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Baum (Vicki) correspondence and film typescript
6267
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Pamphlet-Binder 1
Correspondence 1943-02-09-1943-10-13 1946-12-30
Four original typed letters signed "Vicky" to her publisher Malcolm Johnson (1902-1958) and his wife Mathilde Whitridge Johnson
(1910–1976), along with one envelope. Mr. Johnson was the president of the American Book Publishers Council, executive vice-president
of the D. Van Nostrand Publishing Company, and a managing editor of
Atlantic Monthly and Doubleday & Co. Although Mr. Johnson was Baum's publisher, the letters here are of a personal nature, addressed to "Tillie"
(for Mathilde) and Malcolm. They discuss birthday congratulations, health matters, children, and her struggles writing.
Baum writes:
I was especially proud that [Malcolm Johnson] seemed to approve of my English. It's the one thing I'm a bit proud of, or rather, it's the only way in which I can really show how hard I tried to make myself into an American. [...][I] want to write honest enough even to please Hemingway; again, after wallowing in cruelty, exploitation and injustice for 200 years[...]
Baum also writes about her health and her upcoming 1943 book
The Weeping Wood, a history of the rubber industry:
I want to report to you that the rubber book is more or less finished. I am only struggling with the rewriting of the last two chapters which seem a bit flat[...] Somehow, I feel I got a bit too Pollyanna in the end and I want to remedy that, but don't know exactly how. [...]I'm not sick and neither am I well. Doctor claims it's a very busy little epidemic... and he even wrote to Washington about it, because he has a notion that it's a little germ friend Hitler might have planted here; sounds beautifully fantastic, doesn't it?
Pamphlet-Binder 1
Conspiracy (Working Title for Sands O' Life) - film treatment 1946-11-15
An unpublished film treatment titled "Conspiracy (Working Title for Sands O' Life)" -- authored by Baum in 1946. OCLC indexed
this unpublished script with three copies worldwide—all in Germany. This script is not listed in the American Film Institute
catalogue, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, or in imdb.com.
According to the
New York Times, this script was purchased November 25, 1946, by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Inc. and assigned to Dore Schary for
production. Selznick, who is best known as the producer of
Gone with the Wind, announced in the
Times that he wanted the lead male role to be played by British-American actor Cary Grant. Dorothy McGuire, who was under contract
to Vanguard, would play the lead female role. Exactly why the movie did not come to fruition is unknown.
A summary of the plot of Baum's story follows. The young wealthy Lord Earl of Haddonsfield travels to Malaysia, and it is
reported that he died. Years later, a man appears claiming to be the same Earl of Haddonsfield. Is he or is he an impostor
looking to claim the Earl's wealth? A court case follows to set the record straight. The highlight comes when the returned
Earl correctly recites the engraving of a poem on a locket he gave to his true love and the court proclaims him the true Earl.
Towards the end of the script we learn that the Earl's fiancée had slipped the poem to him because she preferred the "new"
Earl to the one who left many years back. Even the faux Earl's mother realizes that her son is an impostor because he does
not have a telltale scar. Yet, they all look the other way to keep the lineage and fortune intact. The grand conspiracy played
out exactly as the family's attorney Ogglethorpe planned.
This note was adapted from the seller of the material, Mark Funke Bookseller.