How It All Began - Part II

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

 CLICK HERE TO READ PART I

The next day, Monday, March 4, 1901, Tietjens walked to L. Frank Baum’s downtown office to make his proposal, but Baum had vacated the premises six months earlier. Tietjens returned home and wrote to Baum, asking to pay a visit.

Baum was basking in the success of his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which had been published ten months earlier. He was writing at a furious pace. A new series of American Fairy Tales had begun national newspaper serialization on March 3, the very day Paul determined to ask Baum about a collaboration. Baum had two manuscripts to finish: one to be illustrated by Denslow called Dot and Tot of Merryland, and The Master Key, a young adult science-fiction novel. Both books were to be published before year’s end.

Tietjens would have to wait to hear back from Baum. He tried to read, but his eyes hurt. He wondered if his family had made it safely to the farm in Slater. “I can only hope that I may be able to do something to make things more pleasant for them. I hope the opera will be the means of doing this.”

Anxious to begin work on a comic opera, any comic opera, the young composer recalled a previous project—a libretto his friend, tenor Jim Rohan, had once given him to work on. Tietjens retrieved the old composition project and began revising it. He was so taken with the results he decided he “might employ it in my prospective opera.”

Thursday evening, March 7, Tietjens finally got together with Baum and presented his grand idea. “He did not accept my plan . . . at first. . . . He feared that I might not be able to write in a light enough vein, but I played the chorus which I had originally written for Jim Rohan’s opera, [and two of my other pieces] which [Baum] liked. It was then that he promised to write the libretto, with the restriction that if he did not think our effort good, he would not have it performed as he could not risk his reputation with a failure.”

L. Frank Baum with sons in his Humboldt Park home in Chicago.

 

The next morning Tietjens woke early and despite having no libretto from Baum, composed “a rattling good march . . . I think it will be a fine number to end the opera with.”

He immersed himself in comic opera. On March 11, he played through the piano score of Victor Herbert’s The FortuneTeller, which he loved, and went in search of any full scores by Herbert. He found none, but he did spend a precious $2.00 on a copy of Berlioz’ Art of Modern Instrumentation, as he planned to orchestrate the opera himself. Paul was hoping not only to get rich quick, but to compose a “respectable” comic opera in line with Herbert or Sousa. In his grander moments, he probably hoped to channel higher-brow composers like Lortzing or Humperdinck, too. His desire to get rich quick would battle his desire to make his mark with high art while he was writing The Wizard of Oz.

The afternoon mail brought a letter from Baum containing the idea for a comic opera called The Octopus.

[No script or scenario for The Octopus is known to survive. The following outline has been created by me from notes in Tietjens's diary and surviving lyrics. The comic opera was variously referred to as Miss Jinks and The Title-Trust. For the sake of clarity I only refer to it as The Octopus.]

Baum’s plot plunged into the then-current trend of the “Dollar Princess,” in which American heiresses married European (often British) nobility—the noblemen got much-needed cash, the ladies got much-desired titles. The show begins with the wealthy young ladies corresponding by mail with the strapped but titled young noblemen—the Opening Chorus even included typewriters in the music. The “octopus” is the aptly named businessman Gripem Harde, who decides he can turn the “Dollar Princess” fad into a business opportunity, singing “I am a Great Promoter.” Other character names are also puns, much like names will be in The Wizard of Oz, such as Mrs. Jane Pastover, an alto, who sang "I Have Social Aspirations." The female lead is a young lady named Marion, or "Miss Jinks," whose first song is “Love is Love,” which Tietjens would eventually work into Wizard. The act featured two grand marches, one for the Heiresses and one for the Noblemen. Gripem Harde falls for wealthy young Marion, but alas, he is not a Nobleman. So he disguises himself as “Count Cronto Misty,” a dreadful sideways pun on Monte Cristo, and makes love to the girl. Complications ensue. While Gripem’s love life is now complicated, his business, “The Title-Trust,” is doing great. Act One ends in a finale in which the Noblemen are literally auctioned off—“Oh, he’s going, going, going for a million…”

Act Two opens with a “patter-song” sextet for the Newspaper Reporters covering the many new romantic engagements. A highlight of the act will be a Fancy Dress Ball (with ballet), not unlike the “Ball of All Nations” that would become the centerpiece of Act Two in Wizard. Some Hobos or Tramps join in the fun, getting a quartet. Character Dainty Dan gets an upbeat topical song, “I Know When I’ve Got Enough,” and, of course, there was a “Kiss Quartet,” with Act Three still to come. The Hobos perform “The Traveler and the Pie,” another song that will survive into Wizard. In the end Gripem Harde not only gets the girl, but gets a title of his own, becoming a Count.

