Alice in Wonderland

***Alice in Wonderland*** is a 1951 American live-action/animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the *Alice* books by Lewis Carroll. The TBD release of Disney's animated features, the film premiered in London on July 26, 1951, and in New York City on July 28, 1951. The film features Kathryn Beaumont as Alice and the voices of Bill Thompson as the White Rabbit, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts and the Duchess, and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter. Walt Disney first tried to adapt *Alice* into a feature-length film in the 1930s and revived the idea in the 1940s as a live-action/animated hybrid film in the style of *The Wizard of Oz* (1939).

The film was considered a disappointment on its initial release, leading to Walt Disney showing it on television as one of the first episodes of his TV series *Disneyland*. It proved to be very successful on Television, especially during the psychedelic era. It was eventually re-released in theaters in 1974 which proved to be massively successful. The film became even more successful through merchandising and subsequent home video releases. The theme song of the same name has since become a jazz standard. Although the film received generally negative critical reviews on its initial release, it has been more positively reviewed over the years and has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest films, notably one of the biggest cult classics in the animation medium, as well as one of the best film adaptations of *Alice*.

## Plot

The film opens on a live-action golden summer day in the park in England. A young girl named Alice (played by Kathryn Beaumont) listens distractedly to her sister's (played by Heather Angel) history lesson, and begins daydreaming of a nonsensical world. Suddenly Alice sees an animated white rabbit wearing spectacles, a red waistcoat and carrying a large, golden pocket watch. He frantically exclaims how late he is, which sparks Alice's curiosity and causes her to follow him down a rabbit hole. As Alice crawls deep inside, the rabbit hole dips suddenly down, causing her to fall into it. Unable to do anything about the situation she was in, Alice slows down her fall. Amazed at what just happened, her dress inflates and Alice continues to float down the rabbit hole wondering what would happen to her. Without anything else to do, Alice decides to admire the decorations and knick-knacks adorning the walls of the rabbit hole. She lands upside down with her dress deflating and follows the rabbit into a large hallway with a tiny door at the other end barely big enough for Alice's head. The Mouse who guards the door tells her that drinking from a bottle marked "Drink me" will help her (she is startled to find that the bottle and the table it is sitting on have appeared out of nowhere). Alice drinks the bottle's contents and starts shrinking until she becomes the right size, but the Mouse reveals that the door's locked. Frustrated, Alice is told by the Mouse that a cake marked with the words "EAT ME" will help her reach the key that's mysteriously appeared on the now giant glass table (Mr. Mouse appeared the key on the table with his magic for an unknown purpose, making Alice feel very stress and upset why he do such a thing, and the box of cookies also has materialized out of nowhere). This time when Alice starts eating the cake, she suddenly expands until her head and legs are cramped in the hallway.

Alice begins to weep hysterically that her massive tears flood the room, which splash like huge puddles. The Mouse points out that the "DRINK ME" bottle still has some fluid inside, so Alice stops crying and sips some the best she can at her height. Alice suddenly shrinks and becomes so small that she fits inside the bottle. She and the bottle both travel through the doorknob's keyhole and out to the sea formed from Alice's tears. A group of animals, led by a dodo, engage in a caucus race (a race without a real ending or winner) in order to get dry. Alice spots the White Rabbit and follows him into a secluded glade in the middle of a thick forest. It is here that she meets Tweedledee and Tweedledum, two fat brothers who take particular delight in reciting poems and songs. They perform a poem for Alice called "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (reused from *Melody Time*), which tells of the two titular characters luring some oysters to eat them all. Alice sneaks away as they attempt to recite another poem for her, and she comes upon the White Rabbit's house, with its owner inside.

Before Alice has a chance to ask him why he is so frantically late, he berates her, thinking her to be his housemaid, Mary Ann, and orders her to fetch his gloves from his bedroom. Inside, Alice decides to eat another cookie, resulting her into growing so large that she gets stuck inside the house, her arms and legs sticking out the windows and doors. She tries to pull herself out but is too big. The White Rabbit pleas for the help of the Dodo to get her out, thinking her to be some sort of ferocious monster. The Dodo summons a chimney sweep lizard named Bill to rip the house's chimney off. Bill's scampering down the chimney causes soot to rise and Alice to sneeze, shooting Bill up towards the sky. The Dodo then attempts to burn the house down using some of the White Rabbit's broken furniture, much to his dismay. Alice frantically looks for a solution to her dilemma and finds one in the form of a carrot in the White Rabbit's garden. After eating, Alice shrinks down to three inches in size. The Rabbit runs off again, this time into a garden of flowers. Because of Alice's size, the flowers are as tall as trees to her. Initially, they are eager to entertain her, but when she reveals that she is not a flower, they suspect that she may be a weed and throw her out in a panic.

