Finding Dorothy: The Story Behind the Wizard of Oz

[Music] called the most influential film of all time its characters and catchphrases have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore are ingrained in our culture there's no place like home [Music] hard to imagine there's anything new to learn about the story made famous by this 80 year old film so many ways three books instead best-selling author Elizabeth let's wrote one captivating book that will have you feeling like Dorothy in this iconic scene seeing things from a whole new perspective once upon a time dreams were made by hand but now they were mass-produced these 44 acres were their assembly line finding Dorothy is the story behind the epic story of The Wizard of Oz originally a children's book that came out in 1900 by L frank Baum he died in 1919 20 years before the movie it was his wife Maude who Elizabeth lets learned would go to MGM meet Judy Garland and watched the making of the book turned movie and the more that you look into the story the more you discover that it was not a story that Frank made up out of nowhere it was really in a very profound way the story of their life together so it wasn't just his story but it was her story as well no wonder she was invested in trying to protect it and Maude Baum's story has a cast of strong female characters sound familiar you know who has the power in Oz right it's the Good Witch it's also the bad witch and of course it's definitely Dorothy and that isn't a mistake that isn't something that's not an interpretation that was really baked into the DNA of the story was this very modern belief in women's equality Maude wasn't your typical girl of the 1880s she was an outspoken tomboy raised by a separate jet who was friends with Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton it wasn't chic in those days right you know that was they they got a lot of bad bad feedback for the Hat Elizabeth let's takes us on the colorful journey of mod Baum's life and this historical fiction each chapter revealing a little more of The Wizard of Oz's influences both the book and the movie and the more unbelievable the story seems I looked into it because and I'm skeptical right and this doesn't sound like a true story the more likely it is to be true let's separate some of the books facts from fiction and how she stays true to the characters despite the occasional research roadblock and I'm going no no more who or what what and you don't know and that's the thing with history is like the documents take you to one place but when there's when you feel like there's got to be more are you allowed to kind of as a fiction writer you could push that door open plus despite years of Wizard of Oz research the photo that surprised her while on book tour a beautiful picture that of course I'd never seen I mean almost started falling right in front of her next in this first-person one on blonde with Elizabeth flats presented by st. Louis County Library and HEC media Elizabeth let's thank you so much for joining us oh I'm so excited to be here you know Wizard of Oz i i went home this weekend and all over my room my bedroom when i was growing up our posters movie posters of The Wizard of Oz Judy Garland my daughter she's 3 she loves The Wizard of Oz like it's just this thing that knows no time limit it's so true it seems like it's existed forever it's really almost hard to believe that events originally it was actually invented by someone it does and yet because of your book I was looking at those movie posters and those pictures of Judy Garland a little bit differently than I had in the past well that's good because that's what I'm hoping for have you gone back and watched the movie or reread the books I did I watched the movie you know it came back into theaters for a short run recently yeah and so I had never seen it on the big screen which is very typical of women of my generation we all saw it on TV and so the film was completely remastered and it was really just extraordinary and I noticed so many things I had never noticed before but one of the things that really made me happy was that it felt modern it didn't feel dated or old or anything it just felt like The Wizard of Oz and what is it I mean it's 80 years old the movie is 80 years old a 80th anniversary of the film 93rd 9 yes so what is it about I mean it because it has the stain I mean like I said my three-year-old loves it yeah what's the staying power of it well I think you know the Smithsonian called The Wizard of Oz America's first homegrown fairytale and it really when you think about it it is it's our story it's the American story and I think there's something so kind of quintessentially American about it so you have the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow represents you know our love of our agrarian past and farming but then you have the Tin Man and the Tin Man is you know made out of machines and we love everything mechanical and futuristic and you have the yellow brick road that people followed that's our history that's our present we love Americans are people who like to go but then we also love our homes I think I've heard you like in this book too when it came out as popularity I mean millions and millions of copies that sequels millions millions I've heard you liking it - kind of like the Harry Potter series of a time right that was what I realized when I started looking into it so um The Wizard of Oz we know it from the movie right but originally it was a book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which was published in 1900 the author EL frank Baum and it was an immediate overnight success it was a giant phenomenon they didn't have movies then but there was a play it opened in a musical play it opened in Chicago and it then it toured the country it went to Broadway and it went all over and so if you were growing up in the early 20th century you would have known the book and then they started putting out a book a year every year around Christmas the book would come out so at the time 1939 when they were making the movie The Wizard of Oz they were the people that were you know adults at that time they knew those characters and they knew that book it was something really really