Page 43 - Orange Butterfly (2)

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Trivia about Oz, the Movie and its Creator:
• Baum grew up constantly having nightmares of being chased by a scarecrow, which later inspired the likeable Scarecrow in the book.
• The Tin Woodman is believed to have been inspired by a store window display Baum once made, that showed off a human statue made by pots, pans, and other pieces of metal.
• The Scarecrow’s fear of matches is thought to have come from Baum’s opera house having burnt down while performing Baum’s play “Matches”.
• He framed the pencil he used to write The Wizard of Oz as soon as he had finished writing it.
• Baum’s grandchild is named Ozma, like the ruler of Oz (though she was nicknamed “Scraps”, like the Patchwork Girl of oz). ozma’s daughter, Baum’s great-granddaughter, is named dorothy.
• Denslow, the illustrator of the first edition, used the money he made to buy a piece of land off the coast of Bermuda, and declared himself king.
• Dorothy Gale, the main character in the first book, was named after Baum’s niece, Dorothy louise Gage, whom Maud considered her own daughter. Uncle henry was based on henry Gage, Maud’s father.
• In The Wizard of Oz movie, the horses in Emerald City palace were colored with Jell-O crystals. The scenes had to be shot very fast, since the horses, liking the taste, started to lick the Jell-o off.
• In a short story he wrote for a newspaper, Baum talked about a farmer that made a horse wear green goggles, so that he thought that the pieces of wood he was eating was actually grass. in the emerald City, the Wizard made the people wear green glasses too, so everyone believes the whole city is made out of emeralds.
• Baum used many fake names while writing his books, such as: Laura Bancroft, Floyd Akers, Captain hugh Fitzgerald, John estes Cooke, Suzanne Metcalf, edith Van dyne, and Schuyler Staunton.
• Baum’s last words were “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands”. The Shifting Sands, as you may know, was the name of the desert surrounding oz.
• Nobody really knows where the name “Oz” came from, but most people believe that it was inspired by the labels on a filing cabinet: A-N and O-Z. Some other think that it comes from the “ohhs and ahhs” that children made when hearing the stories. another theory is that it comes from the abbreviation of “ounce. Yet another theory says that Baum, a big fan of Charles dickens, took his nickname, Boz, and just dropped the B. But according to Maud, she said it was a name l. Frank Baum had created completely out of his own mind.
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