Today's post provides a rich backstory on my latest YouTube video, the "Minuet Chorus" from L. Frank Baum and Paul Tietjens's 1901 first draft version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This video recording marks the first time anyone has paired these lyrics to this music since 1901.
I am quite proud of this discovery, reuniting Baum's lyrics of the "Minuet Chorus" from Act II of the 1901 first draft Wizard of Oz script with the original Tietjens music, though it took me awhile to fit the puzzle pieces together. While the "Minuet Chorus" was cut from the show by the next draft, Baum and Tietjens liked the music well enough that Baum wrote new lyrics for it, turning it into the "Poppy Song."
When I first obtained a copy of Baum's 1901 libretto I did not immediately make a connection between Baum's "Minuet chorus" lyrics and Tietjens's "Poppy" music, in part because Baum's lyrics seldom sit on the melody well, so the relationship of the "Minuet" lyrics to the published "Poppy Song" sheet music was not particularly evident. But the performance version of the "Poppy Song" in Witmark's stock-rental package contains a much longer version of the "Poppy Song," including a "B" section not in the sheet music version. The B section is part of the Poppy ballet in the produced show. This B section perfectly fits Baum's lines "Glide—with proud and stately stride!" I sang the "Minuet" lyrics to the full length Poppy arrangement and the rest of the words fell right into place.
Paul Tietjens was very proud of this piece of music. In November of 1903, when Tietjens was in New York City preparing to sail for Europe, he visited W. W. Denslow and his wife in their new NYC home.Also attending the dinner were Grace Duffie Boylan and Denslow's old friend Charles W. Waldron, who later wrote of that evening in the Lewiston [ME] Journal on Feb 17:
After dinner we listened to some of the finest music it has ever been my luck to hear, as Paul Tietjens treated us to selections from The Wizard of Oz. Some of the music was grand. A minuet from the opera was one of the sweetest numbers, full of melody and well balanced. It was a regret to the composer that more was not made of it in the opera. Denslow suggested that it could come in during a snow storm after the poppy field scene and should be stepped out by eight maidens dressed in spotless white and arrayed in furs. It was a happy thought and may be arranged in the future. This minuet should be as popular as the lullaby in Erminie. It was to my ear much prettier.
But Baum and Tietjens had been fond of this music even before it was introduced into the early draft of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Tietjens originally wrote the music for his first collaboration with Baum, the now-abandoned comic opera The Octopus.
Through Tietjens's journal we can follow the writing process of the song.
On the morning of April 18, 1901, Paul Tietjens arose and went for a
morning walk. He'd had a quarrel with his friend Ike Morgan the night
before and the two were not speaking to each other. After the walk
Tietjens spent all morning working on his piano technique, took a break
for lunch, and returned to the piano to continue his exercises. But
during his afternoon exercises he developed "the nucleus of a Minuet. I
think it promises to be a real good one." The next morning Tietjens and
Morgan made up their differences at breakfast.
Ten days later, Tietjens again mentions that "the Minuet is in the nucleus," but makes it clear he intends to use it in Act II of The Octopus.
On May 4 Tietjens recorded, "I worked at the Minuet this morning and have now all of the material for it, but have not decided how to put it in the opera."
That evening Tietjens walked to the Studebaker Theatre to see The Pirates of Penzance, which Tietjens liked very much indeed.
The Pirates of Penzance at the Studebaker Theatre, Spring 1901.
[The Pirates of Penzance] is not the style of opera we are writing. The second act consisted of nothing but music, and the comic element was subordinated to it. While it has very little music in it that can be remembered or whistled by the average operagoer, it is replete with beautiful music that is not above the heads of the audience.
Tietjens also jotted down . . .
. . . a remark that was made by a young lady sitting behind me. She spoke of it not being funny in a dissatisfied sort of way. The people want to be amused after all, and that is the reason our opera ought to be a success, for it certainly is funny enough . . .
Tietjens continued his work on The Octopus, seemingly jumping from number to number, each in a different state of completion. On May 6, he noted, "Have made some alterations in the Minuet and have now gotten it almost the way I want it." Tietjens finished arranging "The Minuet" on May 9, 1901.
