Katharine M. Rogers takes this citation and suggests that this is "one of Baum's little jokes" and that the play never actually existed.
His biography of L. Frank Baum, To Please a Child was written after being estranged from his mother, and contains numerous made-up details.
Benjamin Ward Baum, a barrel maker turned oil investor, originally did not want his son taking up acting under the family name, so he adopted the pseudonym of George Brooks.
[4] The Maid of Arran is known to survive in manuscript, as well as microform and microfiche copies of it, which can be found in many larger and academic libraries, and a selection of six of the eight songs published for consumer use survives and was reprinted in two parts in The Baum Bugle using a copy found at the University of Minnesota by Scott Andrew Hutchins and Ruth Berman, both of whom received credit.
W.W. Denslow, illustrator of both these books, was reluctantly (according to Tietjens's diary) brought on as designer for The Wizard of Oz because he shared copyright, but was involved in neither King Midas nor The Octopus.
None of these were produced save the culmination in The Wizard of Oz, which first appeared in Chicago in 1902 and at the Majestic Theatre (Columbus Circle) in New York City in 1903.
The show's big song for the Scarecrow, "The Traveller and the Pie," which is included in both versions, is derived from an earlier Baum-Tietjens collaboration called The Octopus; or The Title Trust [5] As with most plays subsequent to the Louis F. Baum period, Hearn marks these "unproduced and possibly never completed" because the existence of their manuscripts is unknown.
Very little Baum material survives in The Wizard of Oz, which was predominantly written by a Mr. Finnegan and Glenn McDonough.
This was to be a musical with composer Nathaniel D. Mann, who provided some songs for The Wizard of Oz such as "The Different Ways of Making Love," and the original film score for Baum's feature film/theatre hybrid, The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908).
These plays reflect an earthier, bawdier sensibility than Baum's other work, his novels for adults included, presumably due to Hough's influence.
Sir Isaac Morgenstern, a retired soap maker, arrives on the island attempting to conquer it for the British Empire, along with a missionary named Willie Cook and various others.
This complicates many of the island's problems and leads them to see the Oracle, who advises them to make soap from the missionary and a Marie Corelli novel Wainwright had with him.
Itla absconds with Wainwright to the Radiant Valley, where Morgenstern and Goo-Goo are struck by lightning enough times to gain sense, and couples are formed from many characters in the play, while the missionary emerges alive and identifies himself as Sherlock Holmes, and an Incan widow and children to be his family.
Baum worked with Edith Ogden Harrison on developing her children's book, Prince Silverwings into a musical extravaganza.
This play, very loosely based on an element of Baum's novel, The Enchanted Island of Yew, was first published under the second of these titles in Entertaining.
[10] No script or music has been found, but neither Baum nor Pryor scholars have put forth the opinion as to the work never having existed.
Although the play toured for over a year, Morosco didn't think it was profitable enough to take to Broadway, closed the show, and started working as a film producer.