Imaginary Worlds - King Denslow of Oz

Episode Date: October 22, 2014

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz started as a perfect partnership between writer L. Frank Baum and illustrator W. W. Denslow. But they became bitter rivals, with each owning half the copyright to the 1900 book. Baum put his nose to the grindstone trying to build a franchise while Denslow took a more colorful and ultimately self-destructive path. I talk with Michael Patrick Hearn, who wrote biographies of both men.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. When I was a kid, I was not a big fan of The Wizard of Oz. I mean, I recognized the performers were amazing, but the movie always felt kind of stagey to me. You know, like I could still see the seams in the costumes, and I felt like the camera was always about to catch a microphone,

like hanging above the actors. So about 10 years ago, I came across the original book from 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum. The story is, you know, just like the movies. But the illustrations were so charming. And the shapes of the characters are really funny. They have these big heads and little bodies. And they were drawn with really broad strokes. The expressions on the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were just as human as Ray Bulger and Jack Haley. But the characters really look like they're made of straw and tin.

And Dorothy is like this scrappy six-year-old girl who really looks like she just ran away from a farm. And the lion is, you know, a lion, like a big lion, which makes it even funnier that he's got like a little bow in his hair. The artist was William Wallace Denslow, or W.W. Denslow. I never heard of him. Had he illustrated more classics, we probably would know more of his books. But, you know, other than The Wizard of Oz, he's pretty much forgotten. That's Michael Patrick Hearn. He wrote biographies on L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, and W.W. Denslow, who illustrated it.

And the story of their collaboration is really fascinating. So the two men met in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair. Baum was, you know, going from one odd job to another while he was working on his writing on the side. Denslow was drawing cartoons for Hearst newspapers, and he wanted to get into something more creative. Now, they were very different men with very different dispositions. Denzel was from this hardscrabble background, and he was an alcoholic, but he was about to go sober and get his life together. L. Frank Baum came from money, and he was something of an introvert. But when they started working together, it was like magic.

an introvert. But when they started working together, it was like magic. The boys, Baum's four sons, always spoke of the wonderful smell of Baum's cigars and Denslow's corncob pipe while they were working. And they cut up like a bunch of school, a couple of school boys. This is how they described each other. They really enjoyed each other's company. And they had big ideas. They wanted to use color plates, which was this new technology at the time, a very expensive technology. The publisher said no, so Baum and Denslow paid for the color plates themselves.

There are 24 color plates. There are over 100 two-color textual illustrations that change as Dorothy goes from one place to another, from gray Kansas to the blue Munchkin country to the green Emerald City. And eventually they go to the South where Glinda lives, which the favorite color is red. So you have, it's like a rainbow effect when you leaf through the book. Now, The Wizard of Oz was the second book that Baum and Denslow had worked on. The first book you've never heard of. I mean, it sold okay. But if Oz hadn't sold that well, they would have done another book with totally different characters. They were just looking for success. And so when Oz turned out to be a phenomenon,

they were kind of blindsided. Sort of a competition between the two of them, who was responsible for the success of their books. Certainly, the illustrations were the first thing that grabbed people. But The Wizard of Oz, the text and the illustrations, it really is a marriage between the two of them. Their marriage was about to end in a very messy divorce. In 1902, they signed a contract for musical comedy of The Wizard of Oz. And it turned out to be the wicked of its day. It was the most successful musical comedy of the time. Oh, it was literally wicked. Yes, it was.

It was wicked, yes. It was, exactly. It wasn't just like it. It wasn't just like it, yes. It was wicked of 1902. And it was enormously successful. There were two touring companies. The musical comedy made Baum and Denslow wealthy men.

Wow, even more than the books. Even more than the books, yeah. And Baum, and Denslow wealthy men. Well, even more than the books. Even more than the books, yeah. And Baum, because Denslow owned half the copyright and control of the book, had to pay him half of what his royalty was from the musical. Although Denslow had very little to do with the musical, and I think Baum resented that. Baum had rewritten the story for the stage, and Denslow apparently wasn't happy with the changes that Baum made.

Although they were all suggestions from the show's producer, who came from vaudeville. For example, Dorothy became a young woman rather than a little girl. Toto becomes a cow named Imogene. The wizard becomes a wisecracking Irishman. And a lot, a lot of marching girls in tights. So Baum and Denslow parted ways. Now at this point, Denslow is, you know, doing pretty well. He's getting illustration offers left and right.