Alice gets over her annoyance at their rudeness quickly when she sees a blue caterpillar blowing smoke rings in the air. Each ring takes the form of a letter or symbol that the Caterpillar is saying. Despite her best efforts to ask him how to grow tall again, the Caterpillar continuously interrupts her, instructing her to recite various bizarre poems. He grows angry at her displeasure of being the same height as him, and turns into a butterfly in a rage, though not before giving her cryptic advice about the mushroom she is sitting on. Alice breaks off two pieces from either side of the mushroom. She takes a bite of the first piece which causes her to grow so tall that her head sticks out of the trees and alarms a nesting mother bird that thinks she is a serpent. She then takes a bite of the second piece and shrinks back down to three inches high. With a small lick of the first piece, Alice finally grows back to her normal size and decides to put both mushroom pieces into her pockets.

Alice soon finds a manor where she meets the musical Duchess, her baby, and her pepper-obsessed plate-throwing cook, who is spraying pepper all over the room, causing the Duchess and Alice to sneeze and the baby to cry. After a quick conversation between Alice and the Duchess, the hot-tempered Cook starts throwing pots and pans at the noisy baby. Alice rescues the baby, but as she leaves the house, the baby turns into a pig and runs away. Wandering through the woods, she meets the Cheshire Cat, an eerily grinning feline that can disappear and reappear at will. Alice tries her best to ask him where the White Rabbit has gone to, but her attempts are futile as he speaks vaguely and in riddles. He finally advises her to visit the Mad Hatter or the March Hare to find out where the Rabbit is.

Alice encounters both at the Hare's house, having a mad tea party along with a Dormouse. She finds out that they are celebrating their unbirthdays, which is a day of the year when it is not one's birthday. Alice is briefly included in the celebrations, but she becomes frustrated by the duo at being interrupting every time she tries to speak. When the White Rabbit shows up, the Hatter and Hare attempt to fix his pocket watch but end up destroying it in the process. After they've literally thrown him out of the tea table, Alice tries to run after him but finds that he has disappeared again.

Soon Alice gives up trying to track the White Rabbit down and decides to spend her time trying to get back home. She finds herself more and more lost in a forest called Tulgey Wood, which is filled with bizarre creatures that either snap at Alice or pay no attention to her at all. She breaks down crying and finds the Cheshire Cat again. He opens a door in a tree that leads to a seemingly neverending hedge maze, telling Alice to go to the Queen of Hearts, the only one who can take her home.

She meets some giant playing cards who are painting white roses red since the Queen only prefers red and will behead them if she discovers their mistake. Alice tries to help them, but the White Rabbit appears and heralds the arrival of the Queen, her significantly shorter husband, and her massive pack of cards army. The Queen has a ferocious temper and is prone to having anyone beheaded if they make her angry, to which she applies to the card painters who unsuccessfully painted the white roses. Randomly switching between bipolar moods, she invites Alice to play a game of croquet with her, using flamingos as mallets, hedgehogs as balls, and card soldiers as goals. The flamingos and card guards rig the game in favor of the Queen, as she beheads anyone who dares stand in the way of her victory due to the "Rule 42: The Queen always wins". The Cheshire Cat appears and attaches the beak of the Queen's flamingo mallet to the bottom of her dress, resulting in her toppling over and revealing her underwear. The Cat disappears in time to make it look like Alice was the prankster, but before the Queen can order her execution, the King suggests they have a trial.

The Dormouse, the Duchess, the March Hare, and the Mad Hatter all come forth as witnesses that add nothing whatsoever to the trial at hand. When the subject of unbirthdays arises, everyone in the courtroom celebrates the Queen's, giving her a headpiece as a present, which turns into the Cat. Chaos ensues when the Dormouse, frightened when Alice points out the Cat, runs around the courtroom. Alice suddenly remembers that the mushrooms were still in her pocket and shoves both pieces into her mouth, growing to gigantic proportions. The King and Queen order her to leave the courthouse, but she refuses and insults the Queen. As she does so, she returns to her normal size.

The furious Queen orders for her guards to execute Alice, which results in a frantic chase through Wonderland. Various characters Alice met on her journey appear and inexplicably begin to chase her as well. Coming back to the door, Alice is told by the Mouse that the door's still locked and that she's already on the other side. Looking through the keyhole, Alice sees herself asleep in the park. At that point, Alice realizes that everything in Wonderland is all just a dream. She urgently bangs on the door as the mob draws closer until she gradually awakens to the sound of her sister's voice. Both Alice and her sister wonder home, and Alice is still in thought of her crazy dream.

## Cast

* Kathryn Beaumont as Alice
* Heather Angel as Alice's sister

### Voice cast

* Bill Thompson as White Rabbit/Dodo/Cook
* Ed Wynn as Mad Hatter
* Jerry Colonna as March Hare
* Richard Haydn as Caterpillar
* Sterling Holloway as Cheshire Cat
* Verna Felton as Queen of Hearts/Duchess
* J. Pat O'Malley as Tweedledum and Tweedledee/Walrus and Carpenter/Mother Oyster
* Joseph Kearns as Mouse
* Mel Blanc as Duchess' Baby
* Larry Grey as Bill the Lizard/Card Painter
* Queenie Leonard as A Bird in a Tree/Snooty Flower
* Dink Trout as King of Hearts
* Doris Lloyd as The Rose
* Jimmy MacDonald as Dormouse/Flamingos
* The Mellomen (Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee, Max Smith, and Bob Hamlin) as Card Painters
* Don Barclay as Other Cards
* Lucille Bliss as Sunflower and Tulip
* Pinto Colvig as Flamingos
* Tommy Luske as Young Pansy
* Marni Nixon as Singing Flowers
* Norma Zimmer as White Rose

## Production

### Development

Walt Disney was familiar with Lewis Carroll's *Alice* books (*Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* and *Through the Looking-Glass*) and had read them as a school boy.

