THE TIK-TOK MAN OF OZ

The Fairyland Extravaganza of 1913–14

Part Two

by Scott Cummings

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 58, no. 3 (Winter 2014), pgs. 29–40

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Cummings, Scott. “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz: The Fairyland Extravaganza of 1913–14: Part Two.” Baum Bugle 58, no. 3 (2014): 29–40.

MLA 9th ed.:

Cummings, Scott. “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz: The Fairyland Extravaganza of 1913–14: Part Two.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 58, no. 3, 2014, pp. 29–40.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs that have not been reproduced here.)

 

On the night of the San Francisco premiere of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, L. Frank Baum shared with the press his resignation to live in Oz forever. “I’ve written twenty-six books of fairy tales now,” he said, “and I suppose I’ll write Oz stories until I die. The children won’t let me write anything else; I tried another sort of fairyland once, but I got thousands of letters from children who said they wanted Oz and lots of it and nothing else.”¹

 

Baum Bounces Back from Bankruptcy

Frank Baum was eager to return to Oz. The author of six celebrated Oz books had neatly concluded the series in 1910 with The Emerald City of Oz,² in which he cloaked his fairyland creation in a Barrier of Invisibility, cutting it off from his devoted fans.³

Only a year later, the U. S. District Court in Los Angeles was hearing Baum’s petition for bankruptcy. Baum had earned great wealth from The Wizard of Oz extravaganza, which had premiered in Chicago in 1902 and then was reworked for a Broadway opening in 1903,⁴ but he had lost much of it in subsequent dramatic ventures. His 1905 musical, The Woggle-Bug, was a flop.⁵ The innovative multimedia show The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, which toured in 1908, was a financial failure, and debts mounted.⁶ Too little relief came from his new “Trot” adventure stories, The Sea Fairies (1911) and Sky Island (1912), which were not selling as well as had the Oz books.

So, with a legacy of both fortune and failure from Oz, Baum set course once again for the Emerald City. In April 1912, he delivered the manuscript for a new Oz book, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, to Reilly & Britton. His Chicago publisher also planned to release a set of “Little Wizard” booklets to promote the revival of the beloved Oz series in 1913.

However, neither of these book ventures was the vehicle for Baum’s return to Oz. That honor goes to The Tik-Tok Man of Oz musical extravaganza, the first public offering of Oz since Baum abandoned his most famous creation three years earlier. Baum’s successful route in breaking through the Barrier of Invisibility surrounding Oz is a page-to-stage-to-page story.

 

Originally Ozma

Baum told the press in 1913 that he wrote the book for the Tik-Tok Man, with its flower-infused theme, in the “lovely, old garden on the Baum homestead in Hollywood” called Ozcot, using three of his stories: Ozma of Oz, The Road to Oz, and The Emerald City of Oz. “In combining these,” mentioned one report, “he first worked out a plot, then brought out the scheme of lighting … and then wrote out the dialog.” In fact, Baum’s book and lyrics for The Tik-Tok Man of Oz are largely an updated version of an older Oz project that he had completed several years earlier, but which was never produced.

Just months after Ozma of Oz was published, on July 29, 1907, Baum announced that he had completed (likely an exaggeration) a new stage adaptation of the story. An article in the November 6, 1907, issue of The San Diego Evening Tribune stated that Baum had composed his “opera” during his stay in Coronado the previous winter, indicating that he had completed the script for the extravaganza even before the book had been published. A description in The New York Times indicates that the new “Oz opera” included many of the main characters from Ozma, but not several of the central characters who would eventually populate later versions of the musical, although a description of Baum’s design of some creative staging and lighting effects hints at the appearance of Polychrome:

L. Frank Baum, who composed The Wizard of Oz, has just finished a new comic opera entitled Ozma of Oz. It will be produced soon by the American Extravaganza Company, comprised of New York and Chicago capitalists. While some of the old Wizard of Oz characters, notably the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, are to appear in the new story, there are several others that Mr. Baum thinks are destined to supersede them, such as a Clockwork man called “Tiktok,” who thinks, speaks and acts by means of three separate mechanisms. There is also the “Wheelerman,” an odd conception, and the “Hungry Tiger.” Mr. Baum has made the libretto and written the lyrics.

Mr. Baum has devised a fairy ballet, in which the dancers will be out of sight of the audience. Their figures will be reflected into the line of vision of the people in the house by means of an intricate arrangement of mirrors. The light reflections will be so arranged that the dancers will change color like chameleons, will seem real enough to touch and will then fade away into thin air, to reappear again in a new evolution. He has applied for a patent on the device.

