Customer Reviews

The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum

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Failed! Failed! Failed! is the basic story of L. Frank Baum, the man who created some of the best-loved characters in children's fiction and "set the stage" for the outstanding film that became the highlight of Judy Garland's career.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,' published when Baum was 44, is a distinctly upbeat American story that avoids the grim horror and gloom of European stories in the same genre. The Emerald City is a mythical version of America, happily isolated from real life and filled with wondrous new technology and unlimited resources. Baum emphasized American qualities of egalitarianism, tolerance, suspicion of all elites and a deep mistrust of all leaders -- even elected ones. The 'Wizard' is a typical American politician, a little man always hiding behind a screen of pretense, fantasy and make-believe.

As an immigrant, Loncraine has great insight in understanding Americans and Oz; for her, many attitudes taken for granted in this country are new and intriguing. The 'Oz' books became instantly popular because they reflect the inner spirit of America, which explains why Baum was deluged with requests to write more and more about Dorothy and Oz. Often it takes an outsider to notice the differences which make us unique.

Born in 1856, Baum had an upper-middle-class upbringing by a father who was a prominent businessman. He was fascinated by the imagery and make-believe of the theatre; after his early success on the New York stage, his father gave him a string of theatres. He began writing comedies and melodramas until business troubles, not entirely his own, ended this venture.

When he was 26 he married Maud Gage, an independent-minded woman who was a suffragette and early feminist. It suited him perfectly, which helps explain why Dorothy is such a strong-minded figure in the Oz books. Two years later he went west and into a string of failures. It wasn't until he moved to Chicago in 1897 and founded 'The Show Window,' a journal which taught shopkeepers how to effectively display goods in their store windows, that success began.

In 'The Show Window,' Loncraine writes, "Baum reveled in the use of trapdoors, invisible mirrors, false walls, and altered perspectives that enabled him to 'make ordinary Things' in shop-front windows 'appear marvelous'." His theatrical background and experiences further west were the basis of his success.

But, he wanted to write. He published 'Mother Goose in Prose' in 1897, then began work on a new story about a child who travels from the dull grey west to a marvelous land called Oz. The story "... came out of the farmlands, woodlands, and lakes of his childhood, the nightmarish Civil War amputees he must have seen, the scarecrow that had haunted his dreams, and the folktales he had read; it came out of his experiences out West, amid drought, cyclones, and rural poverty, out of the gleaming fake White City of the Chicago World's Fair, and out of his fascination with illusions and tricks."

In brief, Loncraine explains how 'Oz' is really America itself and how Baum, with barely a high school education, became one of the most popular authors of the early Twentieth century. Like Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others, he reflected the American psyche. This book it adds fascinating detail and explains why 'Oz' became a stage play and finally a great movie.

It is a beautiful book, and adds immensely to anything and everything associated with 'The Wizard of Oz.'

Like many of the other reviewers, I have been a life long fan of Oz. When I saw this book, I had to read it. L. Frank Baum was an interesting man living in interesting times. Unfortunately the book is choppy and insufficiently researched. The author appears to have been unable to gather the appropriate information to allow her to convey legitimate occurrences. The book is absolutely filled with "might have" and "must have" statements. One example of many is that based on Baum's early residence in Syracuse and knowledge that P.T. Barnum's show traveled through Syracuse during the same period, that Baum may have visited the show or must have seen the parade. The author then takes the liberty to suppose that Baum's thinking and therefore later works were influenced in some way by Barnum. Making this sort of supposition now and then is one thing, but this book is overrun with them. The first hundred pages (the early years of Baum's life) are especially ponderous. The few facts that the author was able to locate are over expanded by repetition, relation of parallel events and the author's attempt to psychoanalyze the subject. The book flows better as Baum relocates his family to South Dakota and he takes over the reins of a local newspaper. Obviously his newspaper clippings were available and this book begins to more closely resemble a biography. Unfortunately, the momentum is short lived and the last few chapters become a running superficial review of one Oz book after the next. This work is a complete tease. I have to believe that a more accomplished biographer could do wonders with the subject matter. If you must read this book, save your money and borrow it from the library.

Almost everyone in the United States knows the story of the Wizard of Oz. Whether you're familiar with it from TV reruns of the 1939 MGM classic or from reading the books, chances are you're well acquainted with Dorothy and her quest to follow the Yellow Brick Road.

What you may not know is that like Dorothy, her creator, L. Frank Baum, experienced a tornado when he was young. Or that Baum's interest in spiritualism informed his creation of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.

