Part 500: Thomas G. Moses and “The Woggle-Bug”
This is a long installment, but too bizarre to leave anything out. In 1905 Thomas G. Moses wrote that he worked on a production called “Woggle-Bug.” It opened at the Garrick Theater in Chicago on June 18, 1905, and closed on July 13 of the same summer.
Written by L. Frank Baum, with the musical score by Frederick Chapin, Baum hoped to duplicate the success of his earlier production – “The Wizard of Oz.” The story was also transformed into a short children’s book in 1905. Here is the link to the Woggle-Bug eBook at Project Gutenberg with illustrations by Ike Morgan: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21914/21914-h/21914-h.htm
Noted as a “spectacular extravaganza,” The Woggle-Bug was reported to be an “artistic and dazzling panorama of light an color” (The World To-day: A Monthly Record of Human Progress, Vol. 9, page 703). The “Chicago Tribune” reported, “The scenery is abundant in quantity and good in design and coloring and the costuming is in exceptionally fine taste. The stage pictures are made of uncommon beauty by the skill with which they are lighted. Better stage lighting; nicer discrimination in the changing and employing in their handling has not been seen in Chicago in many a day. The stage pictures, thanks to the elaborate scenery, the handsome costuming, and the excellent lighting become beautiful enough to make “The Woggle Bug” an impressive spectacle and well worth the seeing” (19 June 1905, page 9).
The “Inter Ocean” reported included an extensive article on “The Woggle-Bug” (20 June 1903, page 6):
“The Woggle-Bug,” a musical extravaganza in a prologue, two acts, and an epilogue, was written by L. Frank Baum, author of the book from which it is derived, “The Marvelous Land of Oz.” The story concerns the experience of Tip, the rightfully Princess Ozma, changed into a boy by the witch, Mombi. Tip steals the old lady’s can of Magic Powder, which brings to life inanimate objects, and with Jack Pumpkinhead, a combination scarecrow and jack-o’lantern, enjoys numerous experiences, including arrest by the upsurpers of his throne, before he reaches the domain of Queen Maetta, the sorceress, is turned back into a girl again and placed in charge of the Jewel City. The Woggle-Bug is an incidental character, representing a highly magnified insect.
The world has turner over and times have changed. This summer Chicago has become the London of America and her producing theaters miniature Drury Lanes in holiday time.
In the Garrick Theater last evening there was added one more to the list of prevailing spectacles for children. “The Woggle-Bug” is entertainment pap for the little ones. It is as huge an extravaganza as the stage of the Garrick will permit it to be, and it tells all about fairies and witches, goblins and jack o’ lanterns, magnified bugs, clouds of cats and dogs, fields of lady chrysanthemums and other things.
The children will like “The Woggle-Bug.” The adults will be divided – those with the hearts of children will approve; those who prefer the stronger fare that suits their years will not. For, so far in its career, it has been written and staged apparently with the intention of appealing directly to children, and only incidentally to their guardians. It is smothered in simplicity in which the child mid will revel, and before which the adult mind will not.
The Chicago child should be proud of itself to thus force so many examples of the infant spectacle in the heat of summer. And the parents of the Chicago child should be proud of themselves. Partly on the child’s account they supported “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Babes in Toyland,” and now we see what they’ve done! But that endorsement they have convinced a whole flock of managers that their patronage is just the richest possible harvest of Chicago’s summer time, and just now there is enough to amuse all the nurseries in the country at the same time. If they keep coming we’ll be talking baby talk and wearing sailor hats with ribbons, and playing ring-around-aroses before fall.
The Woggle-Bug, we repeat, will please the children. It is full of startling incidents for the Chicago youngster. There is a pretty little princess who is turned into a prettier little boy by a wicked witch; there is a funny woggle-bug, picked up by a school teacher and magnified so highly that it comes to life and sings a very tuneful song; there is a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head which is sprinkled with magic powder and becomes a man; there is a sawhorse which also responds to the sprinkling and jumps about in lively fashion, and there is an outlandish young person who will make papa and mamma laugh because she is a regular cut-up.
There is, too, much scenery which is attractive, and electric lights of all colors and in all sorts of places, and a whole stage full of girls who sing right out as though they enjoyed it. Sometimes they have decorated stepladders to help them sing, and sometimes vine covered and illuminated summer houses. They always have something, and it generally lights up.
During one scene, when they are dressed as soldiers, they attack the walls of the Jewel city-think of that, children!-and very pretty walls, too, studded with rubies and diamonds and emeralds, and a few chorus men who are on the other side of the fight. And when they charge someone in the Jewel city shoots toy balloons at them through great big cannon. Yes, sire, they do. But the girls don’t care; they just throw the balloons back and finally capture the Jewel city.
Afterward there is a cyclone, as there was in “The Wizard of Oz,” and on the screen are shown what appear to the corpses of numerous white cats and dogs – an uncanny effect that the managers likely did not count on. Following this there is a field of nodding chrysanthemums shown, as were the poppies in “The Wizard;” then the Woggle-Bug Tip, and Jack Pumpkinhead comes wandering in as the Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Dorothy did in the other play. In fact, “The Wizard” is palpably the inspiration for newer extravaganza. The chief difference is this: Someone took the book of “The Wizard” after Mr. Baum got through with it and did so many things to it that the original author could hardly recognize it, while with “The Woggle-Bug” the impression is strong that the original manuscript has been altered but little. The children’s show was incidental in “The Wizard;” it dominates “The Bug.”
The costuming is pleasing in design and coloring, if not rich in material, and the scenic setting is at all times effective. “The Woggle-Bug,” taken in all, represents an earnest effort to provide an extravaganza free from objectionable feature. The music is an attractive virtue, and reawakens the hope that some day Composer Chapin will have a real good book to work with.”
The show did not do well at all. By July 13, 1905, the “Chicago Tribune” published, “’Woggle Bug’ is Hungry – Salaries unpaid; electrical apparatus taken for debt. Creditors of the Company Playing at the Garrick Theater Clamor for the Money Owed Them and Probably Will Force Close of the Engagement- Show is Given Under Difficulties Without Lighting Effects-Owner Makes Efforts to Continue” (page 3). The company was obliged to turn over its electrical apparatus to the Garden City Calcium Light company. Then the fifteen electricians struck and would not do their work until guaranteed wages by the house management.
When a show about lights loses the lights, it makes for a difficult time.
To be continued…
