Wayyyyyyyyy before Wicked.
Wayyy before MGM's The Wizard of Oz.

L. Frank Baum (El-Pha-Ba... get it?) stood on stage in a white suit, delivering a lecture about an allegedly real place he'd visited.

Behind him, films flickered and magic lantern slides glowed. Characters walked off the screen and onto the stage. He interacted with them. He invited them back into the film.

At the end of each performance he signed autographs and invited children to meet the eight-year-old girl who played Dorothy.

THE FAIRYLOGUE AND RADIO-PLAYS (1908) was the earliest screen adaptation of the Oz books and one of the most technically ambitious entertainments of its era. Baum conceived it as an interactive travelogue combining live actors, 23 filmed segments, 114 hand-tinted magic lantern slides, painted backdrops, mechanical effects, and a full original score of 27 cues by composer Nathaniel D. Mann performed by a live orchestra.

Baum scholars assert this was the first original score composed specifically for a film, even predating the 1908 Saint-Saëns score for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise.

L. Frank Baum had financed the entire production himself. The show operated at a loss even when houses were packed. It closed early in December 1908, leading directly to Baum's insolvency in 1911 and forcing him to sell the rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and other early books to cover debts.

The production's sole known print was eventually discarded by the Baum family after they discovered it was decomposing. What survives is the narration script, 114 slides, production stills, and Mann's score.

The films themselves are gone.