Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll. The thirteenth 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 the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts, and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter. Walt Disney first attempted unsuccessfully to adapt Alice into an animated feature film during the 1930s, and he revived the idea in the 1940s. The film was originally intended to be a live-action/animated film; however, Disney decided to make it an all-animated feature in 1946.

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. It was eventually re-released in theaters which proved to be massively successful. The film became even more successful through merchandising and subsequent home video releases.

While the film was critically panned on its initial release, it has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest animated classics, notably one of the biggest cult classics in the animation medium, as well as the best film adaptation of Alice.

A live-action adaptation of Carroll's works and a live-action sequel of the animated film, Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, was released in 2010. A sequel to the film, Alice Through the Looking Glass, directed by James Bobin, was released in 2016.

## Storyline

### Plot

Lewis Carroll's beloved fantasy tale is brought to life in this Disney animated classic. When Alice (Kathryn Beaumont), a restless young British girl, falls down a rabbit hole, she enters a magical world. There she encounters an odd assortment of characters, including the grinning Cheshire Cat (Sterling Holloway) and the goofy Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn). When Alice ends up in the court of the tyrannical Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton), she must stay on the ruler's good side -- or risk losing her head.

### Genres

* Children's film
* Musical
* Adventure
* Fantasy
* Animation

### Motion Picture Rating

* **Atp** (Argentina)
* **G** (Australia)
* **Livre** (Brazil)
* **S** (Finland) (1951)
* **Tous publics** (France)
* **I** (Hong Kong)
* **G** (Japan)
* **0** (Germany)
* **G** (New Zealand) (DVD rating)
* **AL** (Netherlands)
* **7** (Norway) (1951, cinema rating)
* **U** (Malaysia)
* **G** (US)
* **U** (UK)

## Images

UK VHS cover (1989)UK VHS cover (1990)Alice in Wonderland 1951 UK VHS cover 3.jpgUK VHS cover (1991)UK VHS cover (1992)UK VHS cover (1994)UK VHS cover (1995)UK VHS cover (2005)
## Cast and Crew

### Directors

* Clyde Geronimi
* Wilfred Jackson
* Hamilton Luske

### Writing Credits

* Winston Hibler
* Ted Sears
* Bill Peet
* Erdman Penner
* Joe Rinaldi
* Milt Banta
* Bill Cottrell
* Dick Kelsey
* Joe Grant
* Dick Huemer
* Del Connell
* Tom Oreb
* John Walbridge

### Cast

* Kathryn Beaumont as Alice
* 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
* J. Pat O'Malley as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter
* Bill Thompson as White Rabbit and Pat the Dodo
* Heather Angel as Alice's older sister
* Joseph Kearns as The Doorknob
* Larry Grey as Bill the Lizard
* Queenie Leonard as A Bird in a Tree
* Dink Trout as King of Hearts
* Doris Lloyd as The Rose
* Jimmy MacDonald as The Dormouse (as James MacDonald)
* The Mellomen (Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee, Max Smith, and Bob Hamlin) as Card Painters
* Don Barclay as Other Cards
* J. Pat O'Malley as the Curious Oysters
* Larry Grey as Card Painter
* Queenie Leonard as Snooty Flower
* Jimmy MacDonald and Pinto Colvig as Flamingos
* Norma Zimmer as White Rose
* Marni Nixon as Singing Flowers
* Lucille Bliss as Sunflower and Tulips
* Tommy Luske as Young Pansy

## Details

### Release Dates

* July 26, 1951 (United Kingdom) (London) (premiere)
* July 28, 1951 (United States)
* July 28, 1951 (United States) (New York City, New York)
* August 9, 1951 (Canada) (Toronto)
* August 20, 1951 (United Kingdom)
* August 20, 1951 (Italy)
* October 2, 1951 (Brazil) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) (premiere)
* December 14, 1951 (Ireland)
* December 22, 1969 (United Kingdom) (re-release)
* July 26, 1979 (United Kingdom) (re-release)

## Production

### Development

Walt Disney was familiar with Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), 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 Alice 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 Mickey Mouse 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, and Bambi, 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 re-written to focus on comedy, music, and the whimsical side of Carroll's books.

Around this time, Disney considered making a live-action-and-animated version of Alice in Wonderland (similar to his short Alice Comedies) 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. However, Disney soon realized that he could only do justice to the book by making an all-animated feature and, in 1946, work began on Alice in Wonderland. 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.

