1990 television film directed by Jack Bender
The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story
is a 1990 American
made-for-television
biographical film
starring
John Ritter
as
Lyman Frank Baum
, the author who wrote the 1900 novel
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
and
thirteen other Oz books
.
[2]
[3]
Also starring in it were
Annette O'Toole
as Baum's supportive wife,
Maud
, and
Rue McClanahan
as Baum's tough mother-in-law,
Matilda Gage
.
Plot
[
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]
The film is told as a flashback from the point of view of
L. Frank Baum
's widow, Maud Gage Baum. On how her husband came to create
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
while undergoing and eventually overcoming professional and personal failures.
It's 1939 and the classic
MGM
film
The Wizard of Oz
is about to premiere at
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
in
Hollywood
. 78 year old Mrs. Baum has been invited to attend the premiere. Before she enters the theatre a young journalist recognizes her and asks if he may interview her. She politely agrees and begins to recount how she first met her husband. The story is interspersed with the famous Oz story, shown at certain points when Baum is writing down his ideas. It is shown that he was originally telling this to a group of kids, who asked him the name of this location, to which he looks at a file cabinet with the bottom drawer marked O-Z and decided "Oz". Another idea he had thought of was to say Dorothy was born in the
Dakota Territory
, only to scrap that sentence in favor of
Kansas
.
There is some literary license taken, especially in the completely-fabricated backstory regarding the creation of the character Dorothy. In truth, Dorothy Louise Gage died as a five-month-old infant, in Bloomington, Illinois. To console his wife on the loss of her beloved niece, Baum created an older girl, in the care of her Aunt Em, as the central character in the fantasy universe that became the Oz stories. "M" was the initial of Maud Baum's own first name, and there was no expansion of Em's name in the Oz books (though she was assumed to be "Emily" in the 1939 film).
However, in "Dreamer of Oz" she is portrayed as a young child (and played by 5-year-old Courtney Barilla], living in Dakota Territory. As she lay dying, Baum tells her that the central character in his stories was actually a girl named Dorothy.
Cast
[
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]
Reception
[
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]
In his TV Preview, Tom Shales of
The Washington Post
proclaimed the film "cheerfully satisfying", and praised the production values, but wasn't impressed with Ritter's performance.
[4]
John J. O'Connor of
The New York Times
praised Ritter's performance and called the film "heartwarming".
[5]
Howard Rosenberg of the
Los Angeles Times
dubbed it "long on mush and short on magic", but praised the recreations from the original stories.
[6]
References
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External links
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