Years later, in the July 7, 1909, issue of the San Francisco Call, Baum told a fanciful story about how the Wizard of Oz stage show came to be written. Baum has compressed the history and deleted any mention of The Octopus, but he ends the story stating that Tietjens used the "Minuet" as an audition piece to entice Baum into adapting The Wizard of Oz for the stage.
[Tietjens] sat down at the piano and began to play. It was a minuet, a delicate, dreamy morceau, so dainty in conception, so rippling with melody that I drew a long breath when the last sweet notes died away. It was afterward the famous "Poppy chorus" in The Wizard of Oz.
While Baum's chronology is out of order, his fondness for Tietjens's melody seems authentic. The music began as a number in the Fancy-Dress Ball in The Octopus, it became a "Minuet Chorus" for the Attendants of the Wizard in the earliest draft of The Wizard of Oz, and finally found its home in the deadly Poppy Field.
The following in an excerpt from my forthcoming book. Please note, this early draft does not reflect corrections, changes, and more recent discoveries. There may be substantial differences between the following text and that to be included in the final work. —David Maxine
Julian Mitchell was a slight, dapper,
and nervous man. When he received The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Fred Hamlin
he had just turned forty-six, and he was one of the most acclaimed theatre directors
in the United States. He was also seriously hard of hearing.
It might seem odd for a nearly deaf man to
make a career of staging musicals, but Mitchell turned his disability into an
asset, making the chorus enact the lyrics instead of simply singing, filling
the stage with beautiful and engaging stage business to show through action
what another director might have left to the music alone. Like Jerome Robbins
forty years later, Mitchell informed every show in every aspect with his sensibilities.
Playwright and lyricist Rennold Wolf wrote of Mitchell in 1913 that “a play, to
my way of thinking, is not an actable play until the stage director has made it
one. It may be a flawlessly constructed piece, and possess more than the
average number of elements of success, but before the director has put the
author’s ideas into execution and added his own it is a negligible quantity.
And by picking the wheat from the chaff, and suggesting new wheat to replace
the chaff, Mitchell has ‘saved’ fifty percent of the plays that have passed
through his hands.”
Mitchell had been born in New York City,
November 7, 1855. He began his theatre career as a call-boy at Niblo’s Garden when he was a teenager, alerting actors to their upcoming cues. According to theatre historian Gerald Bordman, Mitchell "soon found himself on the other side of the footlights, dancing in a revival of The Black Crook," which had premiered at Niblo's Garden September 12, 1866. Mitchell's tenure as call-boy would probably have begun during the Black Crook's 474 performance run.
By 1874 he was performing in the theatrical company managed by his uncle John W. Albaugh. Mitchell's taste for the
stage was in his blood. Two of his aunts were major stage stars, Maggie
Mitchell (1832–1918) and Mary Mitchell (circa 1834—1908). Maggie Mitchell made a career
of performing in Fanchon (1861), based on George Sand’s La Petite
Fadette. Julian performed with his Aunt Maggie in a revival of Fanchon
in 1881.
Julian Mitchell performing with his aunt Maggie Mitchell.
By 1883 Julian was working for Charles H. Hoyt as an actor, dancer, and comedian, appearing first in A Bunch of
Keys (1883). Hoyt soon became one of the leading farcical playwrights and
producers. But Hoyt had little interest in staging, or even attending,
rehearsals. Julian Mitchell began to assist in the staging, and within a couple
shows the two men were fully collaborating.
Julian Mitchell (left) and Charles H. Hoyt performing on stage.
The June 15, 1890, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
reported that “Charles Hoyt is busy . . . writing a melodrama, a spectacle, and
a farce comedy. . . . Julian, who is Mr. Hoyt’s stage manager and funniest
comedian, is assisting in the preparation of these masterpieces.” The 1890 Hoyt
and Mitchell collaboration, A Trip to Chinatown, broke the record for
the longest-running Broadway musical at 657 performances.
A Poster for Hoyt's A Trip to Chinatown (1890).