In his Oz books, Baum clearly followed the old adage: write what you know. He may not have physically been to Oz and walked through the Emerald City, but he used everything from his life to inform his creations. Rebecca Loncraine [...] takes a detailed look at Baum's life and its ties to his fiction in The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum.

She begins eight years before Baum's birth with a glimpse at the growing fad for mediums who could contact the dead and the effects of a diphtheria epidemic on Baum's family. Her attention to detail is great, and a reader comes away from the early parts of the biography with a full understanding of growing up in the latter half of the 19th century. At times, the level of detail can frustrate a reader, who wants to get to the good stuff, when Baum comes into his own and begins writing.

Patience is a virtue as each chapter detailing Baum's young life sets the stage for the next chapter. His family newspaper, created when he was a child, holds the seeds of his later fiction. As does his interest in theater. In 1882, Baum married Maud Gage. His close ties with her family would lead him to follow his brother-in-law to Dakota Territory where he experienced droughts and conditions similar to those Dorothy Gale would face before her fateful tornado ride. He also wrote about reports of Sitting Bull's ghost dancers in his Aberdeen Saturday pioneer, a newspaper he acquired in 1889.

Baum began working on The Wizard of Oz in 1898. He drew on his memories of Civil War amputees, his fear of scarecrows, the Chicago World's Fair and a powerful imagination to create his world. His niece, Dorothy Gage, was born one month after Baum started writing. She would die five months later.

Once The Wizard of Oz is published, Loncraine's book picks up momentum. Oz becomes a incredible success, allowing Baum to write other fairy tales and to further explore Oz. He creates a stage musical of the book, which dazzled audiences with its use of electric light and stage trickery.

Financially successful, Baum continues the Oz series, using the books to create a world that should be, rather than the world rapidly growing in the 20th century. Uncle Henry and Auntie Em face bankruptcy in an Oz sequel so Dorothy arranges for them live in a utopian Oz.

Loncraine follows Baum through the wild success of Oz and his alter ego pseudonyms, his financial highs and lows, all the while emphasizing Baum's love of children and childhood and his dedication to imagination. The book continues past his death in 1918 to Maud's attendance at the 1939 MGM premiere.

The Real Wizard of Oz isn't just a biography of L. Frank Baum, but a biography of Oz. The two are intertwined, perhaps just as Baum would have it be.

L Frank Baum was a man of ideas, typical of the times he grew up in when electric light was just coming into common use and life on the frontier was losing its primitive reputation. Baum didn't really know any trade but he had a bent for publishing, decorating, and salesmanship. He married a woman whose mother was a well-known suffragette and the two of them went to live in the Dakota territory where Baum endeavored to support the family of six (four boys) by opening a grand emporium. He had a flair for choosing bright beautiful objects to make the frontier homes look sophisticated, despite the fact that they sat on the edge of the vast dusty plains. The store failed but Baum never forgot the isolation and loneliness of the Great Plains. Nor did he forget the illuminating sight of the Chicago Exposition with its White City, a marvelous construction of fake walls and statuary, lit by thousands of lightbulbs and surrounded by shimmering pools. In Chicago he was a traveling salesman whose fortunes turned around somewhat when he began to design store windows, another piece of fakery that enchanted the passersby. Put this together with his respect for women, and let it percolate, and one day Baum sat down and began to write an extraordinary book for children he called "The Emerald City" in which a strong minded little girl escapes from the dreary plains of Kansas and winds up in a pretend city overseen by a humbug of a wizard whose work consists of using carefully staged tricks to maintain a pretense of power. The story, following on the limited success of Baums Tales of Father Goose, made him an overnight sensation and he was able to feed his family and settle them in comfort at last. Rebecca Loncraine has de-mythologized the many folk legends about the creation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and taken us through the production of the movie and the growth of the book and movie as an integral part of American folklore.
Barbara Bamberger Scott (See my many reviews at Curled Up With a Good Book - I specialize in "non-fiction with a human face")

An enjoyable reading of the life and times of America's first writer of fairy tales. I found Ms. Loncraine work to be most comprehensive as she analyzed Baum's life within the context of his times and then connected suggested influences to his volume of work. The only real stick I have (a very small one) is she does seem to stretch a bit when matching influences to Baum's written stories. I recommend this work to anyone who enjoys fantasy, interested in the world in the late 1800's or early 1900's or just enjoys excellent biography.