A legal dispute with Dallas Bower's 1949 film version was also under way. Disney sued to prevent release of the British version in the U.S., and the case was extensively covered in Time magazine. The company that released the British version accused Disney of trying to exploit their film by releasing its version at virtually the same time.

## Company Credits

### Production Companies

* Walt Disney Animation Studios
* Walt Disney Pictures

### Distributors

* RKO Radio Pictures (1951) (USA) (theatrical)
* RKO Distributing Corporation of Canada (1951) (Canada) (theatrical) (as RKO Distributing Corporation of Canada, Ltd.)
* RKO Radio Pictures (1951) (UK) (theatrical)
* RKO Pictures (Australasia) (1951) (Australia) (theatrical)
* Kommunenes Filmcentral (KF) (1951) (Norway) (theatrical)
* RKO Radio Films (1951) (Finland) (theatrical)
* RKO Radio Pictures (1951) (Sweden) (theatrical)
* RKO Radio Pictures (1952) (West Germany) (theatrical)
* Sascha Filmverleih (1953) (Austria) (theatrical)
* RKO Radio Pictures Argentina (1954) (Argentina) (theatrical)
* Yleisradio (YLE) (1967) (Finland) (TV)
* Buena Vista Pictures (1974) (USA) (theatrical) (reissue)
* Suomi-Filmi (1975) (Finland) (theatrical)
* Walt Disney Productions (1975) (France) (theatrical) (re-release)
* Elan Film (Belgium) (theatrical)
* Buena Vista Distribution Company (1981) (USA) (theatrical) (reissue)
* Walt Disney Telecommunications and Non-Theatrical Company (1982) (USA) (video)
* RCA VideoDiscs (1983) (USA) (video) (CED VideoDisc)
* Disney Channel (1984) (USA) (TV) (as The Disney Channel)
* Audio Visual Enterprises (1985) (Greece) (VHS)
* Walt Disney Home Video (1985) (Japan) (video) (LaserDisc)
* American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (1987) (USA) (TV)
* Canal+ (1987) (France) (TV) (dubbed version)
* Gativideo (Argentina) (VHS)
* Abril Vídeo (1993) (Brazil) (VHS)
* Buena Vista Home Video (1994) (USA) (VHS)
* Walt Disney Home Video (1994) (USA) (VHS) (Spanish)
* Image Entertainment (1995) (USA) (video) (LaserDisc)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (1998) (Norway) (VHS)
* Disney Channel (1998) (UK) (TV) (limited)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (1999) (Germany) (DVD)
* Warner Home Video (2000) (Finland) (DVD) (VHS)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (2002) (Finland) (DVD)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (2002) (Norway) (DVD)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (2004) (World-wide) (DVD)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (2005) (Brazil) (DVD)
* Walt Disney Home Entertainment (2005) (Norway) (DVD)
* ITV (2005) (UK) (TV)
* Nelonen (2007) (Finland) (TV)
* Disney Cinemagic (2008) (UK) (TV) (limited)
* Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (2010) (Argentina) (DVD) (special edition)
* Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (2010) (USA) (DVD) (2-Disc Special Un-Anniversary Edition)
* Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (2011) (Finland) (Blu-ray) (DVD)
* Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (2011) (Norway) (Blu-ray) (DVD)
* Disney+ (2019) (USA) (video)
* Disney+ (2020) (Japan) (video)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Brazil) (VHS)
* Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Finland) (VHS)
* Egmont Film (Finland) (VHS)
* Walt Disney Home Video (Finland) (VHS)
* Walt Disney Home Video (France) (video) (LaserDisc)
* Walt Disney Home Video (Hong Kong) (video) (LaserDisc)

#### Other Companies

* Image Production House (dubbing: Classical Arabic)
* RKO Synchron Abteilung (German dubbing)
* Screen Cartoonists Guild (acknowledgement)
* THX Ltd. (digital mastering: 2004 DVD, 2002 VHS)

## Trivia

* The first Disney animated feature in which the voice talent is credited on-screen with the characters they each play. This would not occur again until The Jungle Book (1967).
* Dink Trout's final movie. He died in 1950, before the film was released.
* The film aired on ITV1 on Monday 29th August 2005 as part of the Bank Holiday Monday schedule, along with the 1988 film *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* and the 2000 musical film *Coyote Ugly*.