So Frank had to keep forging ahead, with the faith that something wonderful lurked beneath the surface of his failures, that something mystical swirled within the turbulence of his family, and something momentous stirred in America during this time of cyclonic change. Gage railed against religious leaders and politicians for a living and was so controversial and so scary to some that she was deemed “an infidel,” her activities called “satanic.” She had warned her daughter that she’d be a “damn fool” to give up school to marry this man who showed little promise of holding a steady occupation - and for a long while she was right. Even by the high standards of the world’s most menacing mothers-in-law, she set herself apart. Her name was Matilda Joslyn Gage, and she reigned as the most radical and principled leader of the women’s rights movement in America. Rounding out the household was Maud’s mother, who lived with the Baums for months at a time.
Together they raised four active sons, boys who demanded that their father tell them stories every evening, stories that seemed to give their lives a sense of constancy. Her name was Maud, and as a college co-ed she had dropped out of Cornell to marry Frank, only to face years of struggle, constantly uprooting their home in search of a better situation.
Prone to flights of fancy, he was lucky to have a wife who kept him grounded. Yet it wasn’t in Frank Baum’s nature to get down on himself, and he became newly energized by each of his schemes, determined to “somehow manage to provide for those dependent on me.” He was a sunny man, tall and handsome with a graceful gait and a deep, resonant voice. But the truth was, even that effort wasn’t going so well. If he had never experienced that one special moment that one day in 1898, he might even have gone on to succeed in his current full-time job-and gone down in history as the founder of the National Association of Window Trimmers of America. By then he had failed at so many wildly different pursuits-as a breeder of chickens, as an actor in stage plays, as a purveyor of petroleum products, as an owner of a variety store, as a secretary for a baseball team, as a publisher of a newspaper, as a traveling salesman of fine china - that he might have simply given up on doing anything special with his life. The novel’s name would have to be changed, as Baum soon found out.“The publisher believes that books with jewel names in their titles do not sell well,” he lamented.įrank was 44 by the time the book hit stores in the year 1900, and this business of being an author of children’s stories was still new to him. He sealed the frame and hung it on the wall above the desk in the den of his Chicago home. He fastened it into a frame and surrounded it with a caption: “With this pencil I wrote the ms. By the fall of 1899, the pencil was just a stub. “The story really seemed to write itself,” the author told his publisher.īaum relied on a favorite pencil as he put the tale to paper.
A trio of comical characters who join the girl on her quest to a city of emerald controlled by a mysterious wizard. A road of yellow bricks stretching through a dangerous frontier. A sensational cast joins Dorothy and Toto this Summer at The London Palladium for an unforgettable adventure down the yellow brick road. A mystical land ruled by both good and bad witches. The Producer of the smash-hit Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat presents a brand-new production of THE WIZARD OF OZ, one of the world’s most beloved musicals.
One day in 1898, an unusual sequence of images leaped from one man’s mind: A gray Kansas prairie. Favorite Regional credits: Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (Igor), Monty Python’s Spamalot (Patsy), The 25 th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Barfeé), Little Shop of Horrors (Seymour), A Chorus Line (Mike), West Side Story (Riff), The Pirates of Penzance (Sergeant), Reefer Madness (Ralph). Erik is also expected to debut his solo show “A Little Different” this Summer. Until then, you can find him advocating, as a certified volunteer, for the restoration of the Historic Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs. Erik is looking to one day play the titular role in Beetlejuice: The Musical. Before that, he was featured in the West Coast Regional Premiere of Something Rotten! and Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn (Musical Theatre West). Erik was most recently seen at the McCallum Theater, in last year’s production of Cabaret, as the Emcee. Erik has appeared and starred in multiple productions throughout Southern California, including his hometown Palm Springs. Erik Scott Romney (The Scarecrow) started his career as a dancer, and has since gone from Balanchine to Broadway.
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