| The Marvelous Land of Oz | |
|---|---|
First edition book cover |
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| Author(s) | L. Frank Baum |
| Illustrator | John R. Neill |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Oz books |
| Subject(s) | Land of Oz |
| Genre(s) | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
| Publication date | 1904 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Wonderful Wizard of Oz |
| Followed by | Ozma of Oz |
The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, commonly shortened to The Land of Oz,[1] published on July 5, 1904, is the second of L. Frank Baum's books set in the Land of Oz, and the sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This and the next thirty-four Oz books of the famous forty were illustrated by John R. Neill. The book was made into an episode of The Shirley Temple Show in 1960, and into a Canadian animated feature film of the same name in 1987. It was also adapted in comic book form by Marvel Comics, with the first issue being released in November 2009. Plot elements from The Marvelous Land of Oz are included in the 1985 Disney feature film Return to Oz.
Contents |
Set shortly after the events in the first book, the protagonist is a boy named Tip, who for as long as he can remember has been under the guardianship of a witch named Mombi in Gillikin Country. As Mombi is returning home, Tip plans to frighten her with a scarecrow he has made. Since he has no straw available, Tip instead makes a man out of wood and gives him a pumpkin for a head, naming him Jack Pumpkinhead. Mombi is not fooled, and she takes this opportunity to demonstrate the Powder of Life that she bought from another sorcerer. She sprinkles the powder on Jack, bringing him to life and startling Tip, whom Mombi catches and threatens with revenge.
Tip leaves with Jack that night and steals the Powder of Life because Mombi plans to turn him into a marble statue in the morning. As they head for the Emerald City, Tip uses the Powder to animate the Sawhorse so Jack can ride him – for even though his wooden body does not tire, it can get worn away from all of the walking. Tip loses them as the tireless Sawhorse gallops faster and he meets with General Jinjur's all-girl Army of Revolt which is planning to overthrow the Scarecrow, who has ruled the Emerald City since the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Marching with the Army, Tip meets again with Jack, the Sawhorse, and now the Scarecrow as they flee the Emerald City in Jinjur's wake.
The companions arrive at the castle of the Tin Woodman, who now rules the Winkie Kingdom, and plan to retake the Emerald City. On their way back they are diverted by the magic of Mombi (whom Jinjur recruited to help her apprehend them), joined by the Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug, and aided by the Field Mice and their queen. Jinjur and her soldiers are scared by the Field Mice out of the main palace, but they still occupy the Emerald City itself. The Scarecrow proposes manufacturing a flying beast called a Gump by which they can escape through the air. Tip animates this collection of palace furniture with the Powder of Life, and they fly off, with no control over their direction, out of Oz and land in a nest of Jackdaws with all of the birds' stolen goods.
In their attempt to drive the Jackdaws from their sanctuary, the Scarecrow's straw is taken away and the Gump's wings are broken. Using the Wishing Pills they discover with the Powder of Life, Tip and his friends escape and journey to the palace of Glinda the Good. They learn from Glinda that a girl named Ozma was hidden by the Wizard of Oz long ago and that she is the rightful ruler of the Emerald City, not the Scarecrow (who did not want the job anyway). Glinda discovered that the Wizard made three visits to Mombi, but not for what they were. She therefore accompanies Tip, Jack, the Sawhorse, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Wogglebug, and the Gump back to the Emerald City to see Mombi. The witch tries to deceive them by disguising a chambermaid as herself (which fails), but manages to elude them as they search for her in the Emerald City. Just as their time runs out, the Tin Woodman plucks a rose to wear in his lapel, unaware that this is the transformed Mombi.
Glinda discovers the deception right away and leads the pursuit of Mombi, who is finally caught as she tries to run across the Deadly Desert in the form of a fast- and long-running Griffin (though later books state that anyone who touches the Desert is transformed into dust). Under pressure from Glinda, Mombi admits that the Wizard brought her the infant Ozma and that she used her magic to transform her into the boy Tip. At first, Tip is shocked to learn this, but Glinda and his friends help him to accept his destiny, and Mombi performs her last spell (although there is some evidence that she performed magic later on in The Tin Woodman of Oz).
