The 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz has been seen by more people worldwide than any other motion picture in history. For two generations of Americans, annual TV broadcasts of the film from the mid-1950s through the 1970s were the cultural equivalent of a kid’s Superbowl.
  

Many may not know that the movie was based on a critically-acclaimed children’s novel written 40 years earlier. Published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became the first best-selling children’s book of the twentieth century and the first modern fantasy novel. Universally hailed as the quintessential American fairy tale, it is the literary equal of any story from the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen—with one distinct difference. Whereas the Grimms and Andersen essentially recorded and embellished popular folk-tales that had been around for centuries, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the creation of one man—L. Frank Baum.
 

May 15 marks the 165th anniversary of Baum’s birth and is one reason why the PBS series American Experience is currently streaming a new documentary,  American Oz. Written and directed by Randall MacLowry and Tracy Heather Strain, the film explores Baum’s fascinating life.
  

An overly optimistic dreamer, Baum threw himself wholeheartedly into a long string of professional ventures—chicken breeder, actor, playwright, oil company executive, store owner, newspaper editor, traveling salesman, show window designer—and failed at all of them. By age 41, he was the married father of four, down-and-out in Chicago and struggling to keep a roof over his family’s heads. In the evenings, he would entertain his four sons by making up funny, nonsensical stories. When his mother-in-law—controversial 19th-century feminist leader Matilda Joslyn Gage—overheard his stories during a visit, she said, “Frank Baum, you’re a darn fool if you don’t write those stories down and try to sell them.” He followed her advice, and the result was not only The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but an additional 13 best-selling Oz sequels. When in May of 1919, Baum died at age 62, his Oz books were so popular that his publishers hired other writers to continue the series. In all, a total of 40 Oz books were published between 1900 and 1961.

“Baum was a distinctly American character, and the story of his remarkable life offers a fascinating window into the last days of the frontier and the birth of the modern era at the turn of the 20th century,” PBS Executive Director Cameo George says. “He embodied those quintessential American traits of optimism and drive and managed to turn what he witnessed into a story that never seems to get old. It continues to be reinvented for new audiences who identify so powerfully with Dorothy, her band of lovable outcasts, and the longing for home.”
  

As Harvard University scholar Philip Deloria sums up in the film: “Who would’ve thought that a failed entrepreneur would write a little story, which would have repercussions and reverberations across the whole course of the 20th century and into the future?”