Finding Dorothy

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts    368 pages

 

Most people I know either love or hate the iconic movie musical, “The Wizard of Oz.” But before MGM added music and Technicolor, it was a book by L. Frank Baum. Too bad Baum didn’t live to see the production, but he had been dead almost twenty years before the movie roared into movie theaters across the country.

 

The book was an instant hit. What many people don’t know is that “The Wizard of Oz,” was the first book in a 14-book series. Baum considered himself not necessarily a writer, but the “Royal Historian of Oz.”

 

When Baum’s wife, Maud, heard that a movie was in production, she headed to MGM and Louis B. Meyer’s office. She had promised her husband that she would do everything in her power to make sure the movie stayed true to the book, the book millions of people loved.

 

I don’t feel that history is clear on where Baum got his inspiration for Dorothy, the lonely little girl who winds up in the enchanted Emerald City. Author Elizabeth Letts gives readers several ideas as they read, but nothing is ever set in stone. One such speculation is that Dorothy is based on Maud. Another that since the Baum’s had four sons he built the young girl as compilation of nieces.

 

Regardless, this is Maud’s story. While the book starts in 1938, when Maud is seventy-seven, it weaves back and forth between her girlhood and premiere night at Graum’s Chinese Theater.

 

Maud was the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a prominent advocate for women’s rights, who was close friends with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Readers get to watch as Maud grows into one of the first female coeds at Cornell University. However, she dropped out of school to marry an itinerant actor, L. Frank Baum. We get to watch the young couple struggle as they make their way through life.

 

Letts uses dueling timelines to go back and forth between 1938 and Maud’s life. I really enjoyed the scenes with the young Judy Garland, yet was appalled how the studio system treated the actress; it would be considered child abuse these days. There are two scenes that really stick with me:  the one where the Wardrobe Department buys man’s jacket in a secondhand store for the peddler, and it turns out to be a coat that once belonged to Baum. Did it add a bit of magic to the creation of the movie?  Hmmmmm.

 

The other scene that touched me was when Maud and Judy were having lunch in the commissary. Well, Judy wasn’t supposed to be as she was only allowed to eat every other day so her costume would fit.

 

In the case of the historical novel, many things are changed. But in the Afterword (which is as wonderful as the book), Letts “altered some dates and names for clarity, but most of my story is based on historical fact.

 

This was a wonderful read, and I was truly sorry for it to end. I feel like I’ve really gotten to know Maud Gage Baum, and I miss her.   “Finding Dorothy” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.