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From: barb@oliven.UUCP (Barbara Jernigan)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Wizard of Oz question
Message-ID: <535@oliven.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 17:42:06 EST
Article-I.D.: oliven.535
Posted: Fri Mar  7 17:42:06 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Mar-86 00:12:40 EST
References: <356@isis.UUCP> <1979@bbncc5.UUCP>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 66

Since someone brought up the subject of the Wizard of Oz, I thought
I'd share the following article from "The Artist's Life" section of
"The Artist's Magazine" (March 1986).  [Books aren't *all* words, you
know.]

TO OZ AND BACK  -- Stan Barker

W.W. Denslow once wrote:  "The world is . . . built upon the joke
principle and as usual the joke is on me.  It always has been and
I suspect it always will. . . ."
	Cynical, but prophetic.  In 1900, Denslow was one of this 
country's leading illustrators -- the first American artist to create
picture books in color for children, and a pioneer of the newspaper
comic strip.  His collaboration with author L. Frank Baum produced
America's best-loved children's classic, *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz*.
Yet, for years, W.W. Denslow has been a forgotten man.
	A newspaper artist in the 1880s, Denslow resisted the realism
his job called for, preferring the comic cartoon.  His work took him
west, to Chicago, Denver, and finally San Francisco, where that
city's Chinatown opened his eyes to Oriental art.  From then-popular
Japanese prints, he adapted the style of the "floating world" --
shallow space, bold black lines, large areas of color -- and fused
it with his comic touch.
	The World's Fair of 1893 brought him back to Chicago, where
his career flourished.  Art nouveau had given rise to an international
poster craze, and Denslow produced many (signing them with a seahorse,
which earned him the nickname "Hippocampus Den").  One poster -- a
skull wearing a laurel wreath, titled *What's the Use?* -- appealed
to the fashionable cynicism of the *fin de siecle*, and stayed in
print for thirty years.
	While in Chicago, Denslow met L. Frank Baum, as sunny an optimist
as Denslow was a misanthrope.  The opposites attracted, and the two
collaborated on *Father Goose: His Book*.  Basically a collection of
posters illustrating Baum's nursery rhymes, it was the best-selling
juvenile title of 1899 and ushered in the use of color in U.S.
children's books.
	The success of *Father Goose* led the pair to collaborate again
-- on *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz*.  Baum's story was an classic, but
Denslow's work was masterful as well.  Nearly every page had a color
illustration, many overlapping the text as part of the total design.
The now familiar Scarecrow and Tin Woodman were given definitive form
by Denslow's hand.  "I made twenty-five sketches of those two monkeys
before I was satisfied," he later said.
	*The Wizard* went from bestseller to Broadway extravaganza,
but fame and fortune caused a rift between Denslow and Baum.  The 
artist went his own way, doing a beautiful series of picture books,
and creating probably the first narrative comic strip ("Billy Bounce")
for the McClure Syndicate.  Prosperity enabled Denslow to collect
rare books, and even purchase an island off Bermuda, where he titled
himself King (his Japanese cook was the "Prime Minister"; his native
boatman was the "Admiral" in charge of his royal yacht, which flew
a pennant with the motto, "After this, the patrol wagon").
	But the Broadway success of *The Wizard* haunted Denslow; 
trying to repeat it, he wrote and illustrated inferior books that
were little more than vaudeville scripts.  Commissions fell off, and
he started drinking heavily.  He was forced to sell his island and
rare books, and fell to working with ad agencies for $25 a week.
	When he died in 1915, broke and obscure, he was buried in
an unmarked grave.  Yet, in the years since, Oz has become a part of
American folklore, and the formation of an International Wizard of 
Oz Club has revived interest in Denslow's work.  Last year, the 
seventieth anniversary of his death, his grave was finally marked, 
by the Club . . . with a stone featuring the Scarecrow and Tin
Woodman he gave shape to for all time.
	If the world *is* built on the joke principle, W.W. Denslow 
is having the last laugh.