By the early 1890s Mitchell was losing
his hearing and gave up performing, choosing to concentrate on directing and
choreography. Mitchell worked with the best. In 1898 he directed Victor Herbert’s
The Fortune Teller for Alice Nielsen. He staged Kirke
La Shelle’s The Princess Chic. But Mitchell’s biggest break came when he
began staging the burlesques of Weber and Fields in 1897.
Julian Mitchell and Fred Hamlin most
likely became acquainted during Weber and Fields’s annual visits to Chicago’s
Grand Opera House each spring. Most recently, in May 1901, Mitchell arrived
in Chicago to stage the latest changes to Weber and Fields's Fiddle-Dee-Dee for its month-long
run at Hamlin’s Grand Opera House. Mitchell had just returned from directing
the London production of The Girl from Up There, starring Edna May and
featuring two newcomers to the legitimate stage, David Montgomery and Fred
Stone. Mitchell had enjoyed making The Girl from Up There a success despite
its deficiencies. “The Girl from Up There is a good entertainment as it
stands today,” said Mitchell, “but it is a bad piece of work on the part of
both the librettist and the composer. The hope of such a show is in the
performers and the specialties . . .”
In the fall of 1901 Julian Mitchell was
looking for a project to work on, a project Fred Hamlin could fund and Mitchell
could bring to life. Hamlin thought he might have found just such a show in The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Mitchell could use his unique abilities to instill
the show with his eye for spectacle, to enrich the chorus—making each member of
the line an individual character—and to flesh out the merest skeleton of a
script with his non-verbal sense of humor—a quality that perhaps only a certain
deaf director might supply.
In late November Julian Mitchell
opened a package from Fred Hamlin containing a handsome children’s book and a
script for a musical extravaganza called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
He sat down to read.
* * *
According to Tietjens’s journal,
Baum’s initial scenario, written in late July 1901, was “in 5 acts.” The “5” might have been a slip of the pen by Tietjens. The vast majority of comic operas and
extravaganzas were in either two or three acts, as the project The Octopus
had been—not five.But perhaps Baum was
cramming every possible incident from the book into his scenario. Tietjens did describe Baum’s
scenario as “impracticable and too long.” If a five-act scenario ever existed,
Baum quickly discarded it. His first draft script conforms to the more
traditional three act structure.
Past scholarship (including some of my
own earlier writing on the show) has characterized Baum’s first draft script as
a faithful adaptation of his children’s book, crediting Baum with writing a
modern “musical comedy” or “operetta,” as opposed to an extravaganza, and
claiming that Baum’s vision was free of the topical references, vaudeville
schtick, and love interestssupposedly ramrodded into The Wizard of
Oz by director Julian Mitchell. But careful examination of Baum’s first draft manuscript proves otherwise. Baum launched The Wizard of Oz on a
direct trajectory toward the Broadway musical it eventually became.
Act I –
“Prologue”
The curtain rises on a pantomime
prologue. Gray tints prevail on the Kansas prairie and a small house at center
stage. Dorothy, a Kansas girl, stands in the doorway. Baum
has eliminated Dorothy's pet dog Toto from the story, even in this, his earliest draft of
the script, and provides no alternative for Dorothy's pet. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry
gaze at the coming storm. The music imitates the “moan of the approaching
cyclone, increasing to a furious gale, during which [the] stage half darkens
and [the] house is carried upward through the flies.”
Possibly Denslow suggested opening
the show with the tornado in pantomime. Little Robinson Crusoe, the popular
extravaganza Denslow had designed costumes for in 1895, had opened with a comparable pantomime consisting of an
elaborate storm at sea, the sinking of a ship, and the titular hero washed
ashore.
Baum’s script doesn’t suggest any vision
for the staging of the tornado beyond Aunt Em and Uncle Henry watching it and
the house rising into the flies with Dorothy. The Kansas pantomime is followed
by a quick curtain.
Scene 1 – “The
Country of the Munchkins.”
