The two companies toured the country from August 1904 to April 1905, and again from September 1905 to May 1906. This version played through May and then moved on to the New York Theater for three weeks before returning to Chicago for a five-week run to finish the season. A second company was established, and the show went on tour from September 1903 through March 1904 before returning to the Majestic with an updated 'Edition De Luxe'. The show premiered at the Chicago Grand Opera House on Jand then went on tour throughout the upper Midwest before moving to the Majestic Theatre on Broadway on January 21, 1903, where it ran for 293 performances through October 3. The show's history is covered in more than 100 pages of the book Oz Before the Rainbow L Frank Baum's 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' on stage and screen to 1939 by Mark Evan Swartz.
Much of the original music was by Paul Tietjens and has been mostly forgotten, although it was still well-remembered and in discussion at MGM in 1939 when the classic film version of the story was made. Although Baum is the credited bookwriter, Glen MacDonough was hired on as jokewriter after Baum had finished the script, and the book was largely ghostwritten by a man named Finnegan. The Wizard of Oz was a 1902 musical extravaganza based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. One of many promotional posters for the show, this one showing the Dance of All Nations Scene.
