Great-grandson of ‘Oz’ creator ready for more adventures

He isn’t the typical fan Disney is counting on to see its flashy “Wizard of Oz” prequel.

He even predates the Judy Garland masterpiece.

But when it opens Friday, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Las Vegas, if not in the entire country, with more of a vested interest in “Oz The Great and Powerful” than the man schoolchildren call Mr. Oz.

“Of course, it’s Oz, so I’m going to see it,” says Roger Stanton Baum, the great-grandson of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” writer L. Frank Baum.

A former securities broker and one-time national sales manager for Players International, Baum says his biggest claim to fame was introducing the term “players card” into casino lexicon.

That was before he started writing his own Oz books. “The Oz Enigma,” his 16th such tale, hits bookstores March 19.

Baum, who’ll turn 75 two days later, had written a children’s book, “Long Ears and Tailspin in Candy Land: A Faraway Adventure,” that was published in 1968. But for the next two decades, that was the extent of his literary career.

“I’d thought of writing another book,” he says. “It never crossed my mind, though, about writing an Oz book.”

Then a lithographer Baum knew offered to illustrate his next story, if it was set in his great-grandfather’s magical land.

Plenty of people go into the family business. Baum’s grandfather, Frank Joslyn Baum, even picked up the mantle. But it can be especially daunting when that family business involves one of the most beloved stories of all time.

Before long, though, Baum was sending out chapters to be illustrated. The lithographer never responded, but by then, Baum had invested too much time in the project, so he soldiered on.

“All of a sudden,” he says, “I’m in the book-writing business.”

That business was very nearly over before it began.

Baum was buying groceries one day while writing his first Oz story, 1989’s “Dorothy of Oz,” when he drove off without realizing he’d left the only copy of his work-in-progress on top of his car. He scoured the parking lot for it. He even enlisted store employees in the search. Finally, during one last effort later that day, he discovered the notebook laying in a gutter. Despite a small stream of water running over it, Baum was able to make out the writing.

“It came that close, because I had literally worn myself out,” he says of the writing process up to that point. “I was already thinking, ‘I don’t think I could put this back together again.’ ”

He’s been inextricably linked to Dorothy and the gang ever since.

Baum spent six years signing autographs at the MGM Grand, back when there was much more tying the resort to the merry old land of Oz than its emerald hue. When the hotel kicked the Tin Man down the yellow brick road, Baum and his wife, Charlene, moved to Branson, Mo., where they lived for most of the past decade. The couple returned to Las Vegas last year to be closer to their family.

Spend even a moment talking to Baum, and you can tell the importance he places on family. He speaks reverentially about “Great Grandad,” even though the author died two decades before Baum was born. He has fond memories of L. Frank Baum’s widow, Maud, and Baum’s parents began immersing him in the Oz stories at an early age.

“Having the stories read to me, then realizing as I got older the scope of Oz,” he says, “it’s something we can call an American fairy tale. ... So much of our fairy tales come from England and Germany and whatnot. Here’s a true American fairy tale.”

As proud as he is of the Oz legacy, though, Baum isn’t territorial. He’s quite looking forward to “Oz The Great and Powerful,” which imagines the wizard’s origins as an ethically challenged circus magician portrayed by James Franco.

“Anything that promotes Oz is great,” Baum says, “as long as it’s positive. ... Anything that puts politics in Oz, it does kind of turn my stomach over, because it’s so not true.” (That’s his way of telling pundits the yellow brick road has nothing to do with the gold standard.)

Of course, it’s easy to be accepting of change when you’ve made a second career out of expanding the Oz universe. “The Oz Enigma” even sends the characters into outer space.

And there’s no doubt that, if it’s a hit, “Oz The Great and Powerful” should drum up interest in the 3-D animated version of Baum’s “Dorothy of Oz.” The film, scheduled to open in theaters later this year, features the voices of Lea Michele of “Glee” as Dorothy, Dan Aykroyd as the Scarecrow, Kelsey Grammer as the Tin Man, and Jim Belushi as the once cowardly Lion.

Truth be told, however, it wouldn’t really matter if Baum objected to the new movie. Or any others for that matter.

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has been in the public domain for more than half a century. Filmmakers largely have free rein to do whatever they choose with the beloved characters.

If you wanted to have, say, John McClane rescue Toto in “Die Hard: Over the Rainbow,” the only thing stopping you would be your conscience.

The biggest area of trouble other adaptations wander into, Baum says, involves Dorothy’s footwear.

“The ruby slippers were made ruby for the movie, so that remained with the movie copyrights,” he explains. “Great Grandad had written them as silver shoes. But on the Technicolor screen in those days, silver got washed out with the yellow in the yellow brick road. The red stood right out.”

So if you write about Dorothy, her slippers had better remain silver.

“A lot of times I’ll do that, and I’ll just put a little red bow on them,” Baum says, somewhat mischievously.

All this talk of other projects isn’t merely hypothetical. In addition to “Oz The Great and Powerful” and “Dorothy of Oz,” at least a half-dozen other Emerald City-related movie projects have been in development just in this decade. In January, Amazon Studios, a division of the online retail giant, commissioned a pilot for a children’s TV show called “Oz Adventures.”

So how can you explain the enduring popularity of a story introduced in 1900?

Aside from the flying monkeys and the whole witch-being-crushed-by-a-falling-house episode, Baum notes there’s very little violence.

“It’s something I like to tell people that we can call our own,” he adds. “And we’re all part of this bundle of love, heart, wisdom and courage.”

Then there’s the reason Baum spends as much time as possible reading in local schools.

“Kids need this today, you know,” he says. “They need storytelling.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@
reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.