hans Christian Andersen, which he was deliberately revising in his "American fairy tales" to include the wonder without the horrors.
Local legend has it that Oz was inspired by a prominent castle-like building in the community of Castle Park near
Holland, Michigan where Baum summered. The yellow brick road was derived from a road at that time paved by yellow bricks. Baum scholars often reference the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as an inspiration for the Emerald City.
Another influence lay in the
Alice books of
Lewis Carroll. Although he found their plots incoherent, Baum identified their source of popularity as Alice herself, a child with whom the child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist.
The Gold Standard representation of the story
Some scholars have theorized that the images and characters used by Baum and Denslow closely resembled political images that were well known in the 1890s, specifically the debate of the day regarding monetary policy: the "Yellow Brick Road" represents the
gold standard, the silver slippers (in the film ruby) represent the sixteen to one silver ratio (dancing down the road). Many other characters, and story lines represent identifiable people or circumstances of the day. The wicked witches of the east and west represented the local banks and the railroad industry, both of which drove small farmers out of business.
The scarecrow represents the farmers of the
Populist party, who managed to get out of debt by making more silver coinage. Unfortunately, the farmers didn't have the brains to understand that introducing more coin into circulation reduced its value (Dorothy eventually losing her silver shoes). The Tin Man represents the factory workers of the industrialized North, who the Populists saw as being so hard-pressed to work grueling hours for little money that the workers had lost their human hearts and become mechanized themselves. (See
Second Industrial Revolution) Toto was thought to be short for
teetotaler, another word for a
prohibitionist; it should be noted that
William Jennings Bryan, the fiery popular candidate (possibly the Lion character) from the Populist Party, was a teetotaler himself. Bryan also fits the allegorical reference to the cowardly Lion in that he retreated from his support of free silver after economic conditions improved in the late 1890's. However, it has also been suggested the cowardly Lion represented the Wallstreet investors given the economic climate of the time. The Munchkins being the common people (serfdom), the emerald city, Washington and its green-paper money delusion. The Wizard (a charlatan who tricks people into believing he wields immense power) the President. The kiss from the Good Witch of the North the electoral mandate; Dorothy must destroy the Wicked Witch of the West - the old West Coast "establishment" (money) with water (the US was suffering from drought). Moreover, of course "Oz" is the abbreviation for the measuring of these precious metals, ounces.
Some biographers and scholars of Baum disagree, pointing to details of Baum's biography, his own statements and writing about the purpose of his book, and the lack of contemporary press discussing these perceived metaphors. The consensus is that the books are written solely for the pleasure of Baum's younger readers, to give them a sense of possibility and imagination.
Cultural impact
The Wizard of Oz has been translated into well over 40 different languages. In some cases, the story proved so popular in other countries that it was adapted to suit the local culture. For instance, in some countries where the
Hindu religion is practiced, abridged versions of the book were published in which, for religious reasons, the Tin Woodman was replaced with a
snake.
Russian author
Alexander M. Volkov brought a rather free translation of the story to the Soviet Union in 1939 (the same year MGM released their film). He called it
The Wizard of Emerald City and the country where the story is set was changed from Oz, to "Magic Land." Alexander Volkov took many liberties with his translation, editing as he saw fit, and adding a chapter in which Ellie (his name for Dorothy) is kidnapped by a man-eating
Ogre and rescued by her friends. The Wizard is renamed “James Goodwin,” the Scarecrow is called “Strasheela” (derived from a Russian word meaning “terrifying”), and the Tin Woodman is now the IRON Woodman. All four of the witches, good and bad, have new names: Villina (Baum’s Good Witch of the North), Gingema (Wicked Witch of the East), Bastinda (Wicked Witch of the West), and Stella (Baum’s Glinda, Good Witch of the South) Volkov went on to write his own independent series of sequels to the book, very loosely based on the originals, including:
Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers,
Seven Underground Kings,
The Firey God of the Marrans,
The Yellow Fog, and
The Secret of the Deserted Castle. Some characters in these sequels clearly have their origins in the later Oz books, such as Ellie's uncle Charlie Black, who is a combination of Baum's
Cap'n Bill and
Johnny Dooit, and the last book invokes the
Forbidden Fountain. The latter three sequels feature, instead of Ellie and Toto, her younger sister Annie along with her own dog, Toto's grandson Arto (which was absent from the last book) and her childhood friend Tim. The original book and all of its sequels were translated in a more faithful fashion some time later, and Russians now see these two versions as wholly different series. In 1959, beloved Russian illustrator
Leonid Vladimirsky drew the Scarecrow short, round and tubby; his influence is evident in illustrations for translations across the Soviet bloc, where the Scarecrow is almost always portrayed as short, round and tubby. Leonid Vladimirsky has written at least two additional sequels to Alexander Volkov's alternative Oz; two more Russian authors and one German have written additional sequels to the "Magic Land" stories. The books have been faithfully translated to English by
Peter Blystone as
Tales of Magic Land. These last two books were previously made available as Oz books through
Buckethead Enterprises of Oz, but were translated loosely to make them Oz books.
