Yesteryears:May 16, 2000 Vol 9 No 49

Section of'Ifie Safem 9\[fws • 1 t I tin n turn 1 'It is-one of America's most en- ' during images: A little girl : named Dorothy Gale stand- 1 ing in the doorway of her Kansas , farmhouse and gazing out at the great prairie, its flatness unbro- ken by so much as a house or tree. The sun has baked the : plowed land into a cracked, gray 'mass. The dried grass is gray too. And so is the house. Her Aunt Em is "thin and gaunt, and never smiled now." ·Uncle Henry "never laughed. , He worked hard from morning till night and did not know wli.at ,joy was." • In the century since L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the story has be come the nation's most beloved Jane Albright holds her first-edition volume of 'The Wonderful Wizard home-grown fairy tale. of Oz," which she keeps in a special room devoted to Oz n1emerabilia-in-~ _ Never out of print, the story her Kansas City;. Mo,, home, May 5. about the little Kansas-girl swept as joyless, boring hayseeds - up by a tornado to the magical not so much by the book, per- land of Oz has inspired 39 se- . - haps, as by the 1939 movie and ' quels - 13 by Baum himself. It Dorothy's memorable line (not li:as been retold in five silent in the book): "Toto, I've a feeling movies, countless stage produc we're not in Kansas anymore." tions and radio broadcasts, and "It is our blessing and our the classic 1939 movie musical curse," said Thomas Fox Averill, starring Judy Garland. an English professor at Wash What the people of Kansas burn University in Topeka who 'could not have imagined, as has extensively researehed Oz's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" impact on Kansas culture. ,hit their bookstores a century "Dorothy's greatest desire is -ago, was that it would saddfe to find a home and to be at home 'them with a stereotype known - this is a great American desire . around the world. It is summed in a nation of immigrants and Actress Judy Garland portrayed Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz," the clas up in this exchange from the people who move a lot," he said. sic 1939 film based on the 1900 book by Frank Baum, which presented a book: "Finding a home ... is a very lasting image of Kansas to moviegoers around the world. : "I cannot understand why American desire." ment, and some believe that and Oz. 'JOU should wish to leave this That is a positive thino- - may be where the author got the Larkin believes it is Kansans beautiful country, and go back to even if that home is mud; ma idea for setting the book in themselves who disapprove of the dry, gray place you call . ligned, rural rather than urban, This is an undated photo of Frank Kansas. Baum' s mother-in-law, the association with Oz, while ,Kansas," the ScarecrowJold innocent rather than sophisticat L. Baum, author of 'The Wonder Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a lead- the rest of the world has warm, 'Dorothy. ed. "That is something Kansans ful Wizard of Oz," published 100 ing suffragist and a friend of -- --positive feelings about it. "That is because you have no could teach Americans," Averill years ago, on May 17, 1900. feminist trailblazer Susan B. An- The state is always anxious to brains," answered the girl. "No said. Dwight D. Eisenhower and the thony. _ f'romote attractions other than matter how dreary and gray our But the unqualified love so heavyweight boxer Jess Willard; If Dorothy is the state's most the Oz connection. Come see the homes are, we people of flesh many Kansans have for their the actors Buster Keaton and famous fictional daughter, rolling hills and steep, wooded _and blood would rather live state is often accompanied by an Jean Harlow; the poet Langston Kan~as boasts plenty o~ real river bluffs, ~he Cfil'.1pai&11 urged; there than in any other country, inferiority complex about being Hughes, the playwright William heromes as well: Amelia Earhart~ and the glonous Flmt Hills - at be it ever so beautiful. There is from Kansas - an image Averill Inge, the jazzman Charlie Parker the first woman to fly solo across more than 5 million acres the no place like home." said is fed by the movie. and Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, dis the Atlantic; Susan Madora largest tallgrass prairie left in the Even now, as Oz fans gear up "The movie has had a bigger coverer of the planet Pluto. Salter, the first American woman United States. to celebrate the centenary of the effect, at least a more negative It was called "Bleeding mayor; Lucy Hobbs Taylor, the