In December 1908, even as Baum’s Fairylogue was fizzling, momentum for staging Ozma was building as the press announced that the team of David Montgomery and Fred Stone, stars of the Wizard extravaganza, would be joining the “sequel” Oz comedy. The show was planned for the upcoming theater season, with music provided by composer Manuel Klein, British composer and musical director of the prestigious Hippodrome theater in New York. In February 1909, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that show, (presumably) incorrectly named The Ozman of Oz, would star (Fred) Bailey and (Ralph) Austin in the leading roles and be produced by the Studebaker Theatre company at that Chicago theatre in the spring of 1910.

In an interview for the August 1909 issue of The Theater, Baum indicated that the Oz project was still alive and mentioned a new title for the production, perhaps hinting at a change in the story to focus more on Polychrome.

I am not neglecting the musical comedy idea. An extravaganza that will go either by the name of Ozma of Oz or The Rainbow’s Daughter, will be put on the first week in October by Montgomery and Stone at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. This is going to be a big thing scenically, something on the order of Bailey and Austin’s big hit, The Top of the World. You can tell that the mechanical effects will be remarkable, for we have working with us Arthur Voegtlin, who is without a doubt the greatest scenic painter in America. His Battle in the Air is probably the most wonderful thing ever produced in this line. The music for this play is being written by Manuel Klein, composer of The Land of Nod,⁷ and several other musical successes.

At some point the Shuberts and Charles Dillingham may have expressed interest in producing Baum’s Ozma musical in New York, but the production did not materialize there or in Chicago. The script was shelved until 1912, when Baum decided to wind up Tik-Tok again.

Extant drafts of Baum’s libretto from 1909 reveal the evolution of ideas that eventually developed into The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.⁸ While much of the storyline and characters are derived from his Oz books, Baum clearly was following the formula of the successful 1902 Wizard extravaganza. To avoid conflict with characters tied to that show, which was still playing in 1912, he devised some creative parallel Oz characters.

Replacing Dorothy Gale and her pet cow Imogene are Betsy Baker, “a ship-wrecked girl from Schenectady,” and her pet mule, Hank. During the revision to the Tik-Tok Man, Betsy’s last name would be changed to Bobbin and her home re-located to Oklahoma. As with Imogene from the Wizard stage musical, Hank is a pantomime part played by an actor in an animal suit.

Dorothy’s sidekick in the book Ozma of Oz, is her pet hen, Billina. The chicken ultimately plays a central role in the conquest of the Nome King. Baum retained the hen in his script for the Ozma extravaganza, but renamed her “Baden-Baden, a spring chicken.” How a chicken would be operated on stage is a mystery—maybe as a marionette? One line of the script mentions that the spring chicken has actual springs inside, so perhaps it was envisioned as a mechanical hen puppet.

Either way, the chicken has no lines, and after a few stage directions (riding on a raft and flying onto the shoulder of some characters, flapping its wings), she disappears entirely from the plot without comment. Baum brought neither Billina nor Baden-Baden into the revised Tik-Tok Man script, but the omission did not go unnoticed. “L. Frank Baum has retained about the central figure of the play all the demi-gods that his fertile imagination placed in the Olympus of Oz,” wrote one newspaper report. “Only one is absent … the yellow hen. The author, fully realizing the unadvisability [sic] of introducing a feminine ‘chantecler,’ omitted that great favorite.”

Substituting for the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow are a similar comic duo: Tik-Tok (a main character from Ozma of Oz) and the Shaggy Man (who was introduced in the 1909 Oz book, The Road to Oz)—a simple swap of one metal man for another and of a wobbly-legged straw man with a curly-clothed vagabond.

Two other female leads are adapted from the Oz series: Polychrome (introduced in The Road to Oz and brought back in the 1912 “Trot” novel, Sky Island), and Ozma (transformed into a Rose Princess quite similar to a Mangaboo, vegetable people who grow on bushes and are picked when ripe, from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz).

For the main villain, Baum turned the Nome King called “Roquat of the Rocks” in Ozma of Oz (and later “Roquat the Red” in The Emerald City of Oz) into “Ruggedo, the Metal Monarch,” in the play. One important legacy of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz is that Ruggedo would remain the Nome/Gnome King’s name for the rest of the Oz series. Ruggedo is never described as being a “nome,” and he rules over an army of “imps.” Another change from the Oz books is that his assistant Kaliko is now named Flash, the “Chief Imp: Subject of the Metal Monarch.”

