Talk:The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Differences between the movie and the book

It would be nice if someone could contrast the movie and book. I mean, I was shocked to find out the Scarecrow does get a brain in the book. The whole 'You didn't need _________, you've had it all along" is one of the most famious lines in American Film. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.37.144.32 (talk) 23:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Notes

The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism by Henry Littlefield – use this to expand The Wonderful Wizard of Oz#The Gold Standard representation of the story. Cunard (talk) 00:12, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

More material: The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory. Cunard (talk) 01:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

More material: Theory (archived link) by Professor Richard J. Amundon. Cunard (talk) 09:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Excellent contribution from Red riot83 (talk · contribs). This content needs to be sourced, though. Cunard (talk) 10:19, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Themes: Verdon, Michael (1991). "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Salem Press. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help):

• the triumph of good over evil
• "the theme of friendship, recounted again and again. Any time there is danger, some character puts his life on the line for his friends."
• self-reliance – "Know thyself"

Cunard (talk) 03:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Information about The Annotated Wizard of Oz, Centennial Edition (1973) and a review of Katharine M. Rogers' biography, L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz from this article by Ruth Berman of Science Fiction Studies. Cunard (talk) 06:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• JSTOR version of this article. Cunard (talk) 06:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
• A review (archived link) of The Annotated Wizard of Oz. Cunard (talk) 09:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• Obituary (archived link) for Baum's son, Harry Neale Baum
• More information (archived link) for the "Background" section – origination of the name "Oz" and Baum's telling of stories about Oz years before he wrote the book. Cunard (talk) 09:26, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• A 1964 article (archived link) about The International Wizard of Oz Club. Cunard (talk) 09:31, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• Another article (archived link) about The International Wizard of Oz Club. Cunard (talk) 09:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• An article (archived link) about The Making of The Wizard of Oz. Cunard (talk) 09:38, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Alice in Wonderland

There are a lot more similarities with Lewis Caroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' than only the fact Dorothy and Alice are both little girls who are trapped in a strange country... Oz = The King of Hearts/White King, (?) Glinda/Locasta(Tattypoo) = Mirana (The White Queen), Bastinda/Gingema = Iracebeth (The Queen of Hearts), the Scarecrow/the Tin Woodman/The Cowardly Lion = Tarrant Hightopp (the Mad Hatter)/Chessur (the Chesshire Cat)/Nivens McTwisp (the White Rabbit)/Malymkun (the Dormouse)/Thackery Earwicket (the March Hare), Oz's balloon = the Jabberwocky, Omby Amby (the soldier with the Green Whiskers)/the Guardian of the Gates = Absolem (the Catterpillar), the King of the Winged Monkeys = The Knave of Hearts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.194.233.40 (talk) 14:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this information. Alice in Wonderland is mentioned at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz#Sources of images and ideas but there is much more that can be said about the similarities of the two stories. I will include this information in the article once I have found scholarly analysis that draw parallels between them. Cunard (talk) 01:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced content – moved from article

Extended content

Russian author Alexander M. Volkov brought his own loose translation of the story to the Soviet Union in 1939 (the same year MGM released their film). The Soviet Union did not recognize foreign copyrights at the time, and neither Baum nor his family received any royalties for it. Volkov's version was published under the title The Wizard of Emerald City (Волшебник Изумрудного Города) and the country where the story takes place was changed from Oz, to "Magic Land". Volkov also took many liberties with the text itself, editing as he saw fit, and adding a chapter in which Dorothy, now renamed Ellie, is kidnapped by a man-eating Ogre and rescued by her friends. The Wizard is renamed "James Goodwin", the Scarecrow is called "Strasheela" (derived from a Russian word meaning "to scare"), and the Tin Woodman is called "the Iron Woodman". The four witches each have new names as well: Villina (The Good Witch of the North), Gingema (The Wicked Witch of the East), Bastinda (The Wicked Witch of the West), and Stella (The Good Witch of the South). Volkov subsequently wrote his own independent series of sequels to the book, even more tenuously based on Baum's books, including: Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers, Seven Underground Kings, The Firey God of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Secret of the Deserted Castle. Some characters in these sequels have clear origins in the original Oz books, such as Ellie's uncle Charlie Black, who is a combination of Baum's Cap'n Bill and Johnny Dooit, and Volkov's last book invokes the Forbidden Fountain. The latter three sequels feature, instead of Ellie and Toto, her younger sister Annie along with her own dog, Toto's grandson Arto, and her childhood friend Tim. Baum's original version and all of its sequels were later translated in a more faithful fashion, and Russians now see these two versions as wholly different series. In 1959, illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky depicted Volkov's Scarecrow as short, round and tubby; his influence is evident in illustrations for translations across the Soviet bloc, where the Scarecrow is usually portrayed in this manner. Vladimirsky has written at least two additional sequels to Alexander Volkov's alternative Oz; two more Russian authors and one German have written additional sequels to the "Magic Land" stories. The books have been faithfully translated to English by Peter Blystone as Tales of Magic Land. These last two books were previously made available as Oz books through Buckethead Enterprises of Oz, but were translated loosely to make them Oz books. References to The Wizard of Oz (and Magic Land) are thoroughly ingrained in British, American, Russian, and many other cultures. In the U.S., however, The Wizard of Oz did not become a cultural phenomenon until after the highly successful annual network telecasts of the film began in the late 1950s. A mere sampling of the breadth in which it is referenced includes Futurama, Family Guy and Scrubs (the former parodied it in an episode, the latter based an episode on it), The Cinnamon Bear (a 1938 radio serial), RahXephon (a 2002 Japanese animated television show), Zardoz (a 1974 Sean Connery movie), Avatar (a 2009 fantasy film), The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (a 1997 Stephen King fantasy/Western novel), World of Warcraft (in the form of a boss fight), and the science fiction literature of Robert A. Heinlein, particularly The Number of the Beast. The Wizard of Oz Mystery, a murder mystery game based on the famous characters was released in 2007 from Shot In The Dark Mysteries. John Connor, a character in the Terminator series who sometimes uses the alias John Baum (presumably in honor of L. Frank Baum), stated that one of his favorite memories was of his mother reading him the story of the Wizard of Oz in Spanish as a child. The terminator series also references the Wicked Witch, Scarecrow and Tin Woodman in a few episodes. The character of Cypher in the 1999 movie The Matrix explicitly quotes a part of a line from the original book. In the film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, reporter Polly Perkins meets with scientist Walter Jennings at Radio City Music Hall during a showing of the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film.