Baum preserves the color scheme from
the book. The Kansas Prologue featured “grey tints” and now Scene 1 calls for “prevalent
blue tints over a landscape of flowers and shrubs, with the dome-shaped dwellings
of the Munchkins in the distance.” The original typescript has an addition in
Baum’s hand: “Scarecrow on Pole near [left upper entrance].” That poor
Scarecrow is going to have to hang around motionless for two long musical
scenes and several pages of dialogue.
Detail from Baum's first draft script with inked addition in Baum's hand.
At curtain-rise for Scene 1 a “Chorus
of Munchkins” is discovered. Baum provides no description of what Munchkins might
be beyond the singers being “male and female."
Baum’s script is almost barren of
description or detail. It’s not that Baum needs to explain how every effect
might be achieved, but he does need to sell the project, to engage and spark
the imaginations of potential managers and directors. Luckily Mitchell also received
a copy of the children’s book, which fleshes out the paucity of context in Baum’s
script.
“Opening Chorus”
MUNCHKINS:
Our hearts are sad, though our lips be
glad—
We’re slaves of the Witch of the East!
Of toil and care we must bear our
share
Until from our thrall we’re released.
The witch has a lash she will flash if
we’re rash—
We’re powerless her will to oppose;
She rules us each day with malignant
sway
And mocks us wherever she goes!
We are Munchkins, wretched Munchkins,
Slaves of an evil dame!
We’re all abused and much misused
And yet we’re not to blame.
By magic cowed, with labor bowed,
Most dreary is our lot:
(Enter Witch of the East)
For day by day. To our dismay,
We’re doomed to feel the knot!
WITCH OF THE EAST: (sings)
Oh, Munchkins—wretched Munchkins!
How dare you thus rebel?
Through punishment you will repent
And this you know quite well.
A trio of Munchkins advances and kneels
before the Witch. They sing their pleas for mercy, but the Wicked Witch will
have none of it.
WITCH OF THE EAST:
Oh, Munchkins—wretched Munchkins!
My just anger I’ll subdue;
But you’ve incurred by each rash word
Some punishment, ’tis true.
It’s just a touch, and won’t hurt
much,
So calm your nervous fears—
Now! Ev’ry one must quick atone
And box the other’s ears!
MUNCHKINS:
Ow!—Wow!—Wow!—Ow!
WITCH OF THE EAST:
Come to me, I’ll show you how!
(She boxes one)
MUNCHKINS:
Ow!—Wow! Here we bow! And beg a truce
you will allow!
The Munchkins continue punishing each
other, the Witch departs, and a storm approaches. The Munchkins gaze upward. The
Witch re-enters, moving to center stage. The Munchkins shrink away from the
Witch who looks upward just as Dorothy’s house is quickly flown down into view from
the flies, crushing the Witch. The Munchkins are overjoyed and sing:
Hooray! Hooray! The Witch is dead!
The house has fallen on her head!
So now are we by chance set free
And slaves no longer need we be!
By fate’s decree we’re now set free,
And slaves no longer need we be!
It’s hard not to enjoy such
story-specific lyrics, especially when they so thoroughly presage the song
“Ding Dong! the Witch is Dead” from the 1939 MGM motion picture version of the
story. You can almost sing Baum’s verse to the Harold Arlen melody.
The door of the house opens and there stands
Dorothy, who asks, “Where am I, good people?” The Munchkins tell her that she
has killed the Witch of the East and that they are “very grateful, sweet
sorceress.” Dorothy explains that she is not a sorceress as she sings:
I’m an innocent Kansas girl—
As harmless as girl can be!
Engulfed by the cyclone’s mad whirl,
Which nobody could foresee.
The song goes on for a while . . .
My one wish is that I may return
To Kansas and home again;
I’ll ne’er be content to sojourn
In lands where sorcerers reign;
The prairie is lonely I know,
In spite of its fields of grain;
But even though fierce cyclones blow
Kansas my love will retain.
The Good Witch of the North arrives.
In a heavy, over-written exchange, she and Dorothy speak almost every line of
dialogue from their encounter in the book.
Baum gets sloppy here. In the Good
Witch of the North’s discussion of other witches in Oz, Baum retains mention of
the Wicked Witch of the West, a character not otherwise featured in this script,
and deletes any mention of Glinda or a good witch in the south, who will be the
entire focus of the journey in Act III.
