M-G-M MEETS L. FRANK BAUM! (Part Seven)

 by John Fricke

[Above: W. W. Denslow drew 24 color plates for the first edition of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ (1900), and this is one of the most evocative. Here, an intrepid little girl from Kansas – you all know her name -- faces “Oz – the Great and Terrible.” She’s walked for days to find him; will he be her salvation and provide the passage back to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry that she’s seeking? And why is she facing the Giant Head alone? Where are her companions? “The answers to these and other questions” . . . will be found below!]

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(Note: This is the seventh installment of our 2024-2025 blog series, celebrating the 85^th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s classic 1939 film version of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Each month -- through this coming June, and sequence by sequence -- we’ll compare content of the motion picture with author L. Frank Baum’s original story of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, first published in 1900. The entry presented here marks an auspicious occasion in the saga, as Dorothy Gale of Kansas, her little dog, Toto, and their Ozzy traveling companions – the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion – are (for the first time) about to meet the Wizard himself. Although the outcome is basically the same, their encounter is handled much differently in Baum’s text than in the motion picture adaptation. So, please keep reading, and you’ll learn what MGM left in, crossed out, or added to Baum’s plot and characterizations. (Pictures from the motion picture herewith are recognizable; five of the six others are among those drawn by W. W. Denslow for the first edition of Baum’s book – and the sixth will be explained when we reach the “ringer” in the crowd. 😊 )

 Last month, we left off our comparisons as Dorothy was summoned – all by herself -- to enter the Throne Room of the Wizard of Oz. This mysterious potentate had stipulated that he would grant an audience to her and her friends, but they all had to individually visit him to proffer their requests.

In Baum’s own words, his heroine continued to manifest the same outward, steadfast courage that had already carried her through her encounters with the Kalidahs and the Poppy Field: “Dorothy walked [in] boldly . . . and found herself in a wonderful place. It was a big, round room with a high arched roof, and the walls and ceiling and floor were covered with large emeralds set closely together. In the center of the roof was a great light, as bright as the sun, which made the emeralds sparkle in a wonderful manner.

“But what interested Dorothy most was the big throne of green marble that stood in the middle of the room. It was shaped like a chair and sparkled with gems, as did everything else. In the center of the chair was an enormous Head, without a body to support it or any arms or legs whatever. There was no hair upon this head, but it had eyes and a nose and mouth and was much bigger than the head of the biggest giant.

“As Dorothy gazed upon this in wonder and fear, the eyes turned slowly and looked at her sharply and steadily. Then the mouth moved, and Dorothy heard a voice say: ‘I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Who are you, and why do you seek me?’

“It was not such an awful voice as she had expected to come from the big Head; so she took courage and answered: ‘I am Dorothy, the Small and Meek. I have come to you for help.’”

The Great Head pondered this and then asked where she’d received her silver shoes and the magic mark upon her forehead. Dorothy referenced the Good Witch of the North for both, adding that “She . . . sent me to you” . . .. Then Oz asked, ‘What do you wish me to do?’

“‘Send me back to Kansas, where my Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are,’ she answered earnestly,” which caused the eyes of the Head to wink “three times, and then they turned up to the ceiling and down to the floor and rolled around so queerly that they seemed to see every part of the room. [When] at last they looked at Dorothy again,” the Head asked, “Why should I do this for you?”

The girl straightforwardly said, “Because you are strong, and I am weak; because you are a Great Wizard, and I am only a little girl.” The Head immediately countered this: “But you were strong enough to kill the Wicked Witch of the East,” and when the child honestly replied, “That just happened. I could not help it,” the Great Head offered his coup de grâce:

“If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must do something for me first . . .. Kill the Wicked Witch of the West.” This shocked the girl, who wept and (quite intelligently) asked, “If you, who are Great and Terrible, cannot kill her yourself, how do you expect me to do it?” Oz brushed off her query and offered, “Remember that the Witch is Wicked – tremendously Wicked -- and ought to be killed. Now go, and do not ask to see me again until you have done your task.”

“Sorrowfully,” the girl left the Throne Room, returned to her friends, and told them of her audience with Oz. She concluded, “There is no hope for me . . ., ” and she went to her room in the palace and “cried herself to sleep.”

The next morning, the Soldier With the Green Whiskers admitted the Scarecrow to the Throne Room “where he saw . . . a most lovely Lady. She was dressed in green silk gauze and wore upon her flowing green locks a crown of jewels. Growing from her shoulders were wings, gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the slightest breath air reached them.

