My husband, theatre historian David Maxine, obtained a photocopy of the fragmentary script in the 1990s. That's the copy I consulted in my research and used as the basis for my 2014 reconstruction of the show. On the left, you can see the first page of that copy. That photocopy had come into the possession of its previous owner in the early 1980s. But that owner could not recall where it came from. While I was researching for All Wound Up, I asked several long-time Oz and Baum collectors about the fragmentary script, but none of them knew anything. All Wound Up had to go to press without a full provenance for the fragmentary script of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.
A few weeks ago, my husband David was looking through material he's collected for his planned book on the history of the 1903 Broadway Wizard of Oz. He ran across a letter that solves part of the mystery of the fragmentary script.
During the late 1950s, Frank Joslyn Baum, eldest son of L. Frank Baum, and Russell P. MacFall, a Chicago journalist, co-authored the first major biography of L. Frank Baum, To Please a Child. They corresponded a lot. In a letter dated 6 October 1958, Frank J. Baum wrote the following to Russell MacFall:
As to [The] Tik-Tok [Man of Oz], I was present at the opening in Los Angeles. For a time I had a script of that show, but Lou Gottschalk, the composer, asked me for it to use for a time as he thought he had a chance to get it re-produced. I loaned it to him and he soon died. I waited a few weeks to give his widow time to recover[,] then asked her for the script. She told me it was in an old trunk which she gave to the Salvation Army! When I contacted them they said all old papers had been burned! No script--except that I have about twenty of the first pages of the first act.
I have little doubt that that what I call "the fragmentary script" is what Frank J. Baum's letter refers to as "about twenty of the first pages of the first act." The fragmentary script consists of the first twenty-nine pages of the first act of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. Where Frank J. Baum's pages are now and who photocopied them for the copy I consulted remain unknown--for now. The letter doesn't establish an unbroken chain of possession. But I believe it establishes a Baum family source for the fragmentary script.
The letter also reveals why no copy of the full script of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz survived in the Baum family. What a shame Marie Gottschalk wasn't a little more conscientious about returning the full script her husband borrowed. At least a copy of the full script survived elsewhere for me to include for all to read in All Wound Up.
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