A Tale of Two Wizards

This is a feature article I wrote for the Winter 2014 issue of The Baum Bugle discussing the differences between L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and MGM's famous film adaptation The Wizard of Oz. Rather than simply point out what the film did differently than the book, this article's intent was to explore these differences and why they were made, asking audiences to enjoy both versions of the story. I must thank then Bugle editor Craig Noble in helping to make this piece quite accessible to readers, though I've made some new edits in this posting.

“Hey, Jared,” my mother said one night. “There's a movie coming on TV, and I think you'll like it.”

“What's it called?” my seven-year-old self asked, walking into the living room.

“The Wizard of Oz.”

For the next two hours, I was rooted to the living room floor, watching the incredible story of how a girl from Kansas was taken to a fantasy world and met some amazing friends and faced a scary witch. I was fascinated.

Shortly after, my grandfather was moving to a smaller house and asked my father to pick up some of his childhood books. I wound up tagging along and discovered a familiar-looking book: the Grosset and Dunlap Illustrated Junior Library edition of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Evelyn Copelman. Later, I fished it out of the garage, and after a disastrous attempt at borrowing the MGM film on VHS from the library (resulting in a broken VCR), I decided to read the book for myself.

I read the book over several days and was quite enchanted by it. More Oz! More characters! More adventures! Of course this version was better, right?

That was twenty years ago, and by now I've read all of the Famous Forty Oz books and then some, as well as seen most of the film and television adaptations of the Oz stories. I've also seen some of my other favorite stories become movies and even taken a shot at a writing a few screenplays. Consequently, I often think about the adaptation process from book to film.

One rule that modern screenwriters seem to cite is, “Don't change the story, change the storytelling.” While this rule has been commonly cited only in recent years, when we look back at MGM's classic film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, we can see that it has been in place for a very long time.

I've come to realize that saying one version of the story is better than another—no matter what well-worded reason you may cite—is failing to appreciate both versions for what they are. Books and films are very different mediums, and what works in one often will not work in the other. A book requires one to use imagination: what do the characters look like? How do they sound? What about buildings and landscape? A typical film adaptation offers a single interpretation of these missing elements, which may not match what the reader imagined.

A bigger difference between books and film—particularly evident in the case of The Wizard of Oz—is the pacing. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a chapter book with children in mind as the target audience. Children would not be expected to finish the entire book in a single sitting, whether they were reading it themselves or having it read to them.

Baum promises in the introduction to to present stories “in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.” This does not mean that the book is free from any violence or death, far from it! However, each chapter—with a couple of exceptions—ends with Dorothy and her friends being relatively safe. Scary situations are routinely dealt with by the end of each chapter, resulting in an episodic narrative style.

Unlike books, films are designed to be taken in during a single sitting, presenting as a continuous story. This often calls for a more linear narrative style, and it may require the dropping of certain plot elements. In the case of the MGM Wizard of Oz, a rather large overhaul was required.

By modern standards, it is perfectly all right for a film to dip into fantasy, even setting the bulk or the entirety of the plot in an unreal world. In 1939, however, such movies were scarce. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was set in a magical version of Europe in the past. Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland presented a fantasy based around familiar nursery characters paired with the comedy duo’s typical shtick. Since the bulk of The Wizard of Oz takes place in a world with good and wicked witches, flying monkeys, unreal landscapes, and some very non-human characters, it was decided to ground the film in the realm of reality from the start. In order for audiences to accept this fantasy world, MGM needed to open the film in a world that was believable and possibly even familiar.

MGM also was inspired by Paramount's disastrous 1933 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. While the movie was a charming adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book, the film studio made a huge mistake in casting big stars and making them unrecognizable under bulky masks. The film was a flop and spelled near ruin for Paramount. If famous movie stars were going to play the Oz characters, then the audience needed to be able to see and recognize them.

Thus, we have the opening set in sepia-toned Kansas, where Uncle Henry and Aunt Em have ordinary worries, such as possibly losing chicks due to a broken incubator, and most of the key Oz characters are suggested by familiar personality types—farmhands, a nasty neighbor, and a tricky showman. We are presented with a reality that audiences in 1939 could easily relate to, and faces that they could recognize. When these faces reappear in Oz under character makeup, we can still see who they are and connect them to the characters from Kansas.

Furthermore, the Kansas scenes foreshadow the new linear plot adaptation of the Oz story: Dorothy and Toto are threatened by a cruel female character, are helped by some friends, and travel to see a man who sends Dorothy back on the road home.

