Tin Woodman

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Cover of The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

The Tin Woodman (also known as The Tin Man or The Tin Woodsman) is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. Baum's Tin Woodman first appeared in his classic 1900 book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and reappeared in many other Oz books. The Tin Man was a stock character in European folklore for hundreds of years, and in late 19th century America a tin man made out of various tin pieces was used in advertising. Baum, who was editing a magazine on decorating shop windows when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was reportedly inspired to invent the Tin Woodman by a figure he had built out of metal parts for a shop display.

1 The classic books
2 Depictions on Stage and Screen
3 Modern works
4 Sources of the Tin Man image
5 Trivia
6 References

[edit] The classic books

In the books, the origins of the character are rather gruesome. Originally an ordinary man by the name of Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman used to make his living chopping down trees in the forests of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to prevent him from marrying the girl that he loved. The enchanted axe chopped off his limbs, one by one. Each time he lost a limb, Nick Chopper replaced it with a prosthetic limb made of tin. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin. However, the tinsmith who helped him neglected to give him a heart. Once Nick Chopper was made entirely of tin, he was no longer able to love the girl he had fallen for.

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale befriends the Tin Woodman and he follows her to the Emerald City to get a heart from The Wizard of Oz. They are joined on their adventure by the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion. The Wizard sends Dorothy and her friends to the Winkie Country to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. The Tin Woodman's axe proves useful in this journey, both for chopping wood to create a bridge or raft as needed, and for chopping the heads off animals that threaten the party.

The Wizard turns out to be a "humbug," and can only provide a placebo heart made of velvet. However, this is enough to please the Tin Woodman, who, with or without a heart, was all along the most tender and emotional of Dorothy's companions (just as the Scarecrow was the wisest and the Cowardly Lion the bravest). When Dorothy returns home to her farm in Kansas, the Tin Woodman returns to the Winkie Country to rule as emperor. Later, he has his subjects construct a palace made entirely of tin—from the architecture all the way down to the flowers in the garden.

Baum emphasized that the Tin Woodman remains alive, in contrast to the windup mechanical man Tik-Tok Dorothy meets in a later book. Nick Chopper was not turned into a machine, but rather had his "meat" body replaced by a metal one. Far from missing his original existence, the Tin Woodman is proud (perhaps too proud) of his untiring tin body.

A recurring problem for the Tin Woodman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and afterward was his tendency to rust when exposed to rain, tears, or other moisture. For this reason, in The Marvelous Land of Oz the character has himself nickel-plated before helping his friend the Scarecrow fight to regain his throne in the Emerald City. Even so, the Tin Woodman continues to worry about rusting throughout the Oz series.

The Tin Woodman appeared in most of the Oz books that followed. He is a major character in the comic page Baum wrote with Walt McDougall in 1904-05, Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz. In Ozma of Oz he commands Princess Ozma's army, and is briefly turned into a tin whistle. In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz he serves as defense counsel in the trial of a cat. He affects the plot of a book most notably in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, in which he forbids the young hero from collecting the wing of a butterfly needed for a magical potion because his heart requires him to protect insects from cruelty. Baum also wrote a short book titled The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, part of the Little Wizard Stories of Oz series for younger readers.

In The Tin Woodman of Oz, Nick Chopper finally sets out to find his lost love, Nimmie Amee, but discovers that she has already married a man constructed partly out of his own discarded limbs. For the Tin Woodman, this encounter with his former fiancée is almost as jarring as his experiences being transformed into a tin owl, meeting another tin man, and conversing with his ill-tempered original head.

Baum's successors in writing the series tended to use the Tin Woodman as a minor character, still ruling the Winkie Country but not governing the stories' outcome. Two exceptions to this pattern are Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, by Ruth Plumly Thompson, and Lucky Bucky in Oz, by John R. Neill.

[edit] Depictions on Stage and Screen

In 1902, Baum helped to adapt The Wizard of Oz into a wildly successful stage extravaganza. David Montgomery played the Tin Woodman opposite Fred Stone as the Scarecrow, and the team became headliners.

In the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Man was played by actor Jack Haley. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast to play the role, but the character's makeup originally contained aluminum powder; Ebsen accidentally breathed the powder into his lungs and was rushed to a hospital. This forced him to give up the role. Haley based his breathy speaking style in the movie on the voice he used for telling his son bedtime stories.

Other notable actors who have played the Tin Woodman include Oliver Hardy in a 1925 silent version of The Wizard of Oz starring Larry Semon, and Nipsey Russell in the film adaptation of The Wiz.