At the suggestion of the Witch of the North,
Dorothy takes the Silver Shoes of the dead witch. The Witch of the North gives Dorothy a kiss of
protection and sends her to the Emerald City to get the Wizard's consent to return home to Kansas. Finally, the Munchkins sing goodbye to Dorothy:
Farewell, sweet stranger;
Guard thee from danger;
None would molest one so pretty.
Journey unfearing
While you are nearing
The great Wizard's wonderful city.
All exit except Dorothy, who sits down
to rest on a stile. The Scarecrow on a pole winks at Dorothy.
Would a simple wink ever be noticed by the audience? One of Baum's weaknesses in adapting the book to the stage is his failure to consider that what works in a book, often won't work on stage.
SCARECROW:
Good morning, little bright eyes. . . . I'm posted to scare away crows and I'm ready to resign the job as soon as you help me down.
DOROTHY:
To scare away crows? I thought there
must be some caws for your being up there.
SCARECROW:
Oh, murder! Don’t talk that way again
or . . . I’ll stay up here in the polar
regions.
The puns flow on until the Scarecrow sings
his Act I solo, “A Man of Straw.” This song, later retitled “Alas for the Man Without Brains,” remained unchanged but for one word (the Scarecrow’s “shapely head”
becomes his “lovely head”) through all subsequent script revisions and ended up
as a permanent feature of the produced show, though Baum or Glen Macdonough would eventually write a couple additional verses.
Tietjens’s journal mentions his composing all the Munchkins’ music,
Dorothy’s solo, and the Tin Woodman’s song from Act I—yet Tietjens makes no mention of
his composing the Scarecrow's song, despite its being written so early in the show’s
creation process. I suspect that the melody for “Alas for the
Man” might be the one which Tietjens composed for Gripem Harde’s solo in The
Octopus, “For I am a Great Promoter.” Baum and Tietjens reused a fair amount of music
from their abandoned comic opera, and that Gripem Harde song was one of Baum’s
favorites. Baum may have simply written a new lyric to Tietjens’s preexisting
music. The words “For I am a great promoter” can be easily sung to the melody of the Scarecrow’s final line “. . . it’s plain
he’ll remain quite brainless!”
The following in an excerpt from my forthcoming book. Please note, this early draft does not reflect corrections, changes, and more recent discoveries. There may be substantial differences between the following text and that to be included in the final work. —David Maxine
L. Frank Baum writing at Macatawa, summer 1901. Courtesy of Robert Baum.
When L. Frank Baum first sat down to write a comic opera
with Paul Tietjens he must have felt like he was returning home, to one of his
first loves, the theatre.
L. Frank Baum grew up in and around Syracuse, New York, where several members of the Baum family had been drawn to the stage. For his uncle, Adam Clarke
Baum, “amateur theatricals were one of his pastimes. . . . Many of his
colleagues on the amateur stage adopted dramatic art as a profession, among
others . . . L. Frank Baum, his nephew.”
Another uncle, John Wesley Baum, was connected with various
theatrical ventures behind the scenes.
His aunt, Katherine Gray, seems to have been the one to
encourage most strongly L. Frank Baum’s youthful stage ambitions and to provide
a role model for him. She excelled at dramatic readings and monologues and
toured professionally, credited in one review as “being the best female reader
living.”
In his mid-20s Baum decided to pursue a career as an actor.
He took elocution lessons that Katherine Gray taught at her School of Oratory
in Syracuse and performed in theatricals she arranged. His earliest recorded
public performance was one such entertainment called Mother Goose. On December 3, 1879, at Syracuse’s Empire Hall, while
his Aunt Katherine recited verse introducing about sixty Mother Goose
characters, Baum played son Jack to his mother Cynthia’s performance as Mother
Goose.
In December the following year Katherine Gray and her
students, as the Syracuse Dramatic Company, mounted performances of the play Shipwrecked, better known as Down by the Sea (1869) by George M.