Cunard (talk) 03:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Margery Hourihan's Deconstructing the Hero

In response to this reversion, Margery Hourihan's Deconstructing the Hero was published in the Psychology Press, which was acquired by Taylor & Francis, an "international company originating in the United Kingdom which publishes books and academic journals". Critics need not be notable for inclusion of their views in the article. That this book was published by a reputable publisher is sufficient for inclusion. Only when the article's "Critical reception" has too many views and becomes bloated should it be pared down. Otherwise, commentary from scholarly sources should not be removed. Please reverse your reversion. Cunard (talk) 08:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The reversion is reversed per the lack of a response after 48 days. Cunard (talk) 22:36, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

13 June 2012 addition

"in 1933 during the Great Depression Dorothy is a young orphaned girl raised by her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm after the death of her parents at the hands of the German soldiers during World War 1 in 1918 when she was a baby." Is in the beginning of the plot summary. I find the dates impossible to believe considering the book was published in 1900. Did someone just copy and paste from the film? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.115.1.109 (talk) 17:19, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

That material was added at 13:15, 13 June 2012‎ (UTC) and reverted by Bulldog73 (talk · contribs) at 22:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC). I cannot tell if the change was Wikipedia:Vandalism or a good faith but mistaken edit, but I agree with you it does not belong in the article. Cunard (talk) 23:50, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Broken Link

The page linked to in footnote 37 - Responses to Littlefield – The Wizard of Oz - appears to be gone. A capture of the page can be found at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090501183546/http://www.turnmeondeadman.net/OZ/Responses.php

This may have been taken care of already; I can't tell. Ileanadu (talk) 18:20, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Evelyn Copelman

The article on this page (http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Evelyn_Copelman) states that the Copelman-illustrated version was not published until 1949, but the Denslow version went out-of-print in 1944.AlbertSM (talk) 02:13, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Wiki pages are not reliable references67.170.169.30 (talk) 05:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Fixing things up

I've been working to clean up and revise this entry in order to (hopefully) get it back to FA status. The summary is still a disaster, but I've cleaned up some sections and removed poorly sourced and/or unrelated material. Hope others may join me! Clevelander96 (talk) 13:38, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Gold Standard

The article appears to have been edited to deny this theory. Contrary to the assertions in the article, this theory has received a lot of currency. In fact, the "Responses to Littlefield" article shows that many scholars give some support to the idea. I've tried to adjust the text.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:31, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Coxey's Army

According to the wikipedia page on Coxey's Army:

Among the people observing the march was L. Frank Baum, before he gained fame. There are political interpretations of his book, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which have often been related to Coxey's Army. In the novel, Dorothy, the Scarecrow (the American farmer), Tin Woodman (the industrial worker), and Cowardly Lion (William Jennings Bryan), march on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, the Capital (or Washington, D.C.), demanding relief from the Wizard, who is interpreted to be the President. Dorothy's shoes (made of silver in the book, not the familiar ruby that is depicted in the movie) are interpreted to symbolize using free silver instead of the gold standard (the road of yellow brick) because the shortage of gold precipitated the Panic of 1893. In the film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, the silver shoes were turned into ruby for the cinematic effect of color, as Technicolor was still in its early years when the movie was produced. However, this theory was not advanced until many decades after the book was written.[9]