References to
The Wizard of Oz (and Magic Land) are thoroughly ingrained in British, American, Russian, and other cultures. A mere sampling of the breadth in which it's referenced might include
Futurama and
Scrubs (the former parodied it in an episode, the latter based an
episode off it),
The Cinnamon Bear (a 1938 radio serial),
RahXephon (a 2002 Japanese animated television show),
Zardoz (a 1974 Sean Connery movie),
Wizard and Glass (a 1997 Stephen King fantasy/Western novel), and the science fiction literature of
Robert A. Heinlein, particularly
The Number of the Beast. The Wizard of Oz Mystery, a
murder mystery game based on the famous characters was released in 2007 from
Shot In The Dark Mysteries.
John Connor, a character in the
Terminator series, cited that one of his favorite memories was of his mother reading him the story of the Wizard of Oz in Spanish as a child.
In 1967,
The Seekers recorded "
Emerald City" in which the vocalist sings of a visit to the Emerald City. The melody of the song is "lied an die Freude" from
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Some of these references, however, can possibly be attributed more to the now-phenomenal popularity of the
1939 film version than the original novel.
MGM's classic
Technicolor film version of the novel has become an ingrained part of popular culture ever since it began to be shown annually on American television.
Criticisms
Although widely held as a classic of children's literature, the novel has repeatedly come under fire over the years. Some religious commentators, for example, have objected to Baum's portrayal of "good witches". On a more secular note, feminist author
Margery Hourihan has described the book as a "banal and mechanistic story which is written in flat, impoverished prose" and dismissed the central character as "the girl-woman of Hollywood".
Adaptations
Stage and screen
The earliest
musical version of the book was produced by Baum and Denslow (with music by composer
Paul Tietjens) in Chicago in 1902, and moved to New York in 1903. It used the same characters, and was aimed more at adult audiences. It had a long, successful run on Broadway. Baum added numerous additional political references to the script. For example, his actors specifically mention President Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Mark Hanna, and John D. Rockefeller by name. (Swartz,
Before the Rainbow, pp 34, 47, 56) He wrote a version more faithful to the book in 1901, but it has never been produced. Although it included many of the same songs, it featured far fewer
interpolations of other songs, which had nothing to do with the story than the 1902 version did.
The earliest
"Oz" film series were produced by Baum in 1908 and 1914 and twice featured the young silent film actress
Mildred Harris. Another series that Baum had nothing to do with, aside from a contractual agreement, appeared in 1910, which may have featured
Bebe Daniels as Dorothy.
Larry Semon, in collaboration with
Frank Joslyn Baum, created a rather well known but unsuccessful
version in 1925. Without question, the most famous adaptation is the
1939 film,
The Wizard of Oz, featuring
Judy Garland as Dorothy. This, in turn, has been adapted into two separate stage productions, first by
Frank Gabrielson, (who wrote the 1960
teleplay of
The Land of Oz for
Shirley Temple), and more recently by the
Royal Shakespeare Company's
John Kane), but the first stage production, in
1902, used a score partly written by Baum and released on compact disc in 2003 by Hungry Tiger Press, and not the one heard in the 1939 film, though there have been attempts, mostly in
Florida by
Constantine Grame, to revive it. Early film versions of the book include a
1914 film produced by Baum himself entitled
His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz, which incorporates several incidents from the book—the Scarecrow is first seen hanging on a pole, from which Dorothy rescues him, and the Tin Man is discovered standing rusted in the forest—and a
1925 film,
Wizard of Oz, featuring
Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodsman [sic].
The Wiz was a hit musical with an all-black cast produced in the 1970s on
Broadway; it was later made into a
1978 movie directed by
Sidney Lumet and starring
Diana Ross as Dorothy and
Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. The most recent adaptation of the novel is "Tin Man" aired in the US on the Sci-Fi Channel in a 3 part miniseries from December 2nd to December 4th 2007 .