Baker. “Mr. L. F. Baum cannot be beaten on any stage,” one review proclaimed of
the actor in the leading role. “His rendition of the eccentric character of
March Gale is truly marvelous.”
On June 15, 1881, the New
York Mirror announced that “L. Frank Baum of this city [Syracuse], a
deserving actor, is now with the May Roberts [Sterling] Comedy Company doing
walking gentleman.” A "walking gentleman" was theatre slang for
subordinate roles with few words but requiring a gentlemanly appearance. Baum
family stories suggest that Baum performed under the stage name “George
Brooks.” He toured with the Sterling Comedy Company for the entire summer
season of 1881, acting in their repertory. Following Baum’s performance as
Gennaro in Victor Hugo’s Lucretia Borgia,
a review said he was “a young actor of genuine dramatic ability and no doubt
will soon take rank among the leading exponents of the profession.”
New York Mirror, June 15, 1881.
Unfortunately, May Roberts’s Sterling Comedy Company was not
particularly sterling. They toured Pennsylvania and New York, often performing
bootleg editions of popular plays and then leaving town without paying their
bills. The company also failed to pay Baum, who wrote, “I not only received no
salary for my services, but was induced to lend [the manager, J. P. Rutledge,] $150
in order to enable him to keep his feet in a pinch—not one cent of which has
ever been refunded. No member of the company received his or her salary,
although the others were not so completely gulled as I was.”
Baum continued with the company for the beginning of the
1881-82 season. A review of the Sterling Comedy Company, dated October 25,
1881, mentions “Mr. Brooks” playing two parts in The Banker's Daughter, and another review the next day mentions Mr.
Brooks's appearance in A Quiet Family.
By this time, Baum's uncle, John W. Baum, was serving as manager. Frank may
have sent for his uncle to help get the unreliable troupe in better standing.
As George Brooks, Frank played the role George Washington Phipps in The Banker’s Daughter on November 8 in
Dansville, New York. But by the end of
that week, the Sterling Comedy Company was advertising for a new walking
gentleman.
Louis F. Baum, actor.
The bad experiences with the touring company did not lessen
Baum’s passion for the theatre. His prospects flipped from the ridiculous to
the sublime when his father, Benjamin Ward Baum, agreed to build Frank an opera
house of his own to manage. Baum’s Opera House opened in the booming oil town
of Richburg, New York, on December 29, 1881, with a performance of The Planter’s Wife starring Charlotte
Thompson.
As manager of an opera house, booking popular acts such as
Buffalo Bill in The Prairie Waif,
Leavitt’s Gigantean Minstrels, and the Madison Square Theatre Company in Hazel Kirke, Baum, now calling himself
Louis F. Baum, seemed to have control of
his destiny. But on March 8, 1882, Baum’s Opera
House was destroyed by fire from a stove under the stage. The opera house
itself was under-insured, $4800 in damage on a $2000 policy. But this setback,
too, failed to dampen Baum’s enthusiasm for the stage.
Before the opera house burned, Baum had registered three
plays for copyright on February 11, 1882, The
Maid of Arran,Matches, and The Mackrummins.The Maid
of Arran was a five-act Irish melodrama loosely based on the popular 1874
novel A Princess of Thule by William
Black. The Sterling Comedy Company had performed a play, Sheila, also based on A
Princess of Thule, but Sheila had
failed before Baum joined the company. While with the Sterling Comedy
Company Baum likely wrote The Maid of
Arran in an attempt to turn Sheila
into a success, then took his effort with him when he left the company. In Matches, a three-act comedy probably
written in 1882, a poor young man seeks to evade his “vinegar-faced landlady”
while seeking a wife with a fortune. Virtually nothing is known about The
Mackrummins, except that it was a comedy-drama in three acts. No evidence
seems to show that it was ever produced.
Baum
assembled a touring company to perform The
Maid of Arran and Matches in
repertory. He took the leading roles,
Hugh Holcomb in The Maid of Arran and
Jack Hazzard in Matches. His Aunt Katherine had parts in both plays as
well. His Uncle John was company manager. Baum wrote music and lyrics to at least six songs for The Maid of Arran, which premiered on
Baum’s birthday, May 15, 1882. During the six-week tour of Pennsylvania and New
York—including a week at New York City’s Windsor Theatre—The Maid of Arran proved popular. The company abandoned Matches after several weeks, and no
script seems to have survived.
