In two days, we will mark the 75th anniversary of what may be the most iconic film of all American films. Aug. 25, 1939, was the national debut of “The Wizard of Oz,” the musical fantasy that has won our hearts for 75 years. “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” and “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” are but three indelible quotations from the movie.
Starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton, “The Wizard of Oz” was adapted from L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” published in 1900.
In 1904, Baum vacationed at the grand Hotel del Coronado and wintered there for six more years. He claimed that he wrote his best stuff in “the sunny clime of Coronado.” In the San Diego Union he was quoted as saying, “Those who do not find Coronado a paradise have doubtless brought with them the same conditions that would render heaven unpleasant to them, did they chance to gain admittance.”
He wrote under the pseudonyms Schuyler Staunton, Floyd Akers, Captain Hugh Fitzgerald, Suzanne Metcalf and Edith Van Dyne, but he is best known as L. Frank Baum. At the end of the 19th century, he sat down to create a children’s book about a girl named Dorothy, who was swept away to a phantasmagorical land populated by munchkins, witches and flying monkeys and a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion.
The fairy tale began as a bedtime story for Baum’s sons and their friends and soon spilled over into several evening sessions. During one of his read-alouds, Baum was asked the name of the magical place to which Dorothy and her little dog, Toto, were transported. Glancing about the room, Baum’s eyes fell upon the drawers of a filing cabinet labeled “A-N” and “O-Z.”
Noting that the letters on the second label spelled out the ahs uttered by his rapt listeners, Baum named his imaginary land Oz. Ever since, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has lived in the hearts of children — and grown-ups.
For many lovers of literature, places that exist only between the covers of books are as vivid as places that actually appear on gas station maps. If you are one of those people for whom Oz is as real as Oslo, Camelot is as real as Camden and Wonderland is as real as Disneyland, here’s a quiz for you.
Match each imaginary locale in the first list with the author in the second list who dreamed up that fantastic place:
- Baskerville Hall
- Dune
- East Egg
- The Emerald City
- The Forest of Arden
- Hogwarts School
- La Mancha
- Lilliput
- Looking-Glass House
- Middle Earth
- Middlemarch
- Narnia
- Never-Never Land
- Northanger Abbey
- Pooh Corner
- Shangri-La
- Toad Hall
- Utopia
- Wuthering Heights
- Yoknapatawpha County
a. Jane Austen
b. James Barrie
c. L. Frank Baum
d. Emily Bronte
e. Lewis Carroll
f. Arthur Conan Doyle
g. Miguel de Cervantes
h. George Eliot
i. William Faulkner
j. F. Scott Fitzgerald
k. Kenneth Grahame
l. Frank Herbert
m. James Hilton
n. C.S. Lewis
o. A.A. Milne
p. Thomas More
q. J.K. Rowling
r. William Shakespeare
s. Jonathan Swift
t. J.R.R. Tolkien
Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com