Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
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I love Elizabeth Letts
for her love of history and her offbeat choices: with "The Perfect Horse," she takes us into the point of view of a relatively obscure soldier, equestrian, and dressage champion, Alois Podhajsky, and with exhaustively researched historical details, she brings to life extraordinary people who did great things--unsung heroes, most of them (although names like General Patton are familiar for other reasons)--as they launched Operation Rescue to save the fabulous horses of World War II .
"The Wizard of Oz"
is one of the most famous, iconic, and beloved movies in all of cinematic history. It was one of the first movies in color, in 1939, and it competed with "Gone with the Wind" that year at the Oscars, or it might have won first place in every category. The story is so familiar to so many of us, our culture is filled with references to ruby slippers, "We're not in Kansas anymore," cries of "Toto!" when a strong wind blows, the courage of the "cowardly" lion, The Tin Man (rock group America sings that Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man that he didn't already have), "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh my!), "I do believe in spooks," poppies ("Now they'll sleep!), and pretty much every line in the movie is well known and oft-quoted.
Less well known is the name Frank Baum,
author of the beloved Oz series of books, without which this movie would not exist.
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If kids today are reading those books,
I haven't heard or seen evidence of it (not like the Harry Potter series), but one man's imaginary world is still very much a part of our world.
And this, to me, stands out the most in reading "Finding Dorothy." Elizabeth Letts focuses on Baumm's wife, the daughter of a famed suffragette, and her interest in the 16-year-old actress who plays Dorothy in the movie. We get an inside look at the movie set, the cast, and the Hollywood sleazebags who exploit girls and women sexually because there will always be more where those actresses came from; millions of women and girls would trade sexual favors for a shot at stardom. Long before the #MeToo movement and Harvey Weinstein becoming a household name, directors, producers, and casting agents were taking advantage of women.
This book alternates between the widow at age 78 visiting the movie set and the little girl named Maude who grew up, married an idealistic dreamer, suffered poverty and despair when bad luck hit time and time again, and ultimately saw her husband's rich imagination vindicated. It was a long time coming. With excruciating detail, Letts describes the squalor of a cramped apartment in Chicago, a lonely home in Aberdeen, South Dakota, the incredible bazaar and emporium Frank Baum built there and the sinking ship that literally sunk his business. Frank suffered so much bad luck. It seemed Maud was crazy to give up college to marry this actor, playwright and producer whose ventures kept tanking with the economy.
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What really hit home for me
in reading this is the importance of people like Frank. As a society, we value the husband who gets a good job and buys the house with the white picket fence and provides for his wife and children. Maud has to take up sewing to meet household expenses, and Frank takes various odd jobs as a salesman to pay the rent and feed a growing family. Years pass before he finally strings together some of the details from their life, including Maud's niece as a role model for Dorothy and the "aaahs" of his sons over a fantastical toy-scape Frank created one Christmas, which ultimately inpsired the name "Oz," to the first book that got published and launched Frank as an author. Sadly, Frank Baum was dead before he ever saw his story brought to life in the cinema, but a memorable scene at a fair shows him excited as a child over one of the first gadgets to show moving pictures inside a box.
Our culture seems to show no respect for the dreamy idealist who'd rather write stories or music for a living, or paint, or act on stage, because that's not "real life," that's just play acting and having fun while shirking the hard work of the daily grind at the office. But after a long day at work, what do people enjoying doing when they get home? Watching a movie or TV show. Where do the suppose these shows come from? Guys and gals who go to a desk job at an office Monday through Friday? No. That is not how it works.
Almost anyone can work at a desk job, but hardly anyone can write a story as memorable as The Wizard of Oz. Frank Baum wrote other stories, and poems, but Oz is the one with all the staying power.
And the people who write epic adventures like Oz are not likely to write while working that soul-killing desk job.
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As a young wife and mother, Maud is often frustrated to tears or to a weary numbness as Frank fails at one venture after another, and moves them from town to town, and Frank pleads with her to believe in him. It is a small thing, and yet it is huge. It's what drew her to him in the first place when they met in their foolish, romantic youth - Frank's imagination, his sense of wonder, his presence on stage, his utterly unconventional and sensational outlook on life. For him to marry and support a wife and child, then more children, is the kind of challenge that can grind down an artist's imagination and stifle productivity in the arts.
And who are we, what are we, without the arts?
I love this novel, even though I don't have a love of historical fiction that tries to get into the mind of a real-life person and present inner thoughts, dialogue, and specific details that did not come straight from journal entries. Conjecture - it brings a story to life, but when it's Historical Fiction about a Real Person, I find it distracting and would rather not see it in the prose.
That said, this is still a 5-star story, and I would love to have everyone take home the message that we need dreamers and idealists like Frank Baum just as we need plumbers, electricians, carpenters, farmers, truckers, and all those people who keep civilization safe and civilized.
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Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) of this book,
and
Thank you for reading!
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