Tietjens was pleased with Baum’s scenario. “It is one of the funniest things I have ever come across, but does not call for a very high order of music. I will try to get him to make concessions to me.” Tietjens wrote back to Baum, suggesting that the end be altered so that “the hero could marry the heroine without being obliged to become a Count. This would be more in keeping with the spirit of the story for it is directed against title worship.”

Tietjens tried to work on the comic opera, but it was “rather a futile effort . . . having no manuscript to work from.” He would have to wait for Baum.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART III

Copyright © 2019 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

How It All Began - Part I

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

Paul Tietjens circa 1902.

On a cold winter morning in the last few days of 1900 Paul Tietjens boarded a train for Chicago. He was homesick before he had even left home. He was twenty-three and he had been studying and playing the piano for nearly two decades. Now it was time to make a name for himself, to start building his career as a concert pianist. Tietjens wrote in his journal that he was “. . . undertaking a Herculean task. To be a pianist above the ordinary class demands work, work, and more work and self-denial. . . . I have made the step, and I can’t retrace it, so there’s no use in crying . . .”

He was born May 22, 1877, to Henry and Marie Tietjens, a financially comfortable family in St. Louis, Missouri. His mother Marie, a pianist herself and his first piano teacher, instilled in him his love for music. Tietjens blossomed into a child prodigy and continued studying piano under Marcus Epstein and Dr. Ernest R. Kroeger. He played frequently in St. Louis as both a soloist and accompanist. After graduating from Central High School in January 1895, he pursued his musical education at the Beethoven Conservatory. At age twenty he appeared as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony, playing the Rubenstein Concerto, and began teaching piano to others.

In late 1900 upheavals at home forced twenty-three-year-old Tietjens to make some choices about his life and career. His father planned to sell his feed business and move the family to Slater, Missouri, to live on the old family farm. Tietjens decided he would go to Paris to study, and he would take his mother with him, but his boyhood friend, Ike Morgan, suggested Tietjens come to Chicago before going to Paris.

Tietjens had visited Morgan in Chicago the year before and met a number of people in his circle of friends, including W. W. Denslow and L. Frank Baum—Morgan and Tietjens had attended Baum’s Christmas party in 1899.  Morgan may have thought an extended stopover in Chicago would help season his naïve young friend before he traveled abroad.

Ike Morgan

Isaac “Ike” Morgan was six years older and Tietjens looked up to him. Morgan was smart and sophisticated, he spoke Latin, loved the theatre, and since childhood had determined to be an artist. The boys met when the Morgan family moved to St. Louis so that Ike could attend public school, and later, the Saint Louis School of Fine Arts. Morgan began his illustrating career at the St. Louis Republic, but he had since moved to Chicago himself and was a staff artist for the Chicago Record-Herald.

Tietjens arrived in Chicago at 8:00 AM Sunday morning, December 30, 1900. Morgan met him at the train station. Tietjens moved in with Ike at the Morgan family’s boarding house. It seemed ideal at first. Tietjens would wake up full of enthusiasm, go for a walk at the lake with Morgan, eat a big breakfast, and spend many hours working on his piano technique. In the evenings he and Morgan went to concerts or the theatre, and Tietjens joined Morgan's social circle. On January 4, 1901, only a few days after his arrival, Morgan took Tietjens over to the Denslows’, where Tietjens met popular author George Ade and Ellen Crosby, a prominent musician and lecturer on Wagner.  It did not go very well. “I was in a morose and cross humor that night,” Tietjens wrote in his journal, “and was very unsociable, thereby offending Denslow, who complained of my supercilious behavior. . .” Tietjens made amends with Denslow and his wife Anne Waters and began seeing them frequently, along with Morgan's and Denslow’s other friends, children’s author Grace Duffie Boylan and composer Alberta N. Hall and her husband.

Tietjens's moods swung wildly. On one day he overflowed with optimism, the next day suffocated him in despair. He looked for any excuse to avoid the piano, burying himself in reading Kipling and playing Solitaire.