Joining in the action are two original characters: Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo, whose army consists of several officers but only one fighter, named Private Files. Ann the conqueror seems to be a close cousin of General Jinjur from The Marvelous Land of Oz, while Ann’s imbalanced army is an obvious derivative of the Army of Oz in Ozma of Oz.

One important character missing from his script for the Ozma musical, and its revision as the Tik-Tok Man, is Oz itself. The action takes place in the Rose Kingdom, the Home of the Field Flowers, the Metal Monarch’s Underground Cavern, and the Metal Forest. And proud as they are to fight for Oogaboo, its Queen and Army never say where their strange-named country is located. The story comes right to the “Edge of Fairyland” but never reaches anywhere recognizably within the borders of the Deadly Desert. The word “Oz” is never mentioned, except in the title. Baum’s 1912 revision of the Ozma of Oz extravaganza first was called Tick-Tock or Tic-Tok, then The Tik-Tok Man, and only in late January 1913 did the title The Tik-Tok Man of Oz emerge. The implied Oz connection intended to build upon the success of the Wizard, but—with no actual references to that specific fairyland in the script—avoided conflict with the other Oz show. At least one theater critic, Waldemar Young of The San Francisco Chronicle, caught this trick, writing that:

The book is built along the line of Mr. Baum’s previous success, The Wizard of Oz. As a matter of fact, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz isn’t of Oz at all—at least it doesn’t appear from anything in the story that he is. That final designation was evidently appended as an afterthought, to couple this winner in the betting with a stake horse from the same stable.

In many other significant ways, Baum’s new script owed a great deal to his earlier stage success. Press releases for the Tik-Tok Man emphasized the connection, touting it as “a musical extravaganza that may be called a successor to The Wizard of Oz.” But Baum was quick to counter that “there isn’t a character in this play or a scene in it that was in The Wizard of Oz, but the natives of that country are so different from other countries they seem alike.”

But it is not difficult to see strong parallels in both characters and scenes. Both shows opened with a storm, showcased a flower-girl chorus (poppies in the Wizard grew into roses in the Tik-Tok Man), and featured an army of female guards performing precision drill maneuvers.

 

The Talented Tik-Tok Team

As early as June 1912, Baum had revived the idea of staging the Ozma musical and began forming collaborations on the project. He teamed up with conductor and composer Louis F. Gottschalk, who would provide the music for Baum’s lyrics. The pair became the Smith & Tinker of The Tik-Tok Man. Stepping in to wind up their creation was producer Oliver Morosco, whose theater empire in California and growing influence in New York could provide the necessary funds, cast, and publicity. Exactly how these three men formed their collaboration is remembered differently by each.

Baum credited Oliver Morosco with initiating the idea, stating in a 1913 interview that he wrote The Tik-Tok Man of Oz “at the request of Oliver Morosco.” In another contemporary interview Baum recalled: “Last year I took up my home in Hollywood. Once Oliver Morosco suggested that the time was ripe for a genuine extravaganza. We had not had a genuine extravaganza for years. That was the origin of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.” Baum also credited Morosco for bringing in Gottschalk, writing in a letter to Sumner Britton on November 6, 1912:

The musical composer chosen for me by Morosco is Lou Gottschalk, for years the orchestra leader at the New Amsterdam Theatre, N.Y., for Klaw and Erlanger and who has many successful songs to his credit. I haven’t heard any of his music yet but have met him and he impresses me as being the real thing. He is now at work on the score.

A newspaper story from the opening night of the show reveals that Morosco’s secretary, Mr. George Stegner, “read the script of Mr. Baum’s story and advised Morosco that it promised to be a big success. The manager [Morsoco] then read it and at once engaged Louis Gottschalk to write the score.”

Gottschalk remembered that he pursued Baum during the summer of 1912, recalling the sequence of events this way in an interview with the Chicago Examiner:

My composing of the music of The Tik Tok Man was quite accidental … I had gone out to Los Angeles in June of last year to take a rest and see my old friends in the home town. Mr. Baum (the author of the book) makes his home in Los Angeles every Winter and at this time was in Syracuse.

Someone gave me a copy of his book of Tik Tok and I became enthusiastic over its possibilities as the background for a musical setting. So I wrote him at Syracuse. The letter followed him all over the country and finally reached him at Los Angeles two months after I had mailed it [August]. In the meantime I had gone back to New York. Mr. Baum addressed a letter to me at the Lambs Club, but I had gone when it reached there. His letter chased me about a month and finally reached me in Los Angeles. Then we were both together and we began holding conferences. That was last October.

Early in November we made our arrangements with Mr. Morosco for a production of the play and I began my work on the score last December.