In 1923, he was a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker working at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, making the unsuccessful short cartoon series by the name of *Newman Laugh-O-Grams.* The last of *Newman Laugh-O-Grams* was called *Alice's Wonderland,* which was loosely inspired by the *Alice* books. The short featured a live-action girl (Virginia Davis) interacting with an animated world. Faced with business problems, however, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in July 1923, and the film was never released to the general public. However, Disney left for Hollywood and used the film to show to potential distributors. Margaret J. Winkler of Winkler Pictures agreed to distribute the *Alice Comedies,* and Disney partnered with his older brother Roy O. Disney and re-hired Kansas City co-workers including Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising, Friz Freleng, Carman Maxwell and Hugh Harman to form the Disney Brothers Studios, which was later re-branded Walt Disney Productions. The series began in 1924 before being retired in 1927.

In 1933, Disney considered making a feature-length animated-and-live-action version of the *Alice* books starring Mary Pickford. However, these plans were eventually scrapped in favor of *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, mainly because Disney was put off by Paramount's 1933 live-action adaptation *Alice in Wonderland*. However, Disney did not completely abandon the idea of adapting *Alice*, and in 1936 he made the *Looney Tunes* color cartoon *Thru the Mirror*.

In 1938, after the enormous success of *Snow White*, Disney bought the film rights of *Alice in Wonderland* with Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, and officially registered the title with the Motion Picture Association of America. He then hired storyboard artist Al Perkins and art director David S. Hall to develop the story and concept art for the film. A story reel was completed in 1939, but Disney was not pleased; he felt that Hall's drawings resembled Tenniel's drawings too closely, making them too difficult to animate, and that the overall tone of Perkins' script was too grotesque and dark. Realizing the amount of work needed for *Alice in Wonderland*, and with the economic devastation of World War II and the production demands of *Pinocchio*, *Fantasia*, *Bambi,* and *The Wind in the Willows*, Disney shelved production on *Alice in Wonderland* shortly after the screening.

In fall 1945, shortly after the war ended, Disney revived *Alice in Wonderland* and hired British author Aldous Huxley to re-write the script. Huxley devised a story in which Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell (the inspiration for Alice) were misunderstood and persecuted following the book's publication. In Huxley's story, stage actress Ellen Terry was sympathetic to both Carroll and Liddell, and Queen Victoria served as the deus ex machina, validating Carroll due to her appreciation for the book. Disney considered child actress Margaret O'Brien for the title role. However, he felt that Huxley's version was too literal an adaptation of Carroll's book. Background artist Mary Blair submitted some concept drawings for *Alice in Wonderland*. Blair's paintings moved away from Tenniel's detailed illustrations by taking a modernist stance, using bold and unreal colors. Walt liked Blair's designs, and the script was rewritten to focus on comedy, music, and the whimsical side of Carroll's books.

Around this time, Disney had begun production on a live-action-and-animated version of *Alice in Wonderland* (similar to both his *Alice Comedies* shorts and *The Wizard of Oz*) that would star Ginger Rogers and would utilize the recently developed sodium vapor process. Lisa Davis (who later voiced Anita Radcliffe in *One Hundred and One Dalmatians*) and Luana Patten were also considered for the role of Alice until newcomer Kathryn Beaumont was cast for the role. With the film tentatively scheduled for release in 1950, animation crews on *Alice in Wonderland* and *Cinderella* effectively competed against each other to see which film would finish first. By early 1948, *Cinderella* had progressed further than *Alice in Wonderland*.

### Writing

Through various drafts of the script, many sequences that were present in Carroll's book drifted in and out of the story. However, Disney insisted that the scenes themselves keep close to those in the novel since most of its humor is in the writing.

One omitted scene was from a draft occurred in Tulgey Wood, where Alice encountered what appeared to be a sinister-looking Jabberwock hiding in the dark, before revealing himself as a comical-looking dragon-like beast with bells and factory whistles on his head. A song, "Beware the Jabberwock", was also written. However, the scene was scrapped in favor of reusing *The Walrus and the Carpenter* segment from *Melody Time*. Out of a desire to keep the Jabberwocky poem in the film, it was made to replace an original song for the Cheshire Cat, "I'm Odd".

Another deleted scene in Tulgey Wood shows Alice consulting with The White Knight, who was meant to be somewhat a caricature of Walt Disney. Although Disney liked the scene, he felt it was better if Alice learned her lesson by herself, hence the song "Very Good Advice".

Other characters, such as the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, the Knave of Hearts, the Lion and the Unicorn and Pat were discarded for pacing reasons.