The “beautiful creature . . . looked upon him sweetly, and said: ‘I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Who are you, and why do you seek me?’” Although expecting the Great Head whom Dorothy had met, the Scarecrow explained, “I am only a Scarecrow, stuffed with straw. Therefore, I have no brains, and I come to you praying that you will put brains in my head instead of straw, so that I may become as much a man as any other in your dominions.”

The Beautiful Lady, however, was no more impressed by this request than had been the Great Oz in his previous form. She similarly declared, “. . . If you will kill for me the Wicked Witch of the West, I will bestow upon you a great many brains [so] you will be the wisest man in all the Land of Oz.”

The Scarecrow was surprised to be assigned the same task as the Kansas girl had received the day before, and when he challenged the Lady about this, she cooly responded, “I don’t care who kills [the Witch]. But until she is dead, I will not grant your wish.”

As had Dorothy, the Scarecrow mournfully reported back to his friends and opined that the Beautiful Lady “needs a heart as much as the Tin Woodman.”

The next two wizardly encounters followed a similar outline – with two Wizardly exceptions. The Tin Woodman had rationalized to himself in advance, “. . . If [Oz] is the head, I am sure I shall not be given a heart, since a head has no heart of its own and therefore cannot feel for me. But if it is the lovely Lady, I shall beg hard for a heart, for all ladies are themselves said to be kindly hearted.”

Yet he was confronted by the most surprising Oz of all. The Wizard “had taken the shape of a most terrible Beast. It was nearly as big as an elephant, and the green throne seemed hardly strong enough to hold its weight. The Beast had a head like that of a rhinoceros, only there were five eyes in its face. There were five long arms growing out of its body, and it also had five long, slim legs. Thick, woolly hair covered every part of it, and a more dreadful-looking monster could not be imagined.” (Here’s the non-Denslow artwork referenced above, simply because there are two “monsters” mentioned in Baum’s original text -- and “Den” pictured neither of them in his drawings. The second creature will also be depicted by a “special guest artist” when we come to that incident in Dorothy’s journey in a few months. For now, though, we show the Great Oz in his creature incarnation, as -- perhaps gleefully – drawn by Russell H. Schulz for the Whitman Publishing Company in 1957:)

Being only tin, the Woodman was not at all afraid, and although much disappointed, he made his tender plea: “I have no heart and cannot love. I pray you to give me a heart that I may be as other men are.” The Beast could only gruffly and cavalierly answer, “If you indeed desire a heart, you must earn it . . . Help Dorothy to kill the Wicked Witch of the West . . .. When the Witch is dead, come to me, and I will then give you the biggest and kindest and most loving heart in all the Land of Oz.”

The following day – and with all the foregoing information “at paw” -- the Lion felt prepared for his audience, and (not at all in a cowardly manner) vowed, “If [Oz] is a Beast . . . I shall roar my loudest and so frighten him that he will grant all I ask. And if he is the lovely Lady, I shall pretend to spring upon her and so compel her to do my bidding. And if he is the Great Head, he will be at my mercy; for I will roll this head all about the room until he promises to give us what we desire. So be of good cheer, my friends, for all will yet be well.”

Yet, to the Lion’s surprise, Oz appeared in a fourth incarnation. “Before the throne was a Ball of Fire, so fierce and glowing he could scarcely bear to gaze upon it. His first thought was that Oz had by accident caught on fire and was burning up; but when he tried to go nearer, the heat was so intense that it singed his whiskers, and he crept back tremblingly to a spot nearer the door.” (This is another instance of one of Denslow’s design techniques for THE WIZARD OF OZ: overlapping art and text on the same page:)

The animal could only admit, “I am a Cowardly Lion, afraid of everything. I came to you to beg that you give me courage, so that in reality I may become the King of Beasts, as men call me . . . ..” The Ball “burned fiercely for a time” and then made the same demand: “Bring me proof that the Wicked Witch is dead, and that moment I will give you courage. But as long as the Witch lives, you must remain a coward.” At that point, the fire “became so furiously hot that [the Lion] turned tail and rushed from the room.”

MGM, of course, did some considerable condensation and handled all of the foregoing in their own manner. Instead of five or six days in the Emerald City, the filmmakers spent barely five minutes covering the time from the cast’s admittance through the Palace entrance until the Wizard hollered them out of his presence.

Yet even trimming the visits with the Great Oz from four to one, there were entertaining additives to this sequence of the movie. Dorothy and all were first confronted by the ominously long passageway to the throne room, and their dramatic terror at their destination was augmented by plangent musical underscoring, courtesy Herbert Stothart and Murray Cutter. (Of course, even such trepidation was tempered by badinage, as Bert Lahr’s Lion suddenly howled and panicked, “Somebody pulled my tail.” The Ray Bolger Scarecrow quickly and drily riposted, “You did it yourself!”)