Three decades earlier, Gottschalk had moved with his family from St. Louis, where he was born in 1864, to Los Angeles, where he developed an interest in a music career. At age 22, he went to Berlin to begin his formal studies. Upon returning to the United States, Gottschalk served as musical director for many productions. His greatest fame as a conductor came in 1907, when theater manager Henry Savage decided that Lou Gottschalk should wield the baton for the American premiere of The Merry Widow, which was held in Syracuse on September 23, 1907. The piece then opened on Broadway, and Gottschalk stayed with the show for two seasons, conducting 721 performances. In addition to being a renowned conductor, Gottschalk was also an accomplished song composer. But with the Tik-Tok Man, he was facing new terrain as it was his first assignment to write a full musical score. Morosco’s autobiography includes this description of how composer and producer first met:

One day an excellent composer, Lou Gottschalk, came to the Burbank and played a score of music for me. It carried me away to the magical land of gnomes and fairies, and while still under the spell of its enchantment, I signed a contract for the peerless child’s extravaganza, Tik-Tok of Oz [sic].

Gottschalk later told me that some time previously he had visited the theater in the hope of meeting the producer Oliver Morosco, whom he expected to be an old man, and had been told by a grinning usher to step to the stage door to see the “old gentleman.” I was pointed out to him, and it so happened, at the time, dressed in a dignified gray suit, I was doing round after round of flip flaps across the stage. He stood by until my “exercise” was suddenly terminated by a gold watch which flew out of my pocket and landed in the orchestra pit. Without making his presence known, Mr. Gottschalk walked away, telling himself, “That’s the manager of Tik-Tok.”

Although The Tik-Tok Man of Oz was billed as “Oliver Morosco’s Fairyland Extravaganza,” the show was also his first venture into the field of musical extravaganza. The thirty-six-year-old “pontifex producer of plays” in the burgeoning Los Angeles theater scene already had brought two successful shows, The Bird of Paradise and Peg O’ My Heart, east to New York. These and other Broadway successes eventually earned Morosco millions (Time magazine reported more than $5,000,000) and made him “one of the nation’s most spectacular showmen.” The Oz extravaganza was described as “the biggest plunge he has ever made.”

With the tracks in place for a Tik-Tok train to make a similar successful transcontinental trip, Morosco spent the winter months shoveling coal into the engine of this production. To fuel the fire was a cash investment of tens of thousands of dollars. Morosco was betting big on Betsy Bobbin and the gang.

Around the time that L. Frank Baum was launching his successful career as a children’s book author in Chicago, Oliver Morosco departed his boyhood home of San Francisco and set out for Los Angeles. Arriving in the city with only $39 in his pocket, Morosco began building his theatrical empire. By 1912, he was managing several theaters and stock companies and producing original plays. From his office at the Burbank Theater, the producer began planning for the Tik-Tok Man’s march out of California to conquer New York.

On November 4, Morosco signed contracts with Baum and Gottschalk. News about the Oz production already had hit the press, with The Los Angeles Times reporting that “Frank Baum’s Tick-Tock will be seen at the Burbank or Belasco about Christmas time.” The premier soon was postponed until February 1913 and then to the end of March.

To serve as general stage director of the Tik-Tok Man, Oliver Morosco brought in Frank M. Stammers, “known and recognized as one of the cleverest producers of musical comedy in America.” However, this was not Morosco’s first choice for how to employ Stammers, who originally was signed as a cast member. Nor was this his first choice for director, which at one point was announced as going to none other than Julian Mitchell, director of the hit Wizard extravaganza.

As stage director, Stammers’s job included “all the work and worry accompanying the nerve-wrecking task of creating a smoothly running, coherent entertainment.” He conducted his rehearsals with “absolute courtesy” to even the most green of chorus girls. He danced, sang, acted, and directed, and was characterized as being “an unusually clever stage director.” “Most stage directors are bears,” observed one reporter, “but Mr. Stammers was a mere Teddy bear.”

As scenic designer, Robert Brunton would provide the backdrop to Baum’s script, Gottschalk’s music, and Stammers’s movement, and he would be responsible for what was “bound to be the biggest and most elaborate series of stage settings that have been revealed on a local stage.” His creations would include everything from the opening sea storm to the colorful gardens of the Rose Kingdom, from the Metal Monarch’s fiery cavern to the brilliant Metal Forest. Brunton’s designs were described as “masterpieces of the scenic painter’s art.”