Maid of Arran song folio (1882).
After a brief hiatus and a few cast changes Baum toured a
full second season with The Maid of
Arran, starting again in Syracuse on August 12, 1882. Katherine Gray retained her role and John W. Baum continued as company
manager. The play toured the east, the
Midwest, and into Canada before it abruptly closed the season on May 9, 1883,
canceling subsequent bookings.
On November 9, 1882, Baum had married Maud Gage in Fayetteville,
New York, and slowed his theatrical career, though Maud toured with him for a
while. The August 15, 1883, Dayton
(Ohio) Herald noted that “Louis F.
Baum, author of The Maid of Arran,
will rest for a year.” Baum’s decision to stop touring was understandable; Maud
was pregnant with their first child.But
Baum’s passion for the theatre was unabated. The Dayton Herald continued: “[Baum] is also writing an opera entitled Nora, which will be produced in New York
early in December next. He has several flattering offers his new play of Justice, but has not yet disposed of
it.” Nothing came of the opera Nora,
and it’s not known to have been completed. The play Justice is also lost.
Even after transitioning into his family’s lubricant
business so he could remain near home, Baum still performed with local amateur
groups. One play, Dora by Charles
Reade, based on Tennyson’s poem, was produced by the Garrick Club in Syracuse
on April 25, 1884. Baum played Luke Bloomfield, sharing the stage with
five-year-old Edna Petty who would grow up to become internationally acclaimed
actress Edna May, star of The Belle of
New York (1897) and The Girl from Up
There (1900). In November 1887 Baum had roles in two plays, Our M’Lindy—probably Walter Fletcher’s Our Malindy—and The Mouse Trap by William Dean Howells, in which Baum played Mr.
Willis Campbell.
Baum sold professional production rights of The Maid of Arran to its leading
actress, Agnes Hallock, but he joinedoccasional
local amateur revivals in 1885, 1887, and 1888, playing a different role each
time. He wrote another Irish
melodrama, Kilmorne, or O’Connor’s Dream,
taking the leading role of Tim O’Connor beginning with the April 1888
Syracuse premiere. Baum’s The Queen of Killarney, probably another Irish melodrama, was
reportedly written in 1885, but may not have been produced.
After Baum moved to the Dakota Territory in 1888 he
continued to act when he found the chance, appearing in a pantomime called The Magic Mirror, in an operetta called The Insect and the Bird, and in Willard
Spenser’s opera The Little Tycoon.
Two separate 1890 productions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera The Sorcerer featured Baum singing the
role of Dr. Daly.
Louis F. Baum in an amateur theatrical in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory. CLICK TO ENLARGE
With his 1891 move to Chicago, Baum’s opportunities for
public performance seemed to dry up. The responsibility of supporting a wife
and four growing boys must have taken priority. Yet even in hotel parlors of
the mid-1890s while traveling as Pitkin & Brooks's representative for Queensware crockery, Baum
gained a small celebrity by entertaining audiences made up of other hotel
guests. “He is an expert pianist and possesses a fine voice, so that an hour
spent with him is indeed a pleasure,” noted the Washington, Iowa, Evening Journal in 1895. Baum's passion for the
theatre would remain with him for the rest of his life.
* * *
After
Baum, Tietjens, and Denslow finally signed the contract for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in late September 1901, the three men enjoyed
good relations over the next few weeks. Robert Stanton Baum, one of Frank’s four
sons, remembered, “Many evenings [Tietjens] would come over to the house [at 68
Humboldt Boulevard] to work [on the show] with father. Denslow . . . was also a
frequent visitor. I can remember the three of them cutting up like a bunch of
school boys. Tietjens would pound out a piece on the piano and father would
sing the words or perhaps do a tap or eccentric dance, accompanied by the
ferocious looking Denslow, who was a thick set man with a heavy ‘walrus’
mustache and looked like a brigand. It was better than a vaudeville show to us
boys.”
