The screen's very first Dorothy, Romola Remus appeared in the Selig Polyscope Company production of Chicago's Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, a multimedia presentation touring the country with the creator of the Oz stories, L. Frank Baum. Remus, a local Chicago girl, was reportedly paid five dollars a day for playing the little girl from Kansas who finds herself in the wonderful land of Oz, appearing opposite Selig stock company actors Frank Burns as the Scarecrow, George E. Wilson as the Tin Woodsman, and Joseph Schrode, from the Broadway musical, as the Cowardly Lion. Remus later toured with Baum, appearing in both the film and live segments of a show that traveled from Grand Rapids, MI, to New York between September and December of 1908. Sadly, the only remainder of this screen presentation, the first film version of the ever-popular The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is the accompanying hand-colored slides. Romola Remus' only other screen appearance seems to have been in the 1985 documentary The Whimsical World of Oz, in which she reminisced about her days travelling with the legendary author.
by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