familiar to them yeah they felt I'm sure they felt an ownership of those characters sure as you write yeah I'm just like I think that's what you see with the Harry Potter phenomenon now so yes it was very much like that and that surprised me I thought that you know I thought it was the film that had had created it but no actually that that mythology was already going before that frank Baum used to get fan mail from children by the wheelbarrow full oh well so that's interesting because we know a lot about JK Rowling and how that all started frank baum not that much not that much right and and that was really for me that was kind of the starting place I didn't know anything about him and I was reading the book aloud to my son about six or seven years ago as a bedtime story I had read it as a child and honestly the book didn't make such a big impression on me when when I was reading it it was um it was the movie that I remembered but I was reading it to my son all of a sudden I thought well it's got this whole different layer that I never you know how that happens when you reading something or or see a movie and it's supposed to be for children but then right there's this whole other level that's what happened and that's when I realized that I didn't know anything about the author and so I'm an author and I thought why don't did he ever write another book who is this fellow el frank baum what's they all stand for you yeah and so I looked him up and that was how I got interested in the first place and then I saw that you were interested but you knew that it was a real book that you could write when you saw a picture is that right that's right so one of the things I learned when I looked him up was that he dedicated the book to his wife his wife's name was Maude and the dedication which I really loved was to my good friend and comrade my wife and so I discovered that Maude herself was this very strong woman very well educated one of the first women to attend the Ivy League and her mother was a famous suffragists and advocate for the rights of women so when I discovered that I was interested in it but it didn't say to me Elizabeth write a book about this it just seemed like an interesting background at some point later though I that was when I found this picture and the picture was a picture of Maude bomb at the time she was Frank's widow so she was 77 78 years old on the set at MGM with Judy Garland and I thought wait a minute there's there's a link between the story and the movie and the link is his wife and as the book was dedicated to her and that's when I became intrigued and thought I need to find out what the story is behind the story is that how you decided to write this book it's based around Maude not Frank Maude is that how you decide kind of that yeah that's the evolution of that yes yes and Frank is a fascinating character for sure and Frank you know there's been there have been lots of biographies written a Frank which I used in my research not as much as known about model though there was quite a bit of research about her too but no one's ever written a book about her but I thought to myself okay you know she was there so Frank died in 1919 Frank wrote the book died and now it's 20 years later and I I just assumed that there was no connection between the story and the movie but so think about Maude she's 77 she's 78 she's the last person alive who really knows the story secrets and the more that you look into the story the more you discover that it was not a story that Frank made up out of nowhere it was really in a very profound way the story of their life together so it wasn't just his story but it was her story as well no wonder she was invested in trying to protect it and part of that story the movie The Wizard of Oz is the book The Wizard of Oz is is really kind of a girl-power kind of story isn't it well you don't see that at first you don't you don't think I had never thought of it that way but I was interested in this idea that the bomb family and when I say the bomb family you have Maude and you have Frank and you have the mother-in-law they were all very close Matilda Joslyn gaz'd was this towering figure a real intellectual a close friend of susan b anthony z' so much so that susan b anthony would stay at their house so often that she actually carved her name in one of the upstairs windows and their house is now a museum and so Maude grew up with that and you know when I looked into the story you might kind of think oh tension the mother-in-law she's this right no they were very very close and it was clear that the ideas that were circulating through Maude's family that frankly that really came to embrace them as well and you when you start to look at the story you think okay you know who has the power in Oz right it's the good witch it's also the bad witch and of course it's definitelya Dorothy and that isn't a mistake that isn't something that's not an interpretation that was really baked into the DNA of the story was this very modern belief in women's equality well obviously when you read a book that is a historical fiction you always go this is you know where where's that where are the facts yeah and you do a great job at the end of the book you come out and I don't want to spoil too much but let's just suffice it to say that the evolution of a lot of those characters that's real that's that yes based on facts so I did a tremendous amount of research and I've written some other books that are not fiction my last two books were both history nonfiction so I come to writing with a background of really digging into the facts and doing a lot of research so everything you don't need to make up things about the bombs because they had a very extraordinary life Frank was kind of you know he was a happy handsome imaginative person just the person you would hope he would be totally impractical you know and so they moved and they kept trying was a jack of all trades and master of none he kept trying different careers and none of them really panned out for him he loved the arts he loved to sing and he loved to do he was in plays it was a drama and and all of that kind of thing that was what what his passion was when I was doing the research I decided to stick with