In 2006, the Tin Man was the protagonist in a pair of television commercials for Chef Boyardee brand canned Beef Ravioli, in a costume identical to the design used in the 1939 Oz film. In the commercials, the Tin Man (played by Australian actor David Somerville) is pursued by groups of children due to the fact that an oversized Beef Ravioli can label has been affixed to the back of his cylindrical torso (which he doesn't notice until the midpoint of the first commercial); thus, he appears to be a very large, mobile can of ravioli. In the first ad, the Tin Man escapes from his pursuers only to discover that the building he ducked into is an elementary school cafeteria full of hungry children. The second ad begins with the Tin Man running through a residential neighborhood, accidentally adding to his pursuers when he stumbles across a backyard birthday party; after fleeing across a golf course (while dodging balls from the driving range), he is cornered in another backyard and threatened with a garden hose (playing on the Tin Man's classic weakness of rusting). As the scene shifts to the image of a Beef Ravioli can, sounds of water hitting metal and the Tin Man's cries for help are heard.

[edit] Modern works

In the song "Tin Man" by the band America, the lyrics state that "Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man, that the Tin Man didn't--didn't already have." The rest of the song has nothing to do with the Tin Man or Oz.
The Tin Woodman is also a minor character in author Gregory Maguire's revisionist novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, its Broadway musical and Maguire's sequel Son of a Witch. In the Musical adaptation of Wicked The Tin Woodsman is revealed to be Boq, a Munchkin whom the Wicked Witch of the East, Nessarose, fell in love with when they were at school together. When she discovered his heart belonged to Glinda, she botched a spell that was meant to make him fall in love with her, but instead shrunk his heart to nothing. To save his life Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West was forced to turn him into tin. Not understanding her reasons, he pursues Elphaba with a single-minded vengeance for his current form. In the novel, however, his story is the same as in the original book.
The Muppet Gonzo plays a similar role, the Tin Thing, in 2005's The Muppets' Wizard of Oz.
In the novel The Tin Man, by Dale Brown, the eponymous protagonist is a power-armored vigilante whom the media and police have dubbed The Tin Man for his physical resemblance to the Wizard of Oz character.
In Todd McFarlane's action figure line "The Twisted Land of Oz", the Tin Woodman is a zombie with machinery attached to him; in the accompanying story, he was a mad scientist in a past life who took people's body parts and attached them to his own failing body.
In the comic book series "Oz: The Manga", the Tin Man is depicted as a large, golemesque tin creation. His personality and backstory are exactly the same as in the original books, however.
When Alice Liddell appeared out of nowhere in Oz in January 2006 in the Oz/Wonderland Chronicles #1 comic, not one but two Tin Woodsmen chased Liddell, assisted by The Cowardly Lion and The Hungry Tiger.

[edit] Sources of the Tin Man image

1899 soap ad shows a man made of tin containers, labeled as a "Man from Panville"

Economics and history professors have published scholarly studies that indicate the images and characters used by Baum and Denslow closely resembled political images that were well known in the 1890s. They state that Baum and Denslow did not simply invent the Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Yellow Brick Road, Silver Slippers, cyclone, monkeys, Emerald City, little people, Uncle Henry, passenger balloons, witches and the wizard. These were all common themes in the editorial cartoons of the previous decade. Baum and Denslow, like most writers, used the materials at hand that they knew best. They built a story around them, added Dorothy, and added a series of lessons to the effect that everyone possesses the resources they need (such as brains, a heart and courage) if only they had self confidence. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a children’s book, of course, but as Baum warned in the preface, it was a "modernized" fairy tale as well.

The Tin Man was a common feature in political cartoons and in advertisements in the 1890s. Indeed, he had been part of European folk art for 300 years. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman is described as a worker, dehumanized by industrialization. The Tin Woodman little by little lost his natural body and had it replaced by metal; so he has lost his heart and cannot move without the help of farmers (represented by the Scarecrow); in reality he has a strong sense of cooperation and love, which needs only an infusion of self-confidence to be awakened. In the 1890s many argued that to secure a political revolution a coalition of Farmers and Workers was needed.

1890 cartoon portraying Benjamin Harrison as a knight in tin armor

The 1890 editorial cartoon to the right shows President Benjamin Harrison wearing improvised tin armor because he wanted a tariff on tin. Some interpreters argue that this shows the figure of a "tin man" was in use as political allegory in 1890s. The man on the right is politician James G. Blaine.

The oil needed by the Tin Woodman had a political dimension at the time because Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company stood accused of being a monopoly (and in fact was later found guilty by the Supreme Court.) In the 1902 stage adaptation the Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller," the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened." (Swartz, Oz p 34).

[edit] Trivia

In Alexander Volkov's Russian translation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Tin Woodman is dubbed the Iron Woodchopper. Volkov, unlike Baum, was aware that tin does not rust. Note, however, that many times, an object made of iron or steel coated with tin (in order to prevent rusting) is called a "Tin" object; for example, "tin bath", a "tin toy", or a "tin can"; thus, the Tin Woodman might be interpreted (in English, at least) as being made of steel with a tin veneer.
The "tinman" gene in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is so called because, when it is absent, the flies do not develop a heart. (Cf. Azpiazu & Frasch (1993) Genes and Development: 7: 1325-1340.)