Chicago was not working out as he'd imagined. He was depleting his savings much faster than he had planned. The added financial stress inhibited his practicing even more. Each day he waited for the two mail deliveries to arrive. He grew dejected and worried if no letter came, but more dejected and worried still if a letter came bearing less than perfect news from home. In mid-February Tietjens asked his father for money. He received a draft of fifty dollars along with word that his father would probably have to sell the feed business at a loss, if he could sell it at all.

Tietjen's creativity frequently collapsed into a near paralytic state. Unable to make himself work, he went for additional walks on the lake, read more Kipling and now Stevenson. "The greater part of the evening was wasted in playing Solitaire," he wrote on February 15. "I will swear off playing Solitaire henceforth." His resolve did not last long. He would attempt to build up a proper creative mood so he could get a long day of piano study in, but would become angry when his fellow boarders complained of his piano practice. He primarily blamed the female boarders for wrecking his plans: “I wish there would be nothing but male roomers in the house. . . . They are not bothered so much with ‘nerves’ and are more liberal minded generally.”  When Tietjens could make himself practice and do his technical exercises, he often overdid it, injuring his wrists and fingers.

Pauline Swain

Socializing with Ike Morgan was one of the few things that brought Tietjens pleasure. But soon he was feeling frustrated with Morgan, who was becoming more and more involved with a young woman named Pauline Swain.  Tietjens felt like a third wheel, and worse, very jealous.

“I am again in one of my morose spells. I feel embittered and bored at everything . . .  It made me feel angry that Miss Swain should be getting all of the best seats from Ike, when he had written me that we would take in the Thomas concerts together. I can’t afford to pay $1.50 for a seat,” top price at the time. Instead, Tietjens would buy the cheapest balcony seat and become resentful when Ike gave Tietjens’s promised ticket to Pauline. “Had I known [it would be like] this I would not have come to Chicago.”

He decided to resume his formal piano studies in Chicago since the funds were no longer there for him to go to Europe. On February 28 he met with Austrian-born pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, but she refused to take him as a student. He was crushed. “She said some very disheartening things, that I was too old, and that I probably could not get under Leschetizky [in Vienna] without some trouble . . . “

On March 3, 1901, Tietjens wrote that, “the idea of becoming a piano virtuoso is gradually losing much of its charm . . . I would much more relish a quiet life, surrounded by my friends and free from the strain and turmoil of a public life.” He then proceeded with a life-changing declaration:

“Therefore, as I wish to make my mark, it occurred to me that if I could write a successful comic opera, this result might be consummated. When Den comes back I will ask him about it. I think Baum would be just the man to write the libretto and Denslow could design the costumes, etc. I will stick to this idea.”

CLICK HERE TO READ PART II

Copyright © 2019 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

Color Me Dorothy

Aside from the wonderful posters advertising the show and a set of tinted postcards, very few color images from The Wizard of Oz exist—thus the picture of Dorothy Gale below has always been one of my favorites.

Anna Laughlin as Dorothy Gale in her Broadway costume.

Of course, it is only a black and white photo made color by the addition of some red ink for Dorothy's dress and a rosy hue to her skin, but it is still effective. In the show Dorothy did indeed wear red for the first and second acts.

This photo is of Dorothy's costume as it was redesigned for Broadway by Caroline Siedle. In the Chicago premiere Dorothy wore a white dress with red polka-dots and a solid red apron. The switch to a white apron with tiny red dots over a solid-red dress is much stronger visually.

I suspect that the the idea of Dorothy wearing red came from W. W. Denslow's illustrations of Dorothy in the original book, where she is wearing red when she arrives in Oz.

Anna Laughlin (as Dorothy) would have been a primary focal point (as the star should be) as the only person in red, walking through the blues and greens of the Munchkin Country set and the "Road through the Forest" set (where she meets the Tin Woodman) and looking really smashing in the all green and glittery Emerald City set.

In the Emerald City many of the costumes had red in them. It must have looked like Christmas! In the "Ball of All Nations" some of the chorus costumes were all red, at which point Dorothy changed into a sporty black and white Pierrot costume.

For those curious about the piece of paper Dorothy is holding in the photo, it is the love song written for her by Sir Dashemoff Daily, Dorothy's future love-interest.

I only have a clipped-out version of the large color photo of Anna Laughlin above. It was originally published March 21, 1903, in the magazine section of the Commercial Advertiser, a newspaper in New York City at the time (see below).

This is one of the rare occasions when "red ink" is fun!

Cover of the magazine section of the Commercial Advertiser, March 21, 1903.

Copyright © 2019 David Maxine. All rights reserved.