In Baum's book, Dorothy meets two powerful women in Oz who appear at the beginning and end of her journey: the Good Witch of the North and Glinda the Good. One could make many arguments for the significance of keeping these characters separate, but for the purposes of MGM's film adaptation, the two are combined, the former receiving the latter's name. Glinda was a popular character in the Oz books, and leaving her entirely out of the movie would have been nearly unthinkable. Yet introducing her in the film's final moments would have proven problematic to the linear adaptation, so the characters were combined. A downside to this change in the story is it begs the question of why Glinda quite willingly withholds critical information from Dorothy and sends her on a dangerous journey.

In contrast to her one-chapter appearance in Baum's book, the Wicked Witch of the West is redeveloped into a recurring threat to Dorothy in the film. The Wicked Witch of the East’s magic footwear is transformed from the book's silver shoes to the movie’s iconic Ruby Slippers. After Glinda gives them to Dorothy, the Wicked Witch of the West targets the girl and threatens her throughout her journey.

Perhaps the most altered character is Dorothy. In the book she is of an indeterminate—but likely prepubescent—age. The character played by the sixteen-year-old Judy Garland is supposed to be twelve, but she clearly looks older. In another change, Dorothy is a rather reserved child in the book, whereas in the film, she runs away from home and even scolds the Wizard when he scares the Cowardly Lion. This is not to say that Judy's Dorothy is consistently bolder than Baum's. She has her weak moments in the film, such as when she's trapped in the Wicked Witch's castle with nothing to do but wait for rescue or death, and her defeat of the Witch is only by accident. In contrast, Dorothy defies the Wicked Witch in the book by feeding the Cowardly Lion and later throws the fateful water at the Witch because she's had enough of her.

Dorothy is given a character arc in the film, whereas the book simply tells her adventures in an episodic fashion. Baum didn't set out to moralize with his story, but the film clearly has a moral as evidenced by the Tin Man asking, “What have you learned, Dorothy?” By the end the film, Dorothy has found a new appreciation for her home and family, but it’s near the beginning of the book (shortly after meeting the Scarecrow) that Dorothy states, “There is no place like home.” Her desire to return home is always inspired by her love for her guardians.

MGM based its approach to The Wizard of Oz on previous adaptations of Baum's story. It borrowed freely from the most famous adaptation of the story at that time: the original stage musical from 1903. For example, rather than attempting to depict the rescue from the poppy field by the field mice, MGM borrowed from the musical's grand Act One finale and had Glinda send snow to kill the poppies.

The encounter with the poppy field is the only one of Dorothy's adventures along the Yellow Brick Road that is included in the film. This is partly because it would have been too difficult to film most of these scenes in a visually interesting manner. (Does anyone really want to see Kalidahs that are just men in costumes?) Another reason is the linear plot adaptation removed the need for these episodes by placing the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion's needs to prove that they always had the qualities that they were looking for themselves into the expanded mission of defeating the Wicked Witch.

A number of elements from the book are moved to other points in the film’s chronology. In the book, Toto bites the Wicked Witch, while in the film, it is the Witch’s Kansas counterpart, Miss Gulch, who reports that this has happened to her. The Fighting Trees encountered during the final journey to Glinda’s palace in the book become the Apple Trees that lead Dorothy to find the Tin Man in the movie. The bee swarm that originally attacked Dorothy’s friends is referenced by the Wicked Witch in a threat to the Tin Man in the film.

Some elements from the book appear in the film briefly, though their importance is not mentioned in dialogue. For example, we see the Wicked Witch with the Golden Cap in one scene in the movie, but its importance is never brought up. In a similar vein, Glinda kisses Dorothy's forehead, but we are never told whether it has a magical purpose. (Given that the Witch attempts to kill Dorothy with a spell, we might presume that it does not.) The Winkies have spears as weapons, and the Witch sends them to attack Dorothy and her friends much like she did in the book.

Other changes were made for stylistic reasons. Scarcely any dialogue from Baum's book is carried over into the movie. The movie uses the precedents established by the 1903 stage production as a license to tell the story as a musical, in which songs are used as a vehicle to establish characters or move the plot forward. The story must keep moving, and even when Dorothy and her friends take time to sing about their desires, the lively songs are accompanied by choreography and cinematography so the audience doesn't feel like they're just listening to a song.

Although the MGM production took many design cues from W.W. Denslow’s illustrations, few of the character costumes resemble their book counterparts. Given that the movie Munchkins have doll-like figures, it has been suggested that perhaps they were supposed to bring to mind the Dainty China Country. Further cosmetic changes are made as well: the Munchkins and Winkies do not have cultures based around colors and the Wicked Witch does not have an eye patch or a far-seeing eye, but instead green skin and a crystal ball.

So, while both the book and film tell of how a Kansas girl goes to an amazing fantasy world and meets new friends and defeats a Wicked Witch on her quest to return home, they tell it very differently. It is the opinion of this writer that each should be appreciated for its own approach, rather than being pitted against the other. After all, they have delighted readers and audiences for one hundred nineteen and eighty years respectively.