By the end
of September Baum and Tietjens felt the project was far enough along that
they mailed in the copyright registration for their first draft on September 30.
The copyright office registered Baum & Tietjens’ Musical Spectacular
Fairy Tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on October 16, 1901.
While Baum
and Tietjens worked on the show, Denslow eagerly sought a manager for the
project. Denslow was under time pressure, preparing to move from Chicago to New
York City by mid-October. Denslow’s theatre connections paid off when he
discussed the Wizard of Oz project with his friend, operatic tenor
George Hamlin (1869-1923).
George’s
two brothers, Harry and Fred Hamlin, co-managed Chicago’s Grand Opera House, each
taking turns producing a summer show to fill the void between theatrical
seasons. In summer 1899, Fred Hamlin and Kirk La Shelle had produced the western
melodrama Arizona. This hit played the summer in Chicago and then toured,
eventually moving to Broadway.
Poster for Fred Hamlin's 1899 hit Arizona by Augustus Thomas.
In the October 16, 1901, Chicago Record-Herald,
Lyman B. Glover wrote: “Mr. Hamlin of the Grand states that he will make a new
production for the next summer season of his house.” Fred Hamlin,
looking for another project to repeat the success of Arizona, heard of Wizard through his brother George.
By October
19, Denslow had left Chicago and was living in New York City. On October 20, Tietjens
traveled from Chicago to visit the farm in Slater, Missouri, and attend his
sister’s wedding on November 7. Shortly after Denslow and Tietjens left Chicago,
Baum must have met with Fred Hamlin and given him
a copy of the script and the children’s book to read.
Baum was optimistic
enough after the meeting that he issued a statement to the press which appeared
as far afield as Salt Lake City. TheDeseret Evening News of October 26,
1901, reported that “the author of the famous fairy tale, The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz, has arranged with a theatrical syndicate for an elaborate
production of [the show] next season in the form of a ‘musical
spectacular.’Mr. Baum is himself
writing the lyrics and Paul Tietjens the musical numbers. The scenic and
mechanical effects, as well as the principal characters, are entirely original
and out of the ordinary, the plot being closely followed. It is thought this
production will revive the old-time popularity of children’s extravaganza.”
Baum
almost certainly wrote to Tietjens in Slater, informing him of the progress
made in selling the show. Tietjens had found the farm in better shape than
before. The rains had come, the drought was over. His mother had returned from Europe
for the wedding. But the trip to the farm triggered another depression in
Tietjens: “A somber touch of autumn lay upon everything. A sad and melancholy
beauty everywhere—but a beauty nevertheless.” Around November 10, a few days
after his sister’s wedding, Tietjens returned “. . . alone in the night and
alone to Chicago, with a feeling of desolation upon me.” The motivation for Tietjens’s
mood swings and depressions is unclear, especially given the good news of Fred
Hamlin’s interest.
Hamlin invited
Baum and Tietjens to have dinner with him at his apartments. At the dinner
meeting, Tietjens no doubt played Hamlin the score. After the
meeting Tietjens recorded that “Hamlin did not like either the [script] or
music very much.”
Yet something
about the project hooked Fred Hamlin. Perhaps it was some quality he saw in the
children’s book, such as the unique characters or the strong visuals in
Denslow’s vivid illustrations. Perhaps Hamlin found the title of the project a
lucky sign. Hamlin’s father had made the family fortune selling a cure-all
potion called “Hamlin’s Wizard Oil.”
If Hamlin
hadn’t felt a strong connection to The Wizard of Oz or seen the show’s
potential buried in Baum’s script, Hamlin’s interest would surely have ended after
the dinner interview with Baum and Tietjens.
Instead, despite
his dislike of the script and score, Hamlin forwarded a copy of the script and
the children’s book to Julian Mitchell, the New York-based director he had in mind for his
1902 summer production. Hamlin “would leave it to Julian Mitchell," Tietjens recorded in his diary, "to decide
whether [the show] was to be accepted.”