The restored Ozma (whose physical appearance differs considerably between this book and the next, Ozma of Oz) leads her friends in retaking the Emerald City. The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, now stuffed with paper money that is worthless in Oz except as stuffing, return to Winkie Country with Jack Pumpkinhead, the Gump is disassembled at his request (though his head, which was a hunting trophy, can still speak), Glinda returns to her palace in Quadling Country, the Wogglebug remains as Ozma's advisor, and the Sawhorse becomes her personal steed.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had been transformed into a stage play, and in this work, several elements were clearly incorporated with an eye to that adaptation and to the possible adaptations of this work.[2] The Marvelous Land of Oz was dedicated to David C. Montgomery and Fred Stone, the comedians "whose clever personations of the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow have delighted thousands of children throughout the land..." This is referred to in the acknowledgements for Son of a Witch where Gregory Maguire acknowledges all of the cast of the stage musical, especially Joel Grey, Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel. in the 1902 stage adaptation of the first Oz book. From their importance to the play, a similar importance is given them this work, where neither Dorothy nor the Cowardly Lion appear.[2][3]
The Marvelous Land of Oz was also influenced by the story and vaudevillian tone of the stage play.[3] The character of the Wizard was in the book a good man though a bad wizard but in the play, the villain of the piece; this is reflected by the evil part he is described as having played in the back story of this work.[4] The two armies of women, both Jinjur's and Glinda's, were so clearly intended as future chorus girls that even reviews of the book noted the similarity.[5]
One early reviewer of The Marvelous Land of Oz noted that some details in the book clearly appeared to be designed for stage production—in particular, "General Jinjur and her soldiers are only shapely chorus girls."[6] Since the stage adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had been a huge hit, with two companies still touring the country as the second book was published, the reviewer's suspicion was both natural and accurate: Baum wrote a stage adaptation called The Woggle-Bug that was produced in Chicago the summer of 1905. (The detail of Tip/Ozma's sex change, which can raise a range of psychological speculations in modern readers, made perfect sense in terms of early twentieth-century stage practice, since the juvenile male role of Tip would have been played by an actress as a matter of course.) The musical score was composed by Frederic Chapin, and Fred Mace played the Woggle-Bug. (Baum had wanted Fred Stone and David Montgomery to reprise their roles as the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman for the second show, but the two refused, fearing typecasting, and the characters were omitted completely form the play.) The play, unfortunately, was a flop.[7]
In addition to being part of the basis for Baum's The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, Land of Oz was the final 1910 Selig Polyscope Oz film, and has been brought to the screen several additional times. The Land of Oz, a Sequel to the Wizard of Oz was a two-reel production by the Meglin Kiddies made in 1931 and released in 1932. The film was recently recovered, but the soundtrack of the second reel is missing. The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969) was a studio-bound production from independent filmmaker Barry Mahon, which starred his son, Channy, as Tip. Mahon had previously produced nudie films; however, those films were made in New York, while Oz was made in Florida, and neither Caroline Berner (as Jinjur) nor the rest of her army were drawn from his former casts. Filmation's Journey Back to Oz (1971), recast the army of revolt with green elephants and Tip with Dorothy, but was essentially an unaccredited adaptation of this book. Elements from this novel and the following one, Ozma of Oz, were incorporated into the 1985 film Return to Oz featuring Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. It is also adapted in Ozu no Mahōtsukai and the Russian animated film, Adventures of the Emerald City: Princess Ozma (2000).
The story was dramatized on the TV series "The Shirley Temple Show" in a one-hour program broadcast on September 18, 1960, with a notable cast including Shirley Temple as Tip and Ozma, Agnes Moorehead as Mombi the witch, Sterling Holloway as Jack Pumpkinhead, and Mel Blanc as the voice of the Saw-Horse and others.
The Wizard of Oz screenwriter Noel Langley registered an unproduced script with the U.S. Copyright Office which framed the story as the dream of an orphaned girl named "Tippie".
A new stage production of The Marvelous Land of Oz was mounted in Minneapolis in 1981, with music composed by Richard Dworsky, a book by Thomas W. Olson, and lyrics by Gary Briggle, who originated the role of the Scarecrow. This play stayed close to the novel, eliminating some stage-difficult moments and expanding the role of Jellia Jamb. The play was premiered by The Children's Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis, and a recording of the production was made available by MCA Video. The professional and community theatre rights to the play are currently available.
The 1905 Woggle-Bug script has not been published, though it has been preserved on microfilm. Its songs were published, and a collected volume was published by Hungry Tiger Press in 2001. The book was out of print for a while, but is now available again.
In 1985, the Windham Classics text adventure of the Wizard of Oz adapted much of the plot of this book, however it did not include the bespelled Ozma. At the story's conclusion Tip is crowned King of Oz.
Elements of the 2007 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries Tin Man also borrow from this book as much as it did the Wizard of Oz. The protagonist, like Tip/Ozma, was a lost princess sent away from The O.Z. and magically altered to forget much of her previous existence.
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