Alice in Wonderland (1951 film)


 * For the titular character, see Alice.
 * For the Disneyland attraction, see Alice in Wonderland (Disneyland attraction).
 * For the 2010 live action film directed by Tim Burton, see Alice in Wonderland (2010 film)
 * For the international Music Theatre show, see Disney's Alice in Wonderland Jr. 

Alice in Wonderland is the thirteenth animated feature film produced by Walt Disney in the Disney animated feature canon. and originally premiered in London, England on July 26, 1951 by Walt Disney Pictures. Lewis Carroll's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have been frequently adapted for film; this adaptation solved the problems of the setting by using animation. The film features the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice (also voice of Wendy Darling in the later Disney feature film, Peter Pan) and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter. Made under the supervision of Walt Disney himself, this film and its animation are often regarded as some of the finest work in Disney studio history, despite the lackluster, even hostile, reviews it originally received, especially in the UK. This film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.

Story:
Alice sat by her sister under a tree. Her sister was reading a book. Alice peeked at it.Of what use is a book without any pictures?Alice asked herself.

The hot day made her feel very sleepy.As she leaned back,suddenly a White Rabbit,dressed in this finest cloths,ran by.The rabbit stoped and pulled a watch out of his vest pocket.He cried, "Oh dear. Oh, dear. I shall be too late!'.Then he raced on.This seemed very curious to alice, so she raced after him.the rabbit ran across the field and popped though a hole in a tree and alice popped right in with him.she fiund herself falling down a long tunnel "How curious," Alice said,for she was drifting down quite slowly.As she fell she saw books and hats,some dishes and chairs all sorts of unny things go by. i wonder if i shal fall right through the earth, she said. Then, THUMP! Alice tumbled to a stop on a pile of straw. the white rabbit was hopping down a long hallway."Oh, wait! she called. but the rabbit just said "Oh my ears and whiskers! how late it is getting! and off he went.Alice followed and found herself in a large room full with doors all of them were locked, but on a tablet alice found a tiny gold key . it dit the tiniest of the doors alice opened the tiny door and saw a lovely garden of white roses but alice was too big to get throung the door. so she closed it.how i wish i could fold up like a telescope she said. she went to the table and saw a small bottle wth a note in it the said "Drink Me".... Im sure that bottle was not here before she checked to make sure it was not posion and then drunk it down. the nest thing she was folding up like a telescope! soon she was only ten inches tall how lovely i can fit throung the door.. alice tried to climb up but it was too high. nest to it there was a note saying "EAT ME"... she took a bite of a cookie TO BE COUNTINUED

Production
Development The history of Walt Disney's association with Lewis Carroll's Alice books (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) stretches all the way back to his childhood. Like many children of the time he was familiar with the Alice books and had read them as a school boy.

 In 1923, when Disney was still a 21-year-old filmmaker trying to make a name for himself by 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 in 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 as a sort of pilot 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 Isling, Friz Freleng, Carmen Maxwell, and Hugh Harmen to form  Disney Bros. Studios  (later  Walt Disney Productions ). The series began in 1924 before being retired in 1927.

In 1932, Walt began toying with the idea of making an animated feature film and repeatedly turned to the idea of making a feature-length animated/live-action version of Alice starring Mary Pickford, and even purchased the rights to Sir John Tenniel's illustrations (still under copyright at the time). 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 adaptaion. However, Disney did not completely abandon the idea of adapting Alice, and in 1936 made the Mickey Mouse  cartoon Thru the Mirror.

 In 1938, after the enormous success of Snow White Walt Disney revived the idea of making an Alice feature and officially registered the title Alice in Wonderland with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and hired storyboard artist Al Perkins and art director David S. Hall to develop the story and concept art for the film. A storyreel was complete in 1939, but Walt was not pleased as 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. Realising the amount of work needed for  Alice in Wonderland, as well as the economic devastation of the World War II  and the production demands of Pinocchio , Fantasia , and Bambi , Walt shelved production on  Alice in Wonderland  shortly after the screening.

In 1945, shortly after the war ended, Disney once again revived Alice in Wonderland and assigned British author Aldous Huxley to re-write the script. However Walt felt that Huxley's version was too much of a literal adaptaion of Carroll's book. Background artist Mary Blair submitted some concept drawings for Alice in Wonderland. Blair's paintings moved away from Tenneil's sketchy 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 to Carroll's book.

 Disney toyed with the idea of having a live-action/animated version of Alice in Wonderland (in a similar fashion to his Alice Comedies) that would star Ginger Rogers and would utilize the recently developed sodium vapor process. Lisa Davis Waltz (who would later voice Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One Dalmatians) and Luana Patten were also considered for the role of Alice. However Walt soon realised that he could only do justice to the book by making an all animated-feature, and in 1946, work began on an all-animated version of  Alice in Wonderland.

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

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 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 quick-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 Jabberwocky 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.

 Another cut scene in Tulgey Wood shows Alice consulting with the White Knight, which was meant to be somewhat of a caricature of Walt Disney. Although Walt 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.