the facts of their life and you know so where they went and what they did and the things that happened that's all based on fact and I'll give you a story they're one of my favorite stories that it didn't make its way into the book which is true and seems like it shouldn't be is the story of frank Baum and his jacket so on the set of The Wizard of Oz they were looking for a jacket for Frank Morgan who played the wizard to wear during the scenes where he was playing professor Marvel they wanted kind of an old you know turn-of-the-century coat that looked kind of used so the costume manager went down to a second-hand store on Hollywood Boulevard and she bought a rack of used coats brought them back to the set and Frank Morgan started trying them on until he found one that fit it turns out that that coat that Frank Morgan that he wears in the movie had a label inside and the label said al frank Baum I'm so glad you brought that story up because as I was reading the book that's one was it really his jack and that was one of the notes I took exactly that reordered shake that out so I looked into it because I'm skeptical right and this doesn't sound like a true story so but but the most definitive sources that that were that were that I looked into they all said the same thing they said that they swore up and down that the publicist said that this was the truth and that the two other people who vouched were one of them was Maude and the other one was the tailor in Chicago I guess there was a tailor label and said oh yes indeed we made we made jackets for frank baum well so it seems like it couldn't be true but think about this Frank and Maude Baum lived in Hollywood from 1910 until the end of his life and Maude still lived there when they were making the movie I have been to that place where their house was it is one block from Hollywood Boulevard in one block you can walk so it's not as improbable as it seems but that's the kind of thing that's there and there's this kind of I don't know serendipity or magic in Oz that you just you you run into it all the time and it makes you so happy that it's there one of the things I love about the book too is is it sprinkled throughout the book are pieces that little hints to The Wizard of Oz and and and a lot of them are based off of real things that happen that yeah influenced Frank Wright in this writing like for example the Tin Man yeah the Tin Man story the Scarecrow huh story the witch's yes all of that comes from fact yes love it it's and we don't want to give it away because it's part of the fun unless there's any kind of little hint you want to give tinny well one of the things that's so I can tell you a little bit about the witches because I don't think this gives away too much but um Matilda Joslyn gage as I said she was a very progressive woman and she became interested in the history of witchcraft and she wrote a book in which she did a quite a bit of research she thought that a lot of times it was smart women who were being accused of witchcraft and that witchcraft was basically being used to kind of keep women down and keep them in their place and so there was a very direct tie between Matilda and her beliefs and and the presence of the witches in oz you talked about a little bit about your search yes and and going different places where did your research take you did you go to Aberdeen I did I went to Aberdeen South Dakota and the reason that Aberdeen is important is that in the late 1880s Frank and Maude moved to Aberdeen at that time it was Dakota Territory Frank as I said very impractical and he was it was also I should say though it was a it was a time when it was difficult for people to find a way to make a living it was a time when the world was really rapidly industrializing people were moving into cities and into factories and so if you wanted to be a small business man or something like that it was kind of really hard to find your place so I had a lot of sympathy with that but Frank decides he's gonna move out to Aberdeen lots of opportunities and it's a it's a farming town it's a very new farming town so little town on the Prairie not very much around it and just farmers around it and so does he decide to sell you know overalls or like pitchforks no he decides that what this tiny little town needs is an Emporium he calls it bombs bazaar right and he fills it to the rafters with things like silver tongs and Japanese lanterns and particularly more than a hundred kinds of toys so um perhaps it wasn't the smartest business decision but it was just a very frank like thing to do that just kind of illustrates the the character that he was just yes and that's also a hundred percent true so I went to Aberdeen and in Aberdeen I was able to see the two houses that they lived in two different houses while they lived there they're both still standing in the library one of the bomb descendants it was mods suck i believe cousin donated all her papers at the end of her life to the public library and so the lovely librarian she just assured me into a room and started bringing me these boxes and i opened them up and it was like family photo albums pictures of the family and one of the things that really touched me so much it was this little handkerchief that had been hand laced Mitnick added by Maude I talked about Maude taking up sewing or helping to support her family through sewing in the book and so just to see a real artifact like that it really a lot to me you also got to read her sister's journal right yes Julie is German yes that I found in another place so moths sister Julia had a very difficult life and I think that when you really look and you're trying to find the inspirations for Kansas I'm sure that a lot of it is down there modern Frank lived in the town but her sister had really went out and lived on a homestead and it was quite remote in now what's now North Dakota you know just the four walls and the windows and the weather the wolves outside really difficult life there were other factors that also made her life really hard what you read about in the book she kept a diary a very very detailed diary and it was I found it in the North Dakota Historical Society where you could really read about the daily facts of her