Dorothy gets angry, Dorothy gets mad

Last week I posted a message about TCM's Oz film festival, adding a tart remark about the movie Glinda's decision not to tell Dorothy that the ruby slippers can take her home. (Indeed, that Glinda deceives Dorothy by implying she doesn't know the slippers' power.)

Since then, two fellow Oz fans have sent me this link to the YouTube version of a Mad TV sketch. I was saving it for a future post, but to keep my in-box only mildly out of control, I figured I'd pass it now on with thanks to Atticus Gannaway and Marc Berezin. Before the sketch devolves into the easy yuks of catfighting and homophobia, it does a fine job of portraying how angry Dorothy might feel at realizing what Glinda has done.

The real Dorothy certainly wouldn't have stood for such treatment. Baum told us as much in "Little Dorothy and Toto," one of the short tales published in The Little Wizard Stories of Oz in 1913. In Baum's first version of this story, Dorothy was kidnapped by a giant who (in a poor tactical move) shrank himself down into a very small man, whereupon Toto jumped on him and killed him. Baum's publisher thought that was too violent, and suggested a different ending. In the published story, the giant turns out to be the Wizard; he has disguised himself as the giant, carried off Dorothy, and set her to washing dishes in order to teach her a lesson about wandering around Oz on her own. You know, "she had to learn it for herself."

And the real Dorothy's response? It goes like this:

"Come on, Toto," said Dorothy; "let's go back to the Emerald City. You've given me a good scare, Wizard," she added, with dignity, "and p'raps I'll forgive you, by 'n' by; but just now I'm mad to think how easily you fooled me."