Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Mystery of the Missing Tik-Tok Man Script

I find it curious that while there are many online references to L. Frank Baum's early draft for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz stage show, titled Ozma of Oz, as being extant, I can find little reference to the existence of the final draft for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. Why does no one (at least online, other than Wikipedia and me) seem to know of its substantial, albeit fragmentary, existence?

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz script, page one.
I don't know where the original script is now. The original may be in the hands of a descendant of L. Frank Baum. Or it may be in the collection of an Oz collector. I've had access to a photocopy of it for many years. It can't be the only photocopy around. Can it?

Even if it were, I've mentioned the existence of the script on this blog. And I reproduced the first page of it as an illustration in my detailed discussion of the show's history, published in the Winkie Con 50 Program Book, which has been available beyond the convention itself. I don't expect casual Oz book readers to necessarily be familiar with either my article or this blog. But anyone who writes specifically about The Tik-Tok Man of Oz ought to be.

Anyway, what prompted this post was that I recently ran across a delightful blog called Burzee. The bloggers offer their reactions to the Oz books and Baum's other fantasies. One post on the blog discusses Baum's novelization, Tik-Tok of Oz, and claims erroneously that the Ozma of Oz script is the only version of the script extant. I wrote a comment on the post to correct this, but I'm frustrated that this myth is being perpetuated, despite the easily accessible evidence to the contrary. The Burzee blog isn't the only instance of this misinformation I've seen, only the latest. Claims that the Ozma of Oz draft is the final extant version can also be found on more "scholarly" websites, such as here, here, and here (which explicitly and inexplicably states that the final version is lost).

Why do these myths take hold? You'd think a Munchkin hung himself on the MGM set or something.