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Transcript of King Denslow of Oz

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Transcript of King Denslow of Oz 1 You’re listening to Suspension of Disbelief. I’m Eric Molinsky. When I was a kid, I was not a big fan of the Wizard of Oz. I recognized that the performers were amazing -- but the movie always felt kind of stagey. I could still see the seams on the costumes. And I felt like the camera was just about to catch a microphone hanging above the actors. Now ten years ago, I came across the original book from 1900 -- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum. The story is, you know, just like the movie – but the illustrations were SO charming. The shapes of the characters were really funny with big heads and little bodies. They were drawn with bold strokes. The expressions on the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were just as human as Ray Bolger and Jack Haley, but the characters really look like they’re made of straw and tin. Dorothy is like this scrappy 6 year old, who really looks like she’s from a farm. And the Lion was a LION like a big lion but he’s wearing spectacles and he’s got a little bow in his hair! The artist was William Wallace Denslow or W.W. Denslow. I had never heard of him. MPH: Had he illustrated more classics, we probably would know more of his books. But other than The Wizard of Oz, he’s pretty much forgotten. That’s Michael Patrick Hearn. He wrote biographies on L. Frank Baum and W.W. Denslow. And the story of their collaboration is completely fascinating. They men met in 1893 at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Baum had burned through a bunch of odd jobs and he had this side career as a writer, looking for an illustrator. Denslow was drawing cartoons for Hearst newspapers, and he wanted to do get into something more creative. They were really different men. Denslow was from this hardscrabble background. He was a party animal, but he was about to go sober and get his life together. L. Frank Baum came from money. And he was something of an introvert. But when they started work together, it was like magic. 2 MPH: The boys, Baum’s four sons, always spoke of the wonderful smell of Baum’s cigars and Denslow’s corncob pipe while they were working. And they cut up like a bunch of schoolboys – this how they described each other -- they really enjoyed each other’s company. And they had big ideas. They wanted to use color plates, which was a new technology at the time – a very expensive technology. The publisher said no. So Baum and Denslow paid for the color illustrations themselves. MPH: There are 24 color plates. There are over 100 two color textual illustrations that change as Dorothy goes from one place to another from gray Kansas to the blue Munchkin country to the green Emerald City, and eventually they go to the South where Glinda lives and the favorite color is red, so it’s like a rainbow effect when you leaf through the book. Now Oz was the second book that Baum and Denslow worked on. The first book – you’ve never heard of. I mean it sold okay. And if Oz hadn’t sold, they would have made another book with different characters. They were just looking for success. They did not expect a phenomenon. MPT: And there was sort of a competition between the two of them -- who was responsible for success of their books. Certainly the illustrations were the first thing that grabbed people, but the Wizard of Oz – the text and illustrations – it really was a marriage between the two of them. Their “marriage” was about to end in a very messy divorce. MPH: In 1902 they signed a contract for a musical comedy of the Wizard of Oz, and it turned out to be the Wicked of its day. It was the most successful musical comedy of the time. EM: It was literally Wicked. MPH: Yes, it was Wicked! EM: It wasn’t just like it! MPH: It wasn’t just like it, it was Wicked of 1902. And it was enormously successful. There were two touring companies. The musical comedy made Baum and Denslow wealthy men. EM: Wow even more than books? MPH: Even more than the books. And Baum, because Denslow owned half the copyright and control of the book, had to pay him half of what his royalty was 3 from the musical, although Denslow had very little to do with musical, and I think Baum resented that. Now Baum had rewritten the story for the stage, and Denslow apparently wasn’t happy with the changes Baum made – although they were all suggestions from the producer, who came from vaudeville. MPH: For example, Dorothy became a young woman rather than a little girl. Toto becomes a cow named Imogene. The Wizard became a wise cracking Irishman. There were all sorts of things -- a lot of, a lot of marching girls in tights. So Baum and Denslow parted ways. At this point, Denslow is getting illustration offers left and right. I mean is so famous, he can slap his name above the title. So when he illustrates Humpty Dumpty – it’s marketed as Denslow’s Humpty Dumpty. Meanwhile, L. Frank Baum hires another illustrator for a sequel to the Wizard of Oz – someone who is a much more conventional artist than Denslow. They create a newspaper comic strip to drum up interest in the sequel. And then Baum discovers that Denslow is ALSO writing a sequel to Oz, and ALSO creating a comic strip to drum up interest – because you know, Deslow still owns half the copyright. Naturally, Denslow’s book is called Denslow’s Scarecrow and Tin Man. In his story, the characters wander off the Broadway stage – which they think is the Land of Oz. MPH: And it was obviously designed to be a sequel to the musical as well as to the book. It was dedicated to Montgomery and Stone who played them in musical comedy, their pictures in the end papers and on the dedication page. ME: So did they change characterizations where suddenly the Wizard was an Irish drunk and there were dancing girls? MPH: Well, it wasn’t quite that bad! EM: So when they leave, are they in New York City? MPH: In New York City, yes. EM: Okay. MPH: Yes. They steal a car, they get into all kinds of troubles and it’s really the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman not Fred Stone and Dave Montgomery – so they’re very naïve about what could possibly happen in New York City. 4 Guess what? Denslow’s sequel is actually more successful than Baum’s. Of course Denslow’s book is silly and fun – it’s a crowd pleaser. Baum’s book is full of dense mythology about the history of Oz, and it doesn’t even have Dorothy in it. At this point, Denslow is flying high. He gets remarried. He has enough money to spend his winters drawing in Bermuda. MPH: One day he was going around the islands and there was this one island that was for sale. It’s now known as Bluck’s Island but Denslow purchased it, he built a mansion on it and he declared himself King Denslow the First of Denslow Island. EM: Was this jokingly or did he in any way have any delusions of grandeur? MPH: Of course he had delusions of grandeur, I think almost every ego, every artist has delusions of grandeur. EM: I guess anyone who declares themselves kind of an island. MPH: Yes! The press at the time thought it was pretty funny too. But Denslow’s kingdom was about to crumble. He had taken on too much work. His next few books were not about Oz and they didn’t sell as well, which was a big disappointment for him. He was commuting to Atlanta where he was working with a writer on a musical, which fell through. The stress got to him. He started drinking again. MPH: Well, one thing you have to also recognize is if you had a reputation of a drinker in those days, it wasn’t considered a disease, it was considered a sin. It was considered a flaw in your character. There was a lot of prejudice against someone who drank in those days -- particularly if you’re trying to do children’s books. I think he also may have suffered from manic depression, these highs and lows. When things were going well he was in great spirits but then he could fall down and be very, very depressed. His second wife left him. He sold the island. For a man who would be king, his career got very small. MPH: Evidently he sold a cover design for the old Life Magazine, which was a humor magazine, and this was probably the most significant sale he had in several years. He got a nice check from it. He went to celebrate. Evidently he 5 was going from bar to bar to bar or something like this -- he went on a jag as they say in those days and he caught phenomena and died. He was buried in pauper’s grave, an unmarked grave. Only recently was a marker put up to signify the illustrator of The Wizard of Oz was buried here. Denslow was only 59 years old. L. Frank Baum was living in Los Angeles. He was told incorrectly that Denslow committed suicide, which probably didn’t seem unreasonable to him.
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