An animated series based on the 1939 film was broadcast on
ABC network during the 1990-1991 TV season. The cartoon featured Dorothy returning to Oz, reuniting with her four friends, and journeying through the magical realm in an attempt to rescue the Wizard from a resurrected Witch of the West.
A recent musical adaptation of an Oz-related book is the musical
Wicked, based on the book
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by
Gregory Maguire. The musical has broken Broadway and West End records and received considerable critical and popular success. Another adaptation especially for children was performed by the Festspiele
Balver Höhle in 2005.
There has also been a
spin-off, called "
The Oz Kids". This animated series features the offspring of the main characters of the original novels.
In December 2007,
RHI Entertainment and
Sci Fi released
Tin Man. This three-part miniseries, advertised as a re-imagined version of the Wizard of Oz, gave the story a heavy
science fiction/
fantasy emphasis and at first glance, gives only allusive references to most of the original story and the 1939 film. However, the revelation in the third part of
Tin Man that the heroine, DG, is a descendant of Dorothy Gale indicates that the series may portray a future version of Oz, rather than a re-imagining.
Comics
The novel was adapted into a comic book in 2005, illustrated/painted by Enrique Fernandez and adapted by David Chauvel, with almost all dialogue and narration taken directly from Baum's original. The comic was originally published in 2005 in France, where it won the prestigious Grand Prix de La Ville De Lyon Award of Illustration. In 2006, it was adapted into English and published in America by
Image Comics.
Other comics art adaptations of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz have been published both in the USA and in other countries.
The Wizard of Oz served as the inspiration for the 1994 Legion of Super-heroes annual from
DC Comics, with the characters traveling down a star path to rescue Valor (Mon El) from the villainous Star Finger.
The comic book
Dorothy was launched by
Illusive Arts Entertainment in November 2005. Presented in semi-
fumetti style using digitally altered photographs, this retelling of Baum's story has been updated to 2005 and "stars" model
Catie Fisher as 16-year-old Dorothy Gale, a disaffected youth with dyed hair and piercings who steals her uncle's car and runs away from home ... until she encounters a
tornado and is knocked unconscious. She awakens in a strange land and utters: "I don't think this is Kansas ... maybe it's
Colorado." This version of the tale, created by
Greg Mannino, written by
Mark Masterson with artwork by Greg Mannino and
Ray Boersig, is in part a retelling of Baum's tale and in part a retelling of the 1939 movie version of the story, as it incorporates elements of the Judy Garland film.
An erotic re-telling of the story is featured in
Lost Girls, by
Alan Moore and
Melinda Gebbie, in which an adult Dorothy meets
Alice from
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
Wendy Darling from
Peter Pan and the trio recount the stories of their respective works as allegories for their sexual awakenings.
Oz no Mahōtsukai
An
Anime adaptation of four of Baum's Oz books known as
Oz no Mahoutsukai was created in
1986. It consists of 52 episodes and follows the story of Dorothy and her adventures in Oz with the Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow. It continues on to the story of
Ozma and
Mombi, and follows through the events of other Oz books.
In
1987, HBO purchased the rights to the series and dubbed/edited together key episodes of the series into a series of movies. Production for the English version was done by the Canadian studio
Cinar. Actress Margot Kidder was hired as narrator for the series, which aired as a mini-series.
An earlier, feature-length anime adaptation of the story was made by
Toho in
1982 and was directed by
Fumihiko Takayama, with music by
Joe Hisaishi (known for composing the music to many of
Hayao Miyazaki's works). The English version of the movie stars
Aileen Quinn as the voice of Dorothy. Like the 1939 Judy Garland film version, this anime take on
The Wizard of Oz ends the story with Dorothy's trip home to Kansas after visiting the Wizard, and is a musical boasting original vocal songs such as "It's Strictly Up To You," "I Dream Of Home," and "A Wizard Of A Day," all sung by Aileen Quinn in the English version. The lyrics to these songs were by
Sammy Cahn and
Allen Byrnes. This film was seemingly made with the American market in mind, as it was released in the United States before it premiered in Japan. In the U.S., it was released on video and syndicated to local television stations.
The Wonderful Galaxy of Oz
This is another Japanese animation consisting of twenty-six episodes, this time involving Dorothy and the characters traveling in space around the galaxy of Oz. It was dubbed and edited into the feature-length (75 minute)
Supêsu Oz no bôken for the U.S.
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz'.
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