Monday, May 15, 2006

All we own, we owe him

Happy 150th birthday, Frank Baum.

Wing tip to the uber-writer Mark Steyn and his faboo article on the occasion. Baum, it turns out, didn't have a large political allegory in mind with the Oz books, as I'd always been told. He simply had whimsy aplenty, and it endures, most famously in film.

True trivia: Frank Morgan tried many looks for Professor Marvel, but the one that worked best included an overcoat that had seen better days, purchased at a consignment shop. It turns out that the coat had once belonged to L Frank Baum himself.

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