Although Robert Brunton brought to the Tik-Tok Man his experience creating innovative and acclaimed stage lighting, many of the production’s most remarkable lighting effects seem to predate his involvement. A program note advised patrons that “the original electrical and mechanical effects incident in The Tik-Tok Man of Oz have been copyrighted by L. Frank Baum and are fully protected by law.” This program statement may have been intentionally deceptive to thwart would-be imitators, as there are no records of Baum having copyrighted the stage effects, nor is there evidence that a legal mechanism to “copyright” such stage effects even existed.

The marvelous and extensive costumes for the show (estimated to be “15,000 different articles of dress” just for the chorus girls) reportedly were designed and executed “under the supervision of ” L. Frank Baum, who considered submissions from “many of the foremost costume designers in America,” and selected the most beautiful. A business staff of ten or eleven served the Tik-Tok Man company, several of whom also performed on stage as officers of the Army of Oogaboo!

The production also employed a most creative four-legged “advance agent” to advertise the show. Punch, a brindle bulldog owned by Morosco’s secretary, Charles Friedland, was said to earn $2,500 a year. One reporter described the pooch’s work: “A flash of brown hair, a furious barking, and the dog jumped and jerked The Tik-Tok Man of Oz sign out of Mr. Baum’s hand, stopped just long enough to straighten it, then quickly disappeared through the door to advertise the latest attraction” in the city streets.

 

Whimsical Wonderland Wound Up in the West

To the Los Angeles theater community, Baum and Gottschalk were considered “big leaguers,” with the press describing them as “men of established reputation … stars of all the astronomical works of the theater … they are charming, simple, and unassuming.” While the creative pair worked on refining lines and tunes, Morosco spent the winter months assembling all the needed resources.

On January 16, 1913, Morosco invited Baum and Gottschalk into his home for a run-through of the musical score, performed by the composer on piano and sung by prima donna Vera Doria, who was preparing for a concert series in Morosco’s theater later that month. The producer reported that he was “greatly pleased” with the music, calling it “the best he had ever heard.”

Morosco’s main task that winter was to populate the Land of Oz, by casting the nine principals, especially the comic leads of Tik-Tok and Shaggy.

Back in November, only days after signing his contract, Morosco reported landing Clarence Kolb for the part of Tik-Tok (described as “a mechanical gentleman who happened to be manufactured in Germany, under the pure food laws”) and Max Dill as the Shaggy Man (“a Philadelphia German”). Although German caricature was a popular vaudeville act at the time, Kolb and Dill’s Teutonic slapstick would have been strange … even for Oz. They soon dropped out of consideration.

Morosco announced on February 1 that he had engaged Olga Steck in the part of Betsy. Steck had been performing in the Kolb and Dill show In Dutch with (future silent horror film star) Lon Chaney. Soon, however, Kolb and Dill threatened Morosco with a lawsuit, claiming that Steck was still under contract with them. Another dozen actors and actresses were announced as having joined the cast, but never made it to Oz. One was Joseph Schrode, a well-known animal impersonator who had performed for several years as the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard extravaganza and who certainly was intended for the part of Hank, the mule.

Entering the hide of Hank instead was an actor dedicated to animal impersonations “from a rabbit to a sea lion.” He had been to Oz before, performing as both the Cowardly Lion and Imogene, the cow, for several years with the touring company of the Wizard extravaganza. Fred Woodward was described as “a physical giant [who] possesses a charming personality.” Underneath the hide was “a young blue-eyed man with a soft voice, lithe body and a great nerve.” About his role he admitted: “I feel that when I play Hank, I am giving reality to a beast that proposes to live and die with Betsy Bobbin.”

The press noted how Woodward was enclosed in his awkward costume:

His lower body is encased in the skin-tight legs of Hank; around the waist a heavy leather belt holds the hide in position, around the neck covered in towels rests an iron frame holding the upper portion of the mule’s body. Over the actor’s head is a heavy wire contrivance very much like a baseball catcher’s mask, to which Hank’s head is attached. Both front feet are governed by stilts with handles in which the actor’s hands are engaged. An elaborate arrangement of wires were used to control the mouth, teeth, eyes, ears, mane and tail, all by hand while walking on stilts.

For Woodward, the discomfort came with the part and earned a special reward. “I love children,” he confessed, “and when I hear (as I cannot see) the little suppressed ‘ah!’ and applause from tiny hands, I forget my blistering hands, my discomfort. I am thrilled by the joy of having made the kiddies happy for an hour.”

