Have a look at this copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz I have. Ruby slippers? We can't even get a copy of the original book that doesn't reference the movie? Oz just can't get away from the shadow of the more famous film. Wonder how long before the publisher that did these Oz books gets sued by Warner Bros. The 1939 film adaptation of The
Wizard of Oz turned 80 last year, yet the average person on the street may
not even know there were books. I think most people know that the first book
exists, even if they haven’t read it, but ask them about The Marvelous Land of Oz or if they know who Princess Ozma is and the number drops
exponentially. Taking it a step further, there are even a disturbingly large
percentage of fans of the movie that don’t know there was a book series.
I’m not above it all either. Until fairly recently I didn’t quite know there
were as many books as there are. I’ve related the story of how I came across
the Oz sequels and binge-read them while at work on this blog before. But why
didn’t I know about the Oz books? Why haven’t more people heard of them?
Especially given the fact that well over half of the forty books in the series
are public domain. Generally speaking, for a book to gain major cultural
notoriety these days it has to have movies or television shows based on it. You
would think, given that no one would have to pay for the licensing rights to
the books anymore, we would have a new Oz movie every other year, either by one
of the big movie studios or an independent studio somewhere. After all, movie
adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are made all the time;
and while Through the Looking Glass adaptations are rarer, they do still
exist. Yet the last time we had a movie based on the Oz sequels was in 1985
with Return to Oz, and before that…1914’s The Patchwork Girl of Oz?
At
first, I couldn’t help but think the 1939 film was somehow to blame for
eclipsing the entire franchise. It should have been a gateway into the Oz books
for people. But for some reason, that’s not what happened. The film debuted to
modest success from what I understand, but didn’t quite earn its current place in
American culture until the 1950’s and 1960’s, when it was aired on television
and the baby boomer generation grew up watching it every year. Television and
film had by and large replaced books as a dominant form of entertainment. For the youth of the time, the film adaptation of The
Wizard of Oz became the definitive Oz. The only Oz. In 1954 Disney bought
the film rights to the books, but for some reason, decided to sit on them for
decades and not do anything with them other than release a few novelty records,
until they were about to expire in the 1980’s. This could be another
contributing factor for why the books were forgotten by mainstream culture, as
this allowed the 1939 film to go unchallenged for years, with no one else even
allowed to do movies about the other books. By the time Disney was finally
ready to do something with their film rights and make Return to Oz, plot-wise
a mixture of the second and third Oz books, it was too late. The nostalgia
goggles of the generation that grew up seeing the 1939 film on TV were too
great, they would now not accept anything different. People imprinted on it,
ruby slippers, bipedal lion, green witch and all. The real Oz of the books was too “scary” for audiences. They wanted
their dancing Munchkins. Now the filmmakers of Return to Oz foresaw this
to a degree, throwing the ruby slippers into the story when they had no
business being in it (in Ozma of Oz the Nome King had a Magic Belt which
did basically what the ruby slippers do in the film, and at any rate the
slippers were silver in the first book, and never reappear in the sequels), and
using the “was it all a dream?” trope which was also never used in the books
but present in the 1939 film. But these small gestures apparently weren’t
enough for audiences. Granted, Dorothy never got put into an asylum where they
tried to give her electro-shock therapy in the books either, but that’s on the
filmmakers (I personally liked that idea, but then again, I’m into the macabre).
Return to Oz and its
box-office failure was a nail in the coffin for any mainstream film adaptation
of the Oz sequels, sadly. (I say “a nail’, because it wasn’t the final nail.
I’ll get to that in a moment.) From then on, everything had to be an adaptation
of the 1939 film in some way; at least as far as they could get away with
adapting it without being sued by Warner Bros. If someone was doing a sequel,
they wouldn’t touch the books, it had to be a sequel to the 1939 film. They usually
rehash some variant of “the Wicked Witch is somehow alive again and Oz needs
Dorothy back” premise that never happened in the books. Or make Oz a “darker
and edgier” dystopia, which became cool after Wicked did it. Curiously,
as remake-obsessed as Hollywood is, The Wizard of Oz has become a sacred
cow that everyone’s too afraid to remake and have be compared to the 1939 film,
even though a book-accurate version would be cool to see.
But after digging a little deeper, I
don’t think that a generation that grew up attached to the 1939 film is truly
to blame, nor the box office failure of Return to Oz, nor anything
having to do with the 1939 film itself. They may have been factors, but, the
real reason the books are obscure and haven’t had movies done based on them is
because of the insatiable greed of Warner Bros. Now they had nothing to do with
creating the 1939 film, but since they bought MGM’s back catalog in 1986
they’ve hounded anyone trying to do anything involving Oz, defending the film
as if it were their baby. It doesn’t even matter to them that the books are
public domain. If you have enough money to buy good enough lawyers you can do
anything, apparently, even act like you own a public domain story. Disney,
themselves far from innocent of the same kind of behavior (they’re responsible
for the Copyright Extension Act of 1998 after all) are the only ones with
enough money to stand up to them, which they had to do for 2013’s movie Oz,
The Great and Powerful, even having to invent a new shade of green for the
Wicked Witch of the West to avoid the wrath of Warner’s lawyers (she wasn’t
green in the book, but I guess everyone expects her to be green now). There
were no good guys in that legal battle, but it was still an unfortunate one for
Oz fans. It’s quite possible that the reason we haven’t seen more Oz movies is
because no other studio would want to risk being sued to oblivion for making
their own Oz film, even if it were based on the much safer sequels.
Perhaps
this burial of the Oz books in the public consciousness was all done by design,
so that MGM and later Warner Bros. could maintain their grip on a public domain
property forever by making the film version the only one people have heard of
and want to see. Or perhaps I’m giving them too much credit for being able to
plan this far ahead and monopolize Oz. No, it also took the incompetent
handling of the film rights of the sequels by Disney for Oz to end up where it
is now in pop culture. Imagine if they’d done an animated Oz film. Things would
definitely be different. Will we ever have the books be adapted to film in the
future, I wonder? I suppose it isn’t impossible. As it stands, that’s basically
the only way the sequels are going to get any kind of attention from the
mainstream public. And it doesn’t look to be happening anytime soon.
It’s
hard to say where Oz would be now if it hadn’t been for the 1939 movie. Would
the books be even more forgotten without it? Or without the fear of being
compared to the 1939 film and possibly being sued, would someone else have done
a successful film series that kept the memory of them alive? Unfortunately, I’m
unable to travel the multiverse and find out. But, without having seen the 1939
film on VHS as a young child, I probably would never have read the books. So
even though it took many years, it did eventually act as a gateway for me. And
I’m sure this is probably the same for virtually any other fan of the books, as
niche of a fandom as it is. The 1939 film is both a blessing and a curse for
Oz. I just wish the Oz series had been treated more like Alice in Wonderland.
That book has had a couple very successful, even iconic adaptations, but it hasn’t put an
end to all adaptations or put an end to any book-accurate adaptations. Perhaps
that book had the added advantage of already being in the public domain long
before today’s greedy mega-corporations came into being. At any rate, that’s my
take on why the books are so obscure. I could be wrong or missing another key
factor, of course.
References
