Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children's fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. 

The Wizard of Oz festival run by L. Frank Baum's Great Grandson Robert L. Baum and his wife Clare was an annual festival in Chesterton, Indiana for The Wizard of Oz. The festival was revived in the fall of 2009 under new management and greatly overhauled in structure and organization.

L. Frank Baum's Great Grandson Robert Baum, along with his wife, Clare, dressed in costumes to play the roles of Frank Baum and his wife, Maud Gage, when they appeared at Lakeside Middle School in Norwalk. Baum said he has pieced together information about his great-grandfather’s life through his own research and from family stories.

Robert Baum stood on a yellow brick road at the 2009 Festival and shared stories about the life and times of his great-grandfather, L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Baum authored many other children’s books, including “Mother Goose in Prose,” and “The Queen Zixi of Ix,” but none ever reached the popularity and influence of his most famous book.

Children at the school had been studying the film version of the book for months. They listened attentively, nearly forgetting at times that the speaker was not Frank Baum himself.

Students learned, for example, that Frank Baum came up with the name Oz from the “O to Z” of a filing cabinet. They also learned that the Wicked Witch of the West was inspired by Baum’s mother-in-law.Robert and Clare Baum began impersonating Frank and Maud in 1990, when they were asked to help with the production of “The Dreamer of Oz,” a movie based on the life of Frank Baum.

Since then, Robert and Clare Baum share what they know at “Wizard of Oz” conventions and at schools across the country.

“We miss the children,” Clare Baum said. “That is part of why we do this.”Amy Hughes, a teacher at Lakeside and a “Wizard of Oz” fan, organized the event after she met Robert Baum at a convention in November. She also thought it would be the perfect compliment to what she was teaching in her classroom.

When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route they meet a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) that needs a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who wants courage. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) to earn his help.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). An adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it was primarily directed by Victor Fleming, who left production to take over the troubled Gone with the Wind. 

It stars Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, while others made uncredited contributions. The music was composed by Harold Arlen and adapted by Herbert Stothart, with lyrics by Edgar "Yip" Harburg.

The Wizard of Oz film is celebrated for its use of Technicolor, fantasy storytelling, musical score, and memorable characters. It was a critical success and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow" and Best Original Score for Stothart. 

While the film was sufficiently popular at the box office, it failed to make a profit for MGM until its 1949 re-release, earning only $3 million on a $2.7 million budget, making it MGM's most expensive production at the time.

The 1956 television broadcast premiere of the film on CBS reintroduced the film to the public. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in movie history. 

In 1989, it was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", it is also one of the few films on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. The film was ranked second in Variety's inaugural 100 Greatest Movies of All Time list published in 2022.