After the beast came the beauties. With the odd combination of a singing robot and a dancing hobo as the leads for the Tik-Tok Man, the show needed a garden of gorgeous chorus girls to sell tickets. “GIRLS, GIRLS, and More GIRLS!” would become the call in advertisements, and Morosco made great efforts to showcase his chorus of “California beauties.”

The task of picking these flowers began in Los Angeles on January 27, when Baum and Gottschalk auditioned potential chorus girls. Hundreds showed up to try to earn a spot. On an elevated platform, Baum selected those having previous musical and comedy theater experience and had them go stand in “a hallowed spot by the piano,” in front of which sat Gottschalk, who trained them in singing and dancing.

When stage director Frank Stammers arrived in Los Angeles from New York on February 17, he began to work with the initial members of the chorus. Reportedly he also brought his own corral of “ten of New York’s prettiest ponies” to add to the mix. Auditions for the male parts commenced in both Los Angeles and San Francisco later in February.

While Baum, Gottschalk, and Stammers selected and trained the chorus members, Morosco was working to sign more of the principal roles.

For the part of Princess Ozma of Roseland, Morosco sought an accomplished vocalist, as the role involved two feature songs—although an otherwise lean script. He plucked such a rose after hearing her sing through the Tik-Tok Man draft score in his home and then perform an opera concert series with her husband, Juan de la Cruz, in one of his theaters. The “brilliant lyric soprano prima donna” Vera Doria became the first Princess Ozma … but she would not be the last.

The next principal to join the cast was Dolly Castles, who would portray Polychrome. The Australian native had become “one of the cleverest singing soubrettes in America,” though she had landed on these shores only a few years prior. Morosco cast her as Poly on February 7, but the producer soon ran into another contract dispute, this time with the powerful Shuberts, who claimed that Castles was still signed with them in New York. Morosco insisted that Castles honor her contract with him and threatened to have her kidnapped if she did not get to Los Angeles soon. Morosco appeared to enjoy snatching this rainbow fairy from the skies above the Broadway syndicate, boasting that his New York manager telegraphed him: “I have abducted Dolly Castles.”

Combining beauty, musical talent, and charm, the twenty-nine-year old “dimpled and blond” Castles enchanted audiences as Polychrome, with nimble and dulcet performances. She was described as having “big blue eyes and a big voice, quaint and naïve … clad in a chiffon gown of many delicate tints and tones.”

On February 8, the press announced that James C. Morton and Frank F. Moore had been engaged as Tik-Tok and the Shaggy Man. The vaudeville team of “Morton and Moore” was already strongly associated with their Wizard counterparts, being described as “the Montgomery and Stone of burlesque, offering eccentric dancing, comic songs and clever patter.” The similarity was not casual, as Morton and Moore were experienced impersonators of the famous Oz pair, having performed for several years as the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in a “travesty” review of the popular Wizard of Oz extravaganza. While playing those Oz characters at Hammerstein’s theatre in New York, Morosco offered them the chance to create the new parts of Tik-Tok and Shaggy.

For the part of Betsy Bobbin, Morosco claimed that he “had Miss Novasio in mind while reading the script of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.” In fact, he had already offered the role to three other actresses (Christine Neilson, then Olga Steck, and then Dorothy Webb). More likely, Leonora Novasio was recruited by stage director Frank Stammers, who had worked with her years earlier at the Delmar Gardens in her native St. Louis. When invited to join the Tik-Tok Man cast, the twenty-four-year-old Novasio was already considered “a talented young singer and dancer.”

Appointed as Queen Ann was Josie Intropidi. Morosco had spotted the comic actress, capable of facial distortions and grotesque characterizations, among his own ranks. “My engagement in The Tik-Tok Man came about as a result of my playing in Los Angeles in The Pink Lady,” Intropidi told the press. “Mr. Morosco saw my characterization and immediately obtained my services for the part of Queen Ann of Oogaboo.” With more than three decades of stage experience, Intropidi was regarded as “one of the best character comediennes of the American stage.”

 

Cast Convenes

On March 2, the Tik-Tok Man principals assembled for the first time at the Majestic Theater to meet with Baum, Gottschalk, and Stammers. Baum lectured the company “on the story and significance of the characters,” and they had their first reading of the script. The following morning, the first full rehearsal for the principals commenced.

Back in January, Morosco had engaged “beautiful Charlie” Ruggles to play the part of the Ugly One, the Shaggy Man’s brother, Wiggie, a character who appears only at the very end of the play. He was to be costumed in a suit of armor. Ruggles departed his job at the Alcazar Theater in San Francisco and returned to his hometown, where was known as “Los Angeles’ best juvenile man.”

