Theater Baum embarked on his lifetime infatuation—and wavering financial success—with the theater. A local theatrical company duped him into replenishing their stock of costumes on the promise of leading roles coming his way. Disillusioned, Baum left the theater—temporarily—and went to work as a clerk in his brother-in-law's dry goods company in
Syracuse. This experience may have influenced his story "The Suicide of Kiaros", first published in the literary journal
The White Elephant. A fellow clerk one day had been found locked in a store room dead, probably from suicide. Baum could never stay away long from the stage. He performed in plays under the stage names of Louis F. Baum and George Brooks. In 1880, his father built him a theater in
Richburg, New York, and Baum set about writing plays and gathering a company to act in them.
The Maid of Arran proved a modest success, a
melodrama with songs based on
William Black's novel
A Princess of Thule. Baum wrote the play and composed songs for it (making it a prototypical
musical, as its songs relate to the narrative), and acted in the leading role. His aunt Katharine Gray played his character's aunt. She was the founder of Syracuse Oratory School, and Baum advertised his services in her catalog to teach theater, including stage business, play writing, directing, translating (French, German, and Italian), revision, and
operettas. On November 9, 1882, Baum married
Maud Gage, a daughter of
Matilda Joslyn Gage, a famous
women's suffrage and
feminist activist. A local newspaper reported that their ceremony was "one of equality" and that their marriage vows were "precisely the same." While Baum was touring with
The Maid of Arran, the theater in Richburg caught fire during a production of Baum's ironically titled parlor drama
Matches, destroying the theater as well as the only known copies of many of Baum's scripts, including
Matches, as well as costumes.
The South Dakota years In July 1888, Baum and his wife moved to
Aberdeen, Dakota Territory where he opened a store called "Baum's Bazaar". His habit of giving out wares on credit led to the eventual bankrupting of the store, so Baum turned to editing the local newspaper
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer where he wrote the column
Our Landlady. Following the death of
Sitting Bull at the hands of Indian agency police, Baum recommended the wholesale extermination of all America's native peoples in a column that he wrote on December 20, 1890 (full text below). It is unclear whether Baum meant it as a satire or not, especially since his mother-in-law
Matilda Joslyn Gage received an honorary adoption into the Wolf Clan of the
Mohawk Nation and was a fierce defender of Native American rights, but on January 3, 1891, he returned to the subject in an editorial response to the
Wounded Knee Massacre: Baum's description of
Kansas in
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is based on his experiences in drought-ridden
South Dakota. During much of this time, his mother-in-law was living in the Baum household. While Baum was in South Dakota, he sang in a quartet which included
James Kyle, who became one of the first
Populist (
People's Party) senators in the U.S.
Writing Baum's newspaper failed in 1891, and he, Maud, and their four sons moved to the
Humboldt Park section of Chicago, where Baum took a job reporting for the
Evening Post. Beginning in 1897, he founded and edited a magazine called
The Show Window, later known as the
Merchants Record and Show Window, which focused on store window displays, retail strategies and visual merchandising. The major department stores of the time created elaborate Christmas time fantasies, using clockwork mechanisms that made people and animals appear to move. The former
Show Window magazine is still currently in operation, now known as
VMSD magazine In 1900, Baum published a book about window displays in which he stressed the importance of mannequins in drawing customers. He also had to work as a
traveling salesman. In 1897, he wrote and published
Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of
Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories and illustrated by
Maxfield Parrish.
Mother Goose was a moderate success and allowed Baum to quit his sales job (which had had a negative impact on his health). In 1899, Baum partnered with illustrator
W. W. Denslow to publish
Father Goose, His Book, a collection of nonsense poetry. The book was a success, becoming the best-selling children's book of the year.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz In 1900, Baum and Denslow (with whom he shared the copyright) published
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to much critical acclaim and financial success. The book was the best-selling children's book for two years after its initial publication. Baum went on to write thirteen more novels based on the places and people of the
Land of Oz.
''The Wizard of Oz: Fred R. Hamlin's Musical Extravaganza'' Two years after
Wizard publication, Baum and Denslow teamed up with composer
Paul Tietjens and director Julian Mitchell to produce a
musical stage version of the book under Fred R. Hamlin. Baum and Tietjens had worked on a musical of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1901 and based closely upon the book, but it was rejected. This stage version opened in Chicago in 1902 (the first to use the shortened title "The Wizard of Oz"), then ran on Broadway for 293 stage nights from January to October 1903. It returned to Broadway in 1904, where it played from March to May and again from November to December. It successfully toured the United States with much of the same cast, as was done in those days, until 1911, and then became available for amateur use. The stage version starred Anna Laughlin as
Dorothy Gale, alongside
David C. Montgomery and
Fred Stone as the
Tin Woodman and
Scarecrow respectively, which shot the pair to instant fame. The stage version differed quite a bit from the book, and it was aimed primarily at adults. Toto was replaced with Imogene the Cow, and Tryxie Tryfle (a waitress) and
Pastoria (a streetcar operator) were added as fellow cyclone victims. The Wicked Witch of the West was eliminated entirely in the script, and the plot became about how the four friends were allied with the usurping Wizard and were hunted as traitors to Pastoria II, the rightful King of Oz. It is unclear how much control or influence Baum had on the script; it appears that many of the changes were written by Baum against his wishes due to contractual requirements with Hamlin. Jokes in the script, mostly written by Glen MacDonough, called for explicit references to President
Theodore Roosevelt, Senator
Mark Hanna, Rev. Andrew Danquer, and oil tycoon
John D. Rockefeller. Although use of the script was rather free-form, the line about Hanna was ordered dropped as soon as Hamlin got word of his death in 1904. Beginning with the success of the stage version, most subsequent versions of the story, including newer editions of the novel, have been titled "The Wizard of Oz", rather than using the full, original title. In more recent years, restoring the full title has become increasingly common, particularly to distinguish the novel from the
Hollywood film. Baum wrote a new Oz book,
The Marvelous Land of Oz, with a view to making it into a stage production, which was titled
The Woggle-Bug, but Montgomery and Stone balked at appearing when the original was still running. The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman were then omitted from this adaptation, which was seen as a self-rip-off by critics and proved to be a major flop before it could reach Broadway. He also worked for years on a musical version of
Ozma of Oz, which eventually became
The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. This did fairly well in Los Angeles but not well enough to convince producer
Oliver Morosco to mount a production in New York. He also began a stage version of
The Patchwork Girl of Oz, but this was ultimately realized as a
film. ==Later life and work==