This book tells the story of the creator of the beloved tales of Oz. Author Rebecca Loncraine feels the geographical places and the historical times where and when L. Frank Baum lived informed his writing and most specifically influenced this most famous work "The Wizard of Oz". For instance, she describes how his life in North Dakota parallels the dull drab plain that Dorothy leaves for the colorful world of Oz. She shows how the influence the suffrage movement influenced his use of female characters (and his publishers' responses to them).

Baum is a man of many talents. Before Oz, he was a manager of entertaining road shows and a traveling sales rep. As an entrepreneur and he owned, as sole proprietor, a luxury goods store, a newspaper and a trade magazine devoted to display windows. His loves his wife, writing, gardening and the world and personalities of Oz which he feels he discovered (as opposed to created).

Despite the many good things about this book, I can not give it 5 stars. Some areas need more attention, others need pruning.

Baum's editorials from the "Aberdeen Daily News", which may be at the heart of his character, are presented, but only slightly discussed. Little is said of this children's author's relationship with his own children. (Did he take his kids to Cairo and/or on other travels? Why did Maud go alone to the opening of the film when her children were present?) Similarly, more is needed on Baum's association with Wallace Denslow.

Some text could be shortened. For instance, giving just enough on the Chicago World's Fair for the author to build her thesis that it was the inspiration for Emerald City. Spiritualism, similarly is overdone. (Dorothy's heal clicking having its genesis in the Fox sister's toe clicking seems to be stretching.)

This is a good readable book and if you are interested in Baum and his period, this is a good starting point. It may be a starting point for future biographers as well.

I don't feel I got much of a sense at all of who L. Frank Baum was from this biography. The main problem I found here was that the book meanders, and not in a delightful kind of way. We hear a little about Baum's life, then a lot about the Dakota Territory, or theater at the turn of the century, or spiritualism, or early Hollywood, or gardening, or any number of things. These are all loosely connected to Baum's life, but the detours away from the facts are too long. By all accounts Baum was a wonderful father, but we hear very, very little about his sons or his family life, even though it's mentioned that there are many letters existing from parents to child. We hear more about Baum's mother in law, or cousins. We are told Baum is a bad manager of money, but I don't think it's ever well spelled out exactly how this is the case. The writing of the Oz books and their reception, surely the main interest of many a reader, are not a big part of the book either. We are told almost as much about the writing of his lessor books.

I get the feeling overall that this book was poorly researched, and to make it longer, marginal topics lightly connected to Baum's life are puffed up, and such more important topics as details of the births of his children are lightly written about. The writing isn't bad---it's a little overwrought at parts---and I enjoyed the bits and pieces about the parts of Baum's life that were more interesting than the tangential topics, but I hope I find another biography to read at some point that is a bit better done.

I grew up on Oz, as I watched the 1939 film nearly everyday as a child. I was excited that the new blue-ray included the TV bio-pic about Baum with John Ritter, which I had enjoyed when it came on TV years ago. After watching it again, I really wanted to learn more about Baum so my wife bought me this book. There is a wealth of information here, but even as a history buff myself, I found it quite distracting from what the book was supposed to be about. Much of it just goes on for paragraphs that have little connection to Baum except "he might have been there". I also found her way of conjuring imagery a bit heavy handed. It felt as if she was saying "look what a great writer I am". Most of the time it's very unneeded. Present your info, and be done with it. Pretty words don't make you a better writer if you over do it. Lastly, she starts to chip away at my last nerve with the extreme attention to political correctness she gives to certain aspects of the story. On the bright side, there are some really interesting passages about early film production, and life in the gilded age. It's full of information that I may use as a reference in the future, but I probably would never read it cover to cover again. It took me a month to get though it.

I think what the author of this book failed to do was: EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. If you like history of history of history, this book's for you. The author often went on tangents of Baum's childhood and adulthood, of living on the Plains. While they were cool points of history to note, they were almost sidebarred, foot noted information to contain. It took me about 4 weeks to get through this book for these reasons alone - it was just SO much information (albeit interesting) before we finally got into Oz territory around page 150. Prior to that, parts of his childhood did hint to Oz but it was only implied and not rooted by the author.

Overall, I wish I'd looked at another Baum biography first before drowning in this one.

A very interesting and well written book, especially in light of Gregory Maguire's "Wicked" series of novels. I have it out as a coffee table book, and my friends can't keep their hands off it---they flip and flip, which I think is great. This is a good book that's given a lot of pleasure to many people.