Showing up at rehearsal already underway, Ruggles discovered that he had been moved into the part of Private Files—a man of amour, not armor. “Instead of being ugly,” said the twenty-eight-year-old actor, “I’m supposed to be a dashing cavalier and make love to the prima donna.”

Moving Ruggles into the role of Files may have taken advantage of the young actor’s comic capacity, but apparently was a stretch for his vocal talents. Several weeks into rehearsals, Ruggles sang one of his Tik-Tok Man numbers at a social affair. The press noted that “when he had completed his warbling, a very polite young woman turned to him and said: ‘Why Mr. Ruggles, do you sing?’”

Taking Ruggles’s place in the small part of Wiggie was Thomas Meegan. By the time the show moved to San Francisco, Meegan was given an additional part, playing the Heartless Gardener character in Roseland.

An interesting act imported into the Land of Oz was the dance pair of Samuel (Sammy) Burns and Alice Fulton, described as “vaudeville players of much cleverness.” Burns and Fulton abruptly left the vaudeville circuit to join the rest of the cast for rehearsals on March 14. In their “whirlwind dance” number, the terpsichorean team performed as characters described as “Pan and the Wood Nymph.” The term “whirlwind dancers” refers not to anything specific in the story of the Tik-Tok Man script, but was a general style of theatrical dance of the era. Their sensational dance number, performed at breakneck speed, lasted a mere three minutes, for which they were paid an astonishing $700 a week.

A few days into rehearsals, Morosco announced that Joseph Miron, who had been reading the part of Ruggedo, would be replaced by the famous bass Eugene Cowles. According to Morosco, the Metal Monarch had been “one of the most difficult parts in the piece to fill, for the reason that twice this character’s biggest song number hits low D.” A veteran of the famous Bostonians, the fifty-three- year-old Cowles was considered “one of the best-known comic opera stars in America.”

Because the character of Ruggedo did not even appear on stage until the second act, Cowles did not have much to learn aside from his feature songs. During performance season, Cowles was known to stroll into the theater well after the opening curtain and wander to his dressing room while the “clock girls” were assembling for their dance, causing one chorus girl to chide: “Pretty easy for him, while we have to wear these clocks on a warm night.”

In early March, Morosco moved between his three theatrical centers of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. While in New York he signed a contract for the Tik-Tok Man’s planned run there, bought $1,500 worth of silk flowers and spent another $7,000 on props.

During a stop in the Windy City, Morosco announced: “I will bring to Chicago the pride of my heart … and I am confident it will be the biggest production of its kind for the year. I have already spent $28,000 on it and have hardly started.”

Morosco arrived back in Los Angeles on March 11. He took personal control of rehearsals and then took control of Baum’s script, asking the author to make some substantial trimming. “Frank! You will have to cut down that second act by 10 per cent of the lines,” begged Morosco. “Very well,” said Baum, who calmly sat down at a desk and went to work.

In the final weeks of rehearsals, Morosco continued to grab the rehearsal reins, especially when the press showed up. The Los Angeles Examiner wrote that:

“The Man of the Theatrical Hour” has invested about $35,000 in The Tik-Tok Man. So he takes a little interest in the rehearsals. He happened in a bit early yesterday and took the rehearsal for ten minutes. He showed the chorus girls the steps of the Fire Fly dance; he cooed Dolly Castle’s principal song for that dimpled soubrette; he did an ankle dance for the eccentric comedian, and he taught the mule how to bray, and then acted an electric effect for a transformation scene.

For several weeks the company had been moving between three different rehearsal spaces each day, before finally shifting full-time to the Majestic Theater for scenic dress rehearsals beginning March 24. By then, rehearsals had stretched into “twelve hours out of every twenty four.” Typical of the cast’s schedule was rehearsal starting at 1 p.m. and going until the opening curtain of the show currently playing at the Majestic. The rehearsal resumed at midnight and ran until 5 a.m.

By March 26, Gottschalk had finished selecting musicians for the thirty-two-member orchestra, which he would conduct himself, and on the next day he commenced full orchestra rehearsals of the score. Listening in, one reporter characterized Gottschalk as “the most patient and painstaking director it has ever been my pleasure to watch at work with an orchestra.” The composer provided “songs of the sort that instantly are heard wherever popular music is sung, hummed, whistled or played.”

On March 29, Morosco announced that there would be no more rehearsals until Sunday morning. “Everybody from the most obscure canary of the chorus up to the Producer Morosco is just about tired out.” As of late Saturday night, with only twenty-four hours to go before the first public performance, there was still a “mass of unfinished scenery” facing Robert Brunton. The exhausted scenic designer had been in the theater since Friday catching cat naps when he could.

