Elephants, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

Elephants, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

Revised this 14th of October 2023

In pursuit of my continuing education in creative writing. I have been researching many of the classics; L Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the most recent. (Here is a link to a free online copy if you like: http://www.literature.org/authors/baum-l-frank/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz/index....)

I was disturbed to find how much MGM's 1939 version differs from the original story written and published by Baum in September of 1900. The first edition of 10,000 sold out in pre-sales before it was printed. The second printing of 15,000 also sold out before they could finish printing it. Despite this success, the first publisher went bankrupt, and Baum had to find a new publisher. The next printings netted total sales of 250,000 books by the end of 1902. By 1938, when Sam Meyer bought the movie rights, the book had sold over a million copies. It was the unexpected commercial success of the twentieth century. What makes these numbers so fantastic is it means that one out of every seven households in America had a copy of his book.

The aforementioned is more astonishing if you read the book. Baum wrote it as a children's story. The writing is poor by today's standards for creative writing. It is full of almost every novice mistake we are told about in our writing classes and online forums. A gigantic 'Tell' of the first order. If you had not seen the movie and wanted to know what the late Paul Harvey would call "The rest of the story." I doubt many modern readers or writers would finish reading the book. Yet, this story has made millions of people happy worldwide. Of course, MGM's rewrite, casting, and the first showing of color in movie theaters did much to transform this story into the classic we all now think about. Only two movies were made in this new color format in 1939: The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.

Though MGM left out much in the screenplay rewrite, they kept some of Baum's story in the movie; I was surprised to finally understand why the start and finish of the movie were made in black and white. I originally thought it was Victor Fleming's surprise introduction of color into the movies. However, it was his keeping with Baum's story description of the dank and gray Kansas. In nearly every image that Baum constructed, the word gray is included; this is in bold contrast to the vibrant colors Dorothy experiences when she finds herself in the land of OZ.

I was bowled over to find there was no Mrs. Gulch (she was invented for the screenplay.) Uncle Henry and Aunty Em's house was a small one-room building, and the storm cellar's entrance was through a trap door in the middle of the house. There was no mention of the farmhands Hunk, Zeke, or Hickory; they did not exist in the book.

Here is a colossal let-down: Dorothy's shoes were not ruby slippers; they were heavy silver shoes, not silver colored, but silver as in the metal. Oh ...Oh ...Oh, and the good witch of the north was not Glinda. She was not a young, beautiful, floating vision with a shiny jeweled crown, but instead, she was short, old, and wrinkled with a pointy hat. Glinda is the good witch of the south, whom Dorothy seeks out after the premature take-off of Oz in his old balloon. (This happens in the middle of the story, not at the end.)

I was dazed to discover that the tin-man was once a real man. He lost his limbs to misfortune with his axe, which the wicked witch had cursed so his wife-to-be would not marry him. She was to stay home to serve the old woman she lived with. The old woman purchased the curse for two sheep and a cow to prevent the Tin Man's marriage.

I was taken aback to learn that Kalidahs nearly ate them! What is a Kalidah, you may ask?

To quote the Lion, "They are monstrous beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers," replied the Lion, "and with claws so long and sharp that they could tear me in two as easily as I could kill Toto. I'm afraid of the Kalidahs."

Then, there is the matter of the Poppy field. They did not get there from the woods. No! The foursome landed there after a great stork rescued them from their run-away raft when they tried to cross a river.

It was not Glinda that saved them from the poisoned poppies with snow. But rather, it was the queen of the field mice. Who after the Tin-Man chopped off the head of the wildcat chasing her. She commanded her army of mice to carry the stranded Lion out of the field of sour poppies. The scarecrow and Tin-Man had already carried Dorothy, as they were not affected, but they could not get the Lion because he was too heavy for them.

No horses of a different color or animals are allowed in OZ (the city).

Oh my goodness, MGM screwed the pooch when they left out the backstory of the winged monkeys in chapter 14. Who knew how sad was their origins or how vain the princess of the north, whom we knew nothing of? In addition, we were never told of the Quadlings or the Dainty China Country, where both people and animals were made of porcelain. There was nothing of the Winkies either, the kindly, whiskered people enslaved by the wicked witch of the West.

It appears that I still need to learn about being concise, as it has taken all this time to try to explain my point: Hollywood seldom does any story justice, and just because something is a classic success does not mean it is well written. The next new wonder on the bookshelves could be the story you or I ripped apart in a Writing.com review.

I will be mindful of my advice when offering my opinions because no matter how dreadful his writing, Baum's adventure will air at least twice this year on Network Television as it has for the last 84 years.

I should comment that his writing skill is much improved in his following books, which did not gain anywhere near the notoriety as his first endeavor. These other works, too, are available online for free. http://www.literature.org/authors/baum-l-frank/

Though of the week from Joey C