Frank Joslyn Baum - The Laughing Dragon Controversy

The Laughing Dragon Controversy

Baum was undaunted, and claimed to have written a 1931 radio drama called Tweety in Oz, though no script has ever been found, which he followed with a 1934 story, Jimmy Bulber in Oz, which was printed in order to achieve a trademark on the name "Oz" (it would later be reprinted in the International Wizard of Oz Club's Oziana). He demanded that Reilly & Lee cease and desist publishing Oz books. Maud, who was the one who made the agreement with the publishers, had to sue him to get the trademark back, and she took Frank J. out of her will.

Finally, as "Frank Baum", he produced a two-part manuscript called Rosine and the Laughing Dragon that was broken into The Laughing Dragon of Oz and The Enchanted Princess of Oz. He barely mentioned Oz in the text, and no Oz characters were used except for his own and a brief mention of the Wizard. His publisher, Whitman, was sued by Reilly & Lee after publishing the first part in its Big Little Books series in 1936. The book quickly went out of print and Whitman agreed not to publish the sequel. Baum sold the rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Samuel Goldwyn on 26 January 1934, for $60,000. Goldwyn sat on the rights, and ultimately sold them to MGM for the production of The Wizard of Oz (1939), for which Goldwyn saw a large profit that none of the Baums did.