The “nervous activity” resumed at 9 a.m. Sunday morning. A reporter found Mr. Baum out in the darkened auditorium “with his feet cocked up, and the inevitable cigar between his lips, listening to everybody and directing the show.” Viewing the opening storm scene, Baum chided Stammers “that the raft doesn’t tip properly” and to “give us more lightning and wind.” ToJames Morton’s complaint that his tights were not theproper bronze color, Baum simply told him to paint them and then admonished him for not having the “Smith & Tinker” directions on the back of his costume. “How on earth are you going to wind up a Tik-Tok Man without any directions pasted on him?” Baum snapped. In the breathless hours before the open dress rehearsal, the Majestic was occupied by “sleepy chorus girls and weary sewing women coming up from the basement for a breath of fresh air.” Frank Stammers was as “nervous as a bird at a cat show.”

Los Angeles was enchanted. The press displayed boundless boosterism. Each day, the theater reports wound up expectations tighter and tighter. “The Tik-Tok Man will unquestionably be the biggest theatrical offering the local stage has ever known,” wrote the Times. “From a scenic viewpoint, it is expected to eclipse anything the American stage ever has known,” asserted the Express.

The whole city was ticking with excitement, and several businesses devised Ozzy tie-ins, including a “Tik-Tok” ice cream sundae for the kids and a “Tik-Tok cocktail” in the swinging-door refreshment parlors. As a former show-window designer, Baum must have appreciated the “extremely clever” Tik-Tok Man window display of watches and clocks at one of the “high-class jewelry houses” in downtown Los Angeles.

At exactly 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 30, the curtain rose for a purely invited audience. This open full-dress rehearsal—the first “real and complete” performance of the show—was offered “for the benefit of every actor or actress playing in Los Angeles at the time.” James Morton offered the professional audience a speech, described as “a blazing rhetorical gem [that] shed the radiance of wit over the audience.”

The wind howled and lighting flashed as the opening storm scene blew across the Majestic stage in front of a capacity house of industry folk. But not everything ran like clockwork. This open dress ran for three-and-a-half hours, ending at 3 o’clock Monday morning. But with one more tightening of the coils, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz would begin its ten-month march.

To Be Continued . . .

 

¹ L. Frank Baum, “Old Style Fairyland Too Remote,” unidentified San Francisco newspaper, 1913.

² Peter Hanff, “How the Story of Oz (Almost) Came to an End: The Emerald City of Oz at One Hundred,” Baum Bugle 54, no. 3 (Winter 2010): 7–15.

³ Scott Cummings, “Early Reviews of The Emerald City of Oz,” Baum Bugle 54, no. 3 (Winter 2010): 18–21.

⁴ Stephen Teller, “The Wizard of Oz and How it Grew,” Baum Bugle 56, no. 3 (Winter 2012): 9–29.

⁵ Daniel P. Mannix, “The Woggle-Bug on Stage,” Baum Bugle 36, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 8–14.

⁶ Richard A. Mills, “The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays of L. Frank Baum,” Baum Bugle 14, no. 3 (Christmas 1970): 4–7.

⁷ Joseph Howard, not Manuel Klein, was the composer of The Land of Nod (1905). W. W. Denslow designed the costumes for this show.

⁸ A “second writing,” dated April 15, 1909 and titled Ozma of Oz: A Musical Extravaganza in Two Acts, is part of the collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which has posted a transcript online.

 

[Acknowledgments: For access to research materials, I thank Baylor University Moody Memorial Library; The California Historical Society Library, San Francisco; The Chicago History Museum Research Center; The Chicago Public Library; The Cincinnati History Library and Archives; The Clinton (Iowa) Public Library Root Cellar; The Glenbow Archives, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; The Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis Central Library; The Indianapolis Public Library; The International Wizard of Oz Club Archives; The Internet Archive (https://archive.org); The Joliet (Illinois) Public Library; The Minnesota Historical Society; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts/Billy Rose Theatre Division; The Ohio Historical Society Archives/Library; Old
Fulton New York Postcards (http://fultonhistory.com); The San Francisco Public Library and The San Francisco History Center; The University of California, Los Angeles, Charles E. Young Research Library; The University of Wisconsin—Madison, Mills Music Library; and The Wisconsin Historical Society Library-Archives.

For assistance with information and images, I offer “ma-ny thanks” to Jane Albright, Bill Campbell, Atticus Gannaway, Peter E. Hanff, and Randall Hercey.]

 

 

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