life it was her life in kind of the situations with her daughter that really brought you to tears when reading it yeah very tough and but I you know I really think that if you read that that you can find the seeds of the of the story and of Dorothy herself wanting to escape and that's yes yes and that's really where the fiction comes in so there are so many facts that are known there are so many things and I'm not going to go make things up if it's already known but then there's these places where there's there's you know when you go back to those primary source documents as a researcher as me and you in your reading and then you get to this point and then they say only so much so there was for example in this diary there was this one night and there was this line and all it said this is a woman who documented everything in great detail when she ate and everything all it said what a terrible night and you know you chill doesn't it yes and in her handwriting and I'm going no no more for what what and you don't know and that's the thing with history is like the documents take you to one place but when there's when you feel like there's got to be more and you're allowed to kind of as a fiction writer you could push that door open and if you've done a good job creating those characters and making them really round and full-blooded and learn about what their lives were really like then then I think that you can make it believable and it's the reader who decides you know the reader if it you'll know if it feels like it's right were there some days that were so draining you would what parts were were so hard for you to write there's a part where mod gets sick she you know so this is the 19th century and health care was not what it was and childbirth was very dangerous for women and I am I have a background so I was a nurse midwife and I worked in that field for about 20 years while I was getting started writing books and so as I was reading mods history I found out that she had suffered from a complication that would be possibly fatal in 2019 much less you know back when she had it and I was shocked you know and I started reading about her illness and I started researching and I kept thinking how on earth did she did she survive and it took her about two years to recover so that part was really emotional for me thinking about you know thank goodness now childbirth is so much safer and something like that would be very unlikely to happen but then I kept thinking about how much grit did this woman have to to live through it was very very so that part was painful and then the other part was the part that we talked about before the part I'm in South Dakota but then again another part that I found really emotionally I guess intense and all of the scenes with Judy Garland I knew you were here to say that yeah because it just it breaks your heart because you don't when you watch The Wizard of Oz yeah you don't think about that at all the things that were that happened and that's well documented I'm very well documented yes and she was fifteen-year-old girl when they started filming and think about Hollywood in those days it's interesting because the reason that Louie be mayor wanted to make the film was that Disney had had a really big success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which is an animated film they didn't know if you could really do an anta see on film they weren't sure but but they were going to try and because special effects were coming along and they were going to kind of invent this as they went along but the real difficulty with Oz was that it had the entire story hangs on it on a world child and a bunch of people and animal and other costumes right so so and actually there was only one really famous child star at the time and it was Shirley Temple and so they did think maybe Shirley Temple if you could can you imagine no no Judy Dorothy is Judy Garland I love Shirley Temple but but no and but so they decided to take a take a chance on on Judy but it was a big-budget film they put a lot of money into it MGM was a pressure-cooker in those days they controlled every aspect of her life and it was the Great Depression so you get a job in a studio that has a steady paycheck you you know you're nobody's gonna tell you you're when you're mistreated they're gonna tell you to you know basically suck it up that's what she did so so that was hard and also Judy Garland because you know for me I just had this you know as so many of us do there's something about Judy that makes made people love her and we all feel like we know her and I should say my mother oddly enough met Judy Garland twice and so I think that maybe was also kind of something that helped me form a connection with her she she was on the ice she went and saw some movies at MGM yeah when she was when my mom was a little girl she went she went on the set and she saw Judy Garland not filming The Wizard of Oz but it was the Harvey girl so not much longer afterwards so my mom was actually able to describe what it was like to go in as an observer but then my mom met her again toward the end of her life toward the end of Judy's life my mom was working as a waitress and yes she came in and I guess every day for a week you know her and her entourage were coming in with their furs and everything and my mom was waiting on tables and bringing the and of course she's so starstruck and she said Judy at the you know toward the end she kind of sees her and a beckons her over and says wouldn't you like an autograph dear and my mom says yes and so she got her autograph and so she told me you know she said that she was just a beautiful gracious warm human being in person that's what's gonna ask you when you're writing this day what is it like for you I mean at any point did you think oh this is such a beloved story The Wizard of Oz is such a beloved story then to go to the man who wrote it did you ever have any you know apprehension of that and then I think if I had been clever I would have thought Wizard of Oz know everyone knows the story what are you - you know Judy Garland you're gonna put her in your book I don't know why that never occurred to me I was just I I really you know I think that that you might be able to