He's so famous, he can slap his name above the title. So when he illustrates Humpty Dumpty, it's marketed as Denslow's Humpty Dumpty. Meanwhile, L. Frank Baum goes about writing a sequel to The Wizard of Oz. And he hires another illustrator, somebody who is not really as good as Denslow. He's a more conventional artist. And they start creating a newspaper comic strip to drum up interest in this sequel. And then Bob discovers that Denslow is also writing a sequel to The Wizard of Oz. And he is also creating a comic strip to drum up interest. And they are both appearing in the same newspapers at the same time

because Denslow still owns half the copyright. Bob must have been really mad when he found out that Denslow's sequel was called Denslow's Scarecrow and Tin Man. And in his story, the characters wander off the Broadway stage, which they think is the land of Oz. And it was obviously designed to be a sequel to the musical as well as to the book. It was dedicated to Montgomery and Stone, who played the Scarecrow and Tin Man in the musical comedy. So did they change even the characterizations, where suddenly the wizard was an Irish drunk and there were dancing girls? Well, it wasn't quite that bad. When they leave, are they in New York City?

In New York City, yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah, they steal a car. They get into all kinds of troubles. It's really the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, not Fred Stone and David Montgomery, so they're very naive at what can possibly happen in New York City.

Denslow's sequel was more successful than Baum's. I mean, Denslow's book is silly and fun. It's a total crowd pleaser. Baum's book is full of dense mythology, new characters. It doesn't even have Dorothy in it. So at this point, Denslow is flying high. He gets remarried. He even has enough money now to spend his winters drawing in Bermuda.

One day he was going around the islands, and there was this one island that was for sale. It's now known as Blouk's Island, but Denslow purchased it. He built a mansion on it, and he declared himself King Denszel I of Denslow Island. Was this jokingly, or did he in any way sort of have any delusions of grandeur? Of course he had delusions of grandeur. I think almost every artist's ego has some sort of delusions of grandeur.

I guess anyone who declares themselves king of an island. Yes. But Denslow's kingdom was about to crumble. He had taken on too much work. His next few books were not about Oz, and they didn't sell as well, which was a big disappointment for him. He was commuting to Atlanta, too, where he was working with a writer on a musical, which fell through, and the stress just started to get to him,

and he started drinking again. Well, one thing you have to also recognize, if you had a reputation as a drinker in those days, it wasn't considered a disease, it was considered a sin. It was considered a flaw in your character. There were a lot of prejudices against someone who drank in those days, particularly if you're trying to do children's books. I think he may also have suffered a bit from manic depression,

these highs and lows. When things were going well, he was in great spirits, but then he could fall down and be very depressed. His second wife left him. He sold the island and the mansion for a man who would be king. His career was getting really small. Evidently, he sold a cover design for the Old Life magazine, which was a humor magazine,

and this was probably the most significant sale he had had in several years. He got a nice check from it. He went to celebrate. Evidently, he was going from bar to bar to bar or something like this. He went on a jag, as they say in those days. And he caught pneumonia and died. He was buried in a pauper's grave, an unmarked grave.

Only recently was a marker put up to signify that the illustrator, the Wizard of Oz, was buried here. Denslow was only 59 years old. L. Frank Baum was living in Southern California, and he was told incorrectly that Denslow had committed suicide, which probably didn't seem unreasonable to him. And Baum was doing pretty well. He kept his nose to the grindstone.

He was cranking out Oz books, even silent movies. And Baum was doing pretty well. He kept his nose to the grindstone. He was cranking out Oz books, even silent movies. A few years later, when he passed away, he was surrounded by family who kept the franchise alive for decades, I mean, all the way up to the Judy Garland movie. Baum was so committed to Oz, his dying words were, now we can cross the shifting sands. The shifting sands were the barriers between Oz and the real world. I think Baum took a lot of hits in his life, but he always came back smiling.

In the end, disposition matters. Creative success can come down to little things, even the ability to be boring. When I was telling friends about Denslow, I was surprised how many of them knew that he had declared himself king of an island, but they'd never come across his drawings, which is too bad. I mean, I guess the visuals of the 39 film are just so overwhelming. I mean, that is the Wizard of Oz as far as everyone's concerned. But Denslow does have a legacy, and it's not his drawings as much as the people who were inspired by his drawings.

When you look at most children's book illustrations at that time, they're over cross-hatched. They're so very fussy. There's a lot of sentimentality in the drawing. The style of Denzel, that bold black and white, the flat color, I mean, it still looks modern. You can see his influence on Disney, Looney Tunes, Dr. Seuss, a ton of newspaper comic strips. He kind of invented modern cartooning as we know it. It's a pretty good legacy. That's it for today's show. Thanks for listening.

You can like the show on Facebook, tell people you liked it on iTunes. I tweet at E. Malinsky. Special thanks to Michael Patrick Hearn, Jonathan Mitchell, and AIR, the Association of Independence and Radio. I first met Michael back in 2005 when I was co-producing Studio 360's American Icon show about The Wizard of Oz. And if you're a fan of all things Oz, I think you'll like that show. I put a link on my show's site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org. Panoply