This home looks like a fairly typical Southern Californian dwelling with lots of windows and wide verandas. But this house at 1749 N. Cherokee Ave, Hollywood on the corner of Yucca St didn’t belong to just anyone. It was home to L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz” who moved to Hollywood when it was still a sparse village filled mostly with citrus groves. He built the house in the early 1900s and called it “Ozcot.” Baum died in 1916, long before MGM premiered its film version in August 15, 1939, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater only three blocks away. Ozcot was razed in the late 1950s.
This is what stands on that corner today. It’s a shame the house is no longer there. It would make a wonderful museum who a man who led a rather extraordinary life. Aside from writing the Oz books, he also kept exotic birds and was a highly skilled horticulturalist. (This image is from May 2016.)
This makes me so ashamed of LA and of our race.
That line in the song “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” is so true. Such a sad statement about our culture.
Ink always learn something from these! In 1943-50 I lived at 1830 n Cherokee, a block north. Carol Burnett lived a block south and for a short time Alan Alda lived around the corner on Yucca.
Wow, Earl, that’s quite a buzzy neighborhood!
Carol Burnett still owns that apt at Wilcox and Yucca. Ed Wood also lived near there.
She does? I didn’t know that!
Baum filmed a version of The Wizard of Oz in the backyard of this house. I’ve seen short excerpts from it, but I couldn’t find it on You Tube. There was an enjoyable TV movie starring John Ritter years ago that told the story of Baum’s life before he became a famous author. (That one is available on You Tube.)
Years ago, after reading about Baum’s story in one of Kevin Starr’s histories of Southern California, I was inspired to write a song about him. Here are the lyrics:
I’ll tell you a story, my uncertain listener
I know it’s true for it happened to me
I live in a house on Cherokee Avenue
In Hollywood here in 1918
I made a poor living from peddling samples
I rode the great trains from town to town
I made a small fortune from telling a story
I flew over the rainbow where I settled down
I – oh, I am the Wizard of Oz
And I have a home here in Los Angeles
I have orange trees in the front yard, acacias in back
And I am so happy, so happy am I
I drive in my open car out in the sunshine
The Babylon gates rise up high down the street
The days amble by and I’m happy to see them
In my Emerald City as sweet as my dreams
I – oh, I am the Wizard of Oz
And I have a home here in Los Angeles
I have orange trees in the front yard, acacias in back
And I am so happy, so happy am I
I didn’t realize that the first movie was filmed in his backyard!
Baum and his investors had an entire studio in Hollywood.
i lived in this house when i was about 14 years old with my mother and brother ❤️☀️
Wow, did you really? What year(s) would this have been? Did you know the history of the house when you lived in it?
I would love to hear about that. I’ve been researching Baum’s Oz Film Manufacturing Company.
Did you live there when Frank Baum’s widow was still there? I’ve read that she converted the upstairs to an apartment and she lived downstairs until her death just a few years before it was torn down.
Was the house burned down on purpose or accidently? And did the family still own it then? The least they could have done was put a better looking structure in place. That thing is hideous!
This post makes me want to cry! Why didn’t some one save his house? I used to have a silent version of “The Wizard of Oz” and it is so incredible. Can’t seem to find it anywhere. The makeup was very amaturish The “Tin Man” had big black circles around his eyes!! Wow! Filmed in his back yard…
Addition
I was thinking of the 1925 version which is not true to Book. If you want to see it, you can find it at https://archive.org/details/OliverHardyTheWizardOfOz1925
My Dad lived at 132 North Palm, the next street over to the west, so they shared a back fence with the Baums. Evidently, Frank Baum was a touch cranky about their balls going over the fence into his yard. But then their Dad, Dr. Ernest S. Pillsbury, chatted with Frank and they discovered they had some common connections, which included the ongoing fight for women’s rights, the women’s vote, and others. They could have known of each other earlier, it was a smallish movement of very determined people. Dr. Ernest’s parents were both doctors, and Dr. Harriet Foster Pillsbury graduated from the Women’s Infirmary of NY in 1880. Dad was the youngest of their three children. Now that I have read about the movie being made there in 1910 it could have been that Dad meant the noise the kids made with the sit-in-train they had in their backyard. It got noisy at times. They all loved the Wizard of Oz books. I put up a page about that part of Dad’s life on the website. Here is the link. https://www.acpillsburyfoundation.com/oz-fence
Hey Melinda, thanks for stopping by and sharing your family’s fascinating history with us!
Thanks for sharing your family history, Melinda! But likely Baum’s consternation would have been balls landing in his garden. One of Baum’s favorite pastimes was cultivating flowers, for which he won many awards.
There has been a lot of confusion over the years about the 1910 The Wizard of Oz, so here’s the full story. In 1908, before Baum moved to Hollywood, he had a traveling roadshow combining actors, magic lantern slides, and some filmed elements entitled The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays. Sadly, the show did not do well. It was long believed that the 1910 Oz was the filmed portion of that show, but that is not true. Baum did owe some contractual obligations to the Selig company due to the failure of the Fairylogues, allowing Selig to film four Baum shorts without Baum’s input. The 1910 Oz is one of these; the other three are lost.
In 1914 Baum launched the Oz Film Manufacturing Company to shoot films based on his books. The company’s lot was at the northwest company of Santa Monica and Gower, although not surprisingly it shot all over Los Angeles. I suppose it’s possible that Baum shot at OzCot, but none of the photos I’ve seen of the OzCot property resemble anything in the three of the four films I’ve seen (of the fourth there is only one known copy, and that only three of the five reels).
FYI, I am directing a documentary on the Oz Film Manufacturing Company (and may also write a book) and am currently restoring one of the company’s four films, “His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz.”