WALT DISNEY'S 'ALICE IN WONDERLAND' IN LONDON, UK

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to borrow Alice in Wonderland, the masterpiece written by Lewis Carroll.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland, is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

It tells of a young girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children.

It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

She has reread this amazing book and she has watched animated musical fantasy-adventure adaptation film produced by Walt Disney Productions and premiered in London, England, on a day like today in 1951.

Before watching the film, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 7. Cell Format (III) (Spanish Version)

Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated musical fantasy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

The 13th 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. However, he finally 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.

More information: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The film was considered a flop 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 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. 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 one of the best film adaptations of Alice.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

A live-action adaptation of Carroll's works and animated film, Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, was released in 2010.

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 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.

More information: Screen Prism

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. 

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

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 do justice to the book only 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.

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.

 More information: Alice in Wonderland

One omitted scene from the 1939 treatment of the film occurred outside the Duchess' manor, where the Fish Footman is giving a message to the Frog Footman to take to the Duchess, saying that she is invited to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. Alice overhears this and sneaks into the kitchen of the manor, where she finds the Duchess' Cook maniacally cooking and the Duchess nursing her baby. The cook 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. The scene was scrapped for pacing reasons.

Another scene that was deleted from a later 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 The Walrus and the Carpenter poem. 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. 

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

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 were discarded for pacing reasons.

In an effort to retain some of Carroll's imaginative poems, Disney commissioned top songwriters to compose songs built around them for use in the film. Over 30 potential songs were written, and many of them were included in the film -some for only a few seconds- the greatest number of songs of any Disney film.

In 1939, Frank Churchill was assigned to compose songs, and they were accompanied by a story reel featuring artwork from David S. Hall. Although none of his songs were used in the finished film, the melody for Lobster Quadrille was used for the song Never Smile at a Crocodile in Peter Pan.

When work on Alice resumed in 1946, Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston began composing songs for it after working on Cinderella. However, the only song by the trio that made it into the film was The Unbirthday Song.

While he was composing songs in New York, Sammy Fain had heard that the Disney studios wanted him to compose songs for Alice in Wonderland. He also suggested lyricist Bob Hilliard as his collaborator. The two wrote two unused songs for the film, Beyond the Laughing Sky and I'm Odd. The music for the former song was kept but the lyrics were changed, and it later became the title song for Peter Pan, The Second Star to the Right. By April 1950, Cahn and Hilliard had finished composing songs for the film.

More information: Animation Screen Caps

The title song, composed by Sammy Fain, has become a jazz standard, adapted by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck in 1952 and included on his 1957 Columbia album Dave Digs Disney.

The song, In a World of My Own, is included on the orange disc of Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic.

The film soundtrack was first released on LP record on July 28, 1951. The soundtrack was re-released on Audio CD by Walt Disney Records on February 3, 1998.

All tracks written by Sammy Fain, Bob Hilliard, Mack David, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston, Oliver Wallace, Ted Sears, Gene de Paul, and Don Raye.

Alice in Wonderland premiered at the Leicester Square Theatre in London on July 26, 1951.

During the film's initial theatrical run, the film was released as a double feature with the True-Life Adventures documentary short, Nature's Half Acre. Following the film's initial lukewarm reception, it was never re-released theatrically in Disney's lifetime, instead being shown occasionally on television. Alice in Wonderland aired as the second episode of the Walt Disney's Disneyland television series on ABC on November 3, 1954, in a severely edited version cut down to less than an hour.

Beginning in 1971, the film was screened in several sold-out venues at college campuses, becoming the most rented film in some cities. Then, in 1974, Disney gave Alice in Wonderland its first theatrical re-release.

The company even promoted it as a film in tune with the psychedelic times, using radio commercials featuring the song White Rabbit performed by Jefferson Airplane. This release was so successful that it warranted a subsequent re-release in 1981. Its first UK re-release was on July 26, 1979.

More information: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

 If you don't know where you are going, 

any road will get you there.
 

Lewis Carroll