Monday, February 2, 2026

Baum the Jokester

On April 4, 1913, the pseudonymous reporter "Zip," in a regular dramatic column for the Los Angeles (California) Times, related an amusing anecdote involving L. Frank Baum, which occurred shortly before Baum's new musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz premiered in Los Angeles:

I heard a good one pulled in the Majestic lobby the other night. Somebody, I can’t tell who it was, asked Frank Baum what he was going to do if someone should stand up in the audience at the first performance and shout, “Baum, Baum, Baum.”

To which the author laughingly replied that he hoped such an event would not occur, for the reason that someone might think the kindly-inclined individual was shouting “Bum, Bum, Bum.”

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