How old is Dorothy?
Baum wrote Dorothy as a generic child, with few descriptors, and never gave her a specific age. She could be as young as five or as old as twelve if you go by the illustrations in different books. In the 1902 stage adaptation, she was probably quite a bit older, as some of the characters expressed a romantic interest in her. In The Movie, Judy Garland was sixteen during filming (by the time the film premiered, she had turned seventeen), but her costume included a corset to flatten her bosom so as to make her appear younger. Studio publicity of the day usually gave the character’s age as twelve. An earlier film adaptation from 1925 had Dorothy celebrating her eighteenth birthday — and discovering that she was a lost princess of Oz! In The Wiz on Broadway, Stephanie Mills was in her teens (but played her a bit younger), while in the film version, Dorothy was played by Diana Ross and was twenty-four (!). Fairuza Balk was ten when she made Return to Oz, but Dorothy’s age was never given. I