agree with me with this somehow like there's something about the relationship we have with that movie and those characters that feel so personal that it wasn't until I got out and started talking about the story that I found it it wasn't just me it was all of us and so I didn't really worry I I don't I wasn't thinking about my audience or other people saying oh no I don't think you got that right but I certainly was thinking a lot about them and when you immerse yourselves in people's lives like that it's it's very uncanny they become very real to you you know they really they they seem to walk and talk and sometimes when you're writing that these things will come to you and you don't really know where they came from and I felt that so dramatically with this story and I think you know there's there's something that frank baum himself said where he believed that Oz was a real place he did not think that ours was a fantasy you know and so he loved children because children had these wonderful imaginations and when he would say Oz is a real place it's of course and he thought when we when you got older if you couldn't see Oz it was just because you had this you know veil over your eyes and if you could just push that veil aside you could see a plain as day so I thought about that a lot you know I thought I thought Frank doesn't mind you know he I'm trying to push aside that veil and I'm trying to see them and I'm trying to see them as they were and and it was very vivid to me as I was reading this I thought I wonder what his family think about this book that you've written and you actually had the occasion of meeting Frank and Maude's great-great-granddaughter yes I was in Ohio I'm on a book tour right now and she was standing in the signing line and she said I'm you know I'm want this book for my father and then she says I'm I'm Frank and Maude's great-great-great granddaughter then she opens a folder and in it there's a picture of Kenneth's bomb so that's one of Franken mods for children the youngest and she had a picture of him and then she had a picture of Maude standing in front of Oz cot which was what they called their house in Hollywood a beautiful picture that of course I'd never seen I mean I almost started bawling right in front of her and she was as nice as could possibly be and she was excited because she said you know I know I don't really its distant enough now from her she said she knows a few stories that she'd heard from her dad and that kind of thing but she really didn't know she's dying to learn the family story so I thought that was really neat so interesting it's it's fascinating too that that happened yes was there anything during your research because you do a lot of it I mean how many how long did it take you to research this it took me I mean I wrote I took me about three years to write it so I was researching maybe for a while before I started writing and then I kind of research as I go was there anything that you found fascinating but you couldn't find a way to put into the book oh so many ways I could have had three books but I was really really interested actually in Matilda Joslyn gage and so one of the things that I thought was really fascinating and I end up kind of just mentioning it in passing was that she actually for for 1876 which was the country's centennial she wrote with susan b anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton a declaration of the rights of women and they went down to Philadelphia where they were reading the entire Declaration of Independence in Independence Square the vice-president of the United States and the whole Independence Square was filled with thousands and thousands of people and they the women lied their way in and with faked press credentials or something and we're sitting up toward the front and secretly with them in their bags they had these hundreds of these declarations of the rights of women that they had printed out and so what they did is as the the vice-president was giving a speech they stormed the stage handed it to him he didn't know what did he was so surprised he took it and then walked out tossing these documents into the car today okay but it seventy-six can you imagine so I absolutely just I love that and I wrote I wrote a whole chapter about it didn't end up going into the book but the image of of that happening and one of the things that was really I thought was really great was that when they wrote it they dedicated it to they to the daughters of 1976 so they were saying a hundred years from now if we do this now we will will it'll be good for for us and you know sometimes I feel discouraged I think you know Judy Garland with harassment in the studio in 1939 and we're talking about me 280 years later and that's discouraging but then I think about about these women I think okay that's all right because they fought and they fought and maybe they didn't get it but their daughters did and maybe their daughters didn't get what my daughters are gonna get certainly my daughters are way out ahead of mine and yours will be even more so I think that gave me hope and that's that's ultimately the underlying story of The Wizard of Oz isn't it I think so I well it is I think that the underlying story of The Wizard of Oz encapsulated so beautifully in the song that Judy thinks and over the rainbow that's what it is it's it's it's hope it's even if you don't see that it's somewhere over the rainbow [Music] guys all 80 years after mod bomb watched Judy Garland sing this iconic song on the MGM set Elizabeth let's could find herself in a similar position finding Dorothy has been optioned for a movie I made the I believe it'll be I'll be the mod saying you know that's that [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: HEC Books

Views: 12,256

Rating: 4.8000002 out of 5

Keywords: Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, Judy Garland, MGM, Maud Baum, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, Elizabeth Letts, Finding Dorothy, Hollywood, Ozcot, suffragettes, Angie Weidinger, Peter Foggy

Id: yTb9WFH9vNU

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/missnettiemoore]

This is a great book, I'm almost done with. This interview with the author is great as well.