A few years back, the Kansas May 17, 1900 publication of effect, on Kansas," he said. Kansas" for the violence over nation's first licensed woman Department of Economic Devel- "Tli.e Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Other than Oz, Kansas has slavery that became a sort of re dentist; Lutie Lytle, tli.e first opment mounted a campaign - Kansans seem unsure whether much to distinguish it. Itis the hearsal for the Civil War. Its fa black woman lawyer. with the slogan "Kansas, Land to thank L. Frank Baum or to geographical epicenter-of the mously zealous prohibition Oaudia Larkin, a director at of Ahs" - in an effort to show wish he'd picked another state contiguous United States, and a movement was rersonified by the state's tourism department, tourists - and Kansans - that to set his story in. - stirring symbol of the old West Carrie Nation, who smashed her said that when she talks to out- there was more to the state On one hand, they bask in with 19tli.-century wagon-train first saloon in Kiowa in 1901. sider~, the t?P three things t~ey than wheat ~d tornado~s. The Dorothy's down-home values. ruts still creasing its prairies. It Kansas was· also prominent in associate with Kansas are wide- effort got a nuxed recephon- On the other, they feel put down gave the nation President the women's suffrage move- open spaces, friendly people, See Land of Oz, page 4 a room full of Oz collectibles in "It is not a new message - to her home in Kansas City, Mo. find your way home," she said. · "It has made Kansas known "It is a concern we all have." around the world, and the fact Robert Baum often used his Dorothy wanted to always go great-grandfather's stories of the from Kansans, Averill said, back there would be a compli Wizard of Oz when he taught el and the slogan. was dropped in ment to the state," Albright, 42, ementary school children in Los favor of "Ah, Kansas!" followed said. "She loved Kansas." Angeles.· . more recently by "Kansas, Sim Gita Dorothy Morena is "The reason itis so popular, ply Wonderful." Baum's great-granddaughter. and the Wizard itself is so popu Baum was born in upstate She lives in San Diego, Calif., lar, is that it fits in any period of New York in 1856. His father got and has never even been to time," he said. "It doesn't mat rich from oil, but the son had Kansas.Jn fact it has taken her ter if you were born yesterday or difficulty settling down. Before much of her life to come to terms 100years ago. You can find turning to writing he raised with her literary ancestry. something in the stories that chickens, was a traveling glass Morena was named Dorothy connect with you~" ware salesman, a playwright Anne after her grandmother, the The Kansas centennial edition and actor, and a newspaper pub wife of Frank Baum's youngest features new black-and-white lisher in Aberdeen, SD., where son, Kenneth Gage Baum_. More drawings by children's book il , he became fascinated with torna na's mother, Frances Ozma lustrator Michael McCurdy, and Baum, was Baum's first grand a foreword by Ray Bradbury, the does - including one that Jane Albright holds a 1903 Animal Crackers box that shows a scene from picked up a house and mqved it daughter and a character in one science-fiction master. intact. the stage production of ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,'' the rarest piece of Baum' s Oz sequels, "Ozma of Buried within its illustrations · He never liv_ed in Kansas, but in her collection of Oz memorabilia. Albright poses May 5 in a room she Oz." are such Kansas images as the he traveled there. So it may have devotes entirely to her collection in her Kansas City, Mo., home. But at some point, Morena state tree (the cottonwood), state come naturally to him to pick The book was a success soon a replica of the Yellow Brick embarked on what she calls a mammal (the buffalo), state bird Kansas as the setting for the sto- after the first hand-bound copies Road and Dorothy's house, and "spiritual journey" to get away (the meadowlark), state insect ' ry of a young girl blown away had rolled off the presses. And an annual fall festival called Oz from the family and the Oz lega- (the honeybee). by a house-lifting tornado and 20 years after Baum' s death, toberfest. cy. "We devised a new relation deposited in Oz, there to face a Hollywood made it immortal. Bigger things may be the She found a teacher who gave ship to the book that would cele mysterious Wizard with no one The Oz books have been pipeline.

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