The MGM Throne Room itself is revealed to be a glorious composite of Baum’s on-the-page green and a 1930s deco design. Meanwhile, the Great Head (voiced and “pictured” by a heavily made-up Frank Morgan) alternately materializes and dematerializes in surrounding clouds of smoke and billowing fire:

The motion picture scenarists chose to soften the first words from Oz – “Great and Terrible” became “Great and Powerful” – yet they sagely kept Dorothy’s reply, delivered in the film with Judy Garland’s confessional sincerity: “I am Dorothy . . . the small and meek.” Beyond that, screen time is also saved by the fact that the Wizard is well aware of their desires before they enter into his presence; one suspects the Palace Soldier of eavesdropping and “reporting in.” This, however, leaves time for some clever and alliterative dialogue (“You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk! . . . You billowing bale of bovine fodder!”), as well as some contemporary slang: “Jiminy Cricket!” and “whippersnapper!”

However briefly and whatever the strain of the situation, our protagonists offer some neatly in-character behavior in this sequence. The warm-hearted Tin Man attempts some friendly, casual chit-chat before being shut down by Oz. The Scarecrow manifests an intelligent command of vocabulary: “Your honor,” “your excellency,” “your wizardry.” The Lion . . . well he was brave enough to make it into the room. And Dorothy rises to the occasion to defend the latter, berating Oz when the animal faints: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Frightening him like that when he came to you for help!”

The Wizard finally tosses them both respite and reassurance by announcing he has “every intention of granting your requests.” Such baiting lasts but a fleeting moment, yet the combination of hope and doubt on our friends’ faces is indeed noticeable:

The Great Head then quashes any optimism with his order: “Bring me the broomstick of the Witch of the West!” He never demands she be killed; it’s left for the Tin Man and Lion to toss that unavoidable verb into the mix. Yet all further negotiation is cut off when the Wizard dismisses them by bellowing, “GO!” – and the Lion does one better on Baum’s turning-tail-and-rush- from-the-room: he traverses the long corridor outside the Throne Room at triple speed and propels himself through a floor-to-ceiling window. (One can see here that it was an athletic double for Bert Lahr who did the obligatory jog and jump:)

That last moment puts a brilliant, surprise “button” on MGM’s reportage of Our Friends’ first visit to the Emerald City. Baum and Denslow, however, took additional time after the Lion’s visit to the Throne Room; this gave the characters an opportunity to both reconnoiter and reaffirm their desires -- none of which had been diminished by the Wizard’s ultimatum. Appropriately, Baum had the (purportedly cowardly) Lion take the lead: “There is only one thing we can do and that is to go to the land of the Winkies, seek out the Wicked Witch, and destroy her.” And the others step up and commit, knowing they’ll otherwise never acquire the home, courage, brains, and heart they desire:

Dorothy: “I suppose we must try it; but I am sure I do not want to kill anybody, even to see Aunt Em again.”

The Lion: “I will go with you; but I’m too much of a coward to kill the Witch.”

The Scarecrow: “I will go too, but I shall not be of much help to you, I am such a fool.”

The Tin Woodman: “I haven’t the heart to harm even a Witch, but if you go, I certainly shall go with you.”

“Therefore,” continued Baum, “it was decided to start upon their journey the next morning, and the Woodman sharpened his axe on a green grindstone and had all his joints properly oiled. The Scarecrow stuffed himself with fresh straw and Dorothy put new paint on his eyes that he might see better. The green girl, who was very kind to them, filled Dorothy’s basket with good things to eat . . . and the Soldier With the Green Whiskers led them through the streets of the Emerald City . . ..”

Looking ahead to the next blog, it’s interesting to note that those who’d thus far watched MGM’s OZ had already spent tremulous time with the Wicked Witch of the West. She’d been scripted into Munchkinland and an orchard, onto a rooftop and into her horrorific castle (with magic crystal ball, poison, and clipped-wing monkey “familiar”), and on a skywriting broom over the Emerald City. “She” had also been spied as Miss Gulch – at the Gale farm, on the country road, and “up inside the cyclone,” where she becomes . . . the Wicked Witch of the East?

Yet for all of that gripping plotline placement by MGM, those who had not seen the movie but knew THE WIZARD OF OZ solely from the book were (only minimally) aware of the WWW. It’s not until this juncture in the story -- as author Baum sends our heroes to find her – that he actually brings the harridan of evil into the story. He manages, as well, to cram most of her impact into a single chapter, and along the way, he offers an intentionally succinct and off-hand “dismissal” of a couple of groups of her heinous hench-creatures.

See you next month?! 😊

And as ever, many thanks for reading!

Article by John Fricke