Music
In an effort to retain some of Carroll's imaginative verses and poems, Disney commissioned top songwriters to compose songs built around them for use in the film. A record number of potential songs were written for the film, based on Carroll's verses—over 30—and many of them found a way into the film, if only for a few brief moments. Alice in Wonderland would boast the greatest number of songs included in any Disney film, but because some of them last for mere seconds (like "How Do You Do and Shake Hands", "We'll Smoke the Monster Out", "'Twas Brilling", "The Caucus Race", and others), this fact is frequently overlooked. The original song that Alice was to sing in the beginning was titled "Beyond the Laughing Sky". The song, like so many other dropped songs, was not used by the producers. However, the composition was kept and the lyrics were changed. It later became the title song for Peter Pan (which was in production at the same time), "The Second Star to the Right".

The title song, composed by Sammy Fain, was later adopted by jazz pianist Bill Evans and featured on his Sunday at the Village Vanguard.

On the orange disc of "Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic" includes the song "In a World of My Own." It was not included on "Disney's Greatest Hits."

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/Mother Oyster
 * Bill Thompson as White Rabbit/Pat the Dodo
 * Heather Angel as Mathilda / Lorina (Alice's sister)
 * Joseph Kearns as Doorknob
 * 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 The Dormouse
 * The Mellomen (Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee, Max Smith, and Bob Hamlin) as Card Painters
 * Don Barclay as Other Cards
 * Pinto Colvig as Flamingos (uncredited)
 * Norma Zimmer as White Rose (uncredited)
 * Marni Nixon as Singing Flower (uncredited)
 * Lucille Bliss as Sunflower and Tunip
 * Mel Blanc as Dinah/Wonderland creatures (uncredited)

Compared to the books
Characters not in the film
 * The Duck and the Eaglet
 * The Puppy
 * The Duchess, the Cook, the Baby and the Footmen (Frog & Fish)(seen in Deleted Scene "Pig and Pepper" on 2010 DVD)
 * The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle(Was almost put in but deleted. However, did appear in Disney produced Jello commercials based around Alice in 1957)
 * The White Knight and the Red Knight
 * The Lion and the Unicorn
 * The Executioner (Seen in the Disneyland Ride)
 * The Gnat and the Snapdragonfly
 * The Red Queen and the White Queen (although many of the Red Queen's lines were given to the Queen of Hearts)
 * Lily (the White Queen's daughter)
 * The White King
 * The Red King
 * Humpty Dumpty
 * Jabberwocky (1951)

In the book

 * When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in the book, there is no mentioning of her dress acting like a parachute.
 * When Alice goes through the small door, the door does not talk, and Alice does not fall into the bottle.
 * Having a Caucus Race to get dry, and Alice gives prizes, but the Dodo gives Alice her own items back to her as a prize.
 * Tweedledum and Tweedledee's poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter, is slightly different. It is taken from Through the Looking-Glass.
 * The Caterpillar requests Old Father William, not How Doth the Little Crocodile.
 * The Tiger-Lily, the Rose and the Daisies were taken from Through the Looking-Glass.
 * The pigeon is frightened because Alice’s neck stretches incredibly long, like a serpent's.
 * The Hatter is called 'the Hatter', NOT 'the Mad Hatter'.
 * The idea/topic of unbirthdays is not in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland but instead in Through the Looking-Glass. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare's never-ending tea party was originally a result of the Mad Hatter's falling out with Time, and it always being six o'clock, time for tea.
 * The White Rabbit does not attend the tea party.
 * It is the Hatter's watch that is broken, not the White Rabbits's. It is broken because the March Hare has put butter in it with the bread knife.
 * Alice goes from the tea party to the Queen's garden, she does not get lost in Tulgey Wood. This scene is borrowed from ideas found in the poem Jabberwocky which is in Through the Looking Glass.
 * The gardeners are the two, five and seven of spades, but in the film they are the ace, two and three of clubs. In the book, spades are gardeners and clubs are soldiers.
 * Alice hides the gardeners so that they will not be beheaded, but in the film this does not happen.
 * The Gryphon tells Alice that executions ordered by the Queen are rarely carried out. There is no mention of this in the movie, where the Queen is portrayed as much more of a tyrant than Carroll intended her to be.
 * The Queen orders the execution of the Cheshire Cat (which fails as he only presents his head, and the executioner comments that he cannot behead a head without a body).
 * The Queen of Heart's trial is about the Knave of Hearts of stealing her tarts, and Alice takes on the role of a witness.
 * Contrary to popular opinion, the Knave of Hearts does appear in the Disney version, but he is reduced to a fleeting cameo at the end of the March of the Cards; also he is presented as an actual playing card, in contrast to the King and Queen of Hearts who in the film are presented as human, albeit grotesquely sized.
 * At the end of the trial after Alice grows larger she doesn't get smaller again and there is no nightmarish chase scene towards the end, before Alice wakes up, although the cards do rain over her in both.

Songs
Songs in Film
 * "Alice in Wonderland (song)" - The Jud Conlon Chorus
 * "In a World of My Own" (Alice's Theme) - Alice
 * "I'm Late" - The White Rabbit
 * "Sailor's Hornpipe" - The Dodo
 * "The Caucus Race" - The Dodo and Animals
 * "How Do You Do and Shake Hands" - Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
 * "The Walrus and the Carpenter (Song)" - Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
 * "Old Father William" - Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
 * "Smoke the Blighter Out" - The White Rabbit
 * "All in the Golden Afternoon" - The Flowers and Alice
 * "AEIOU" - The Caterpillar
 * "Twas Brillig" - The Cheshire Cat
 * "The Unbirthday Song" - The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, and Alice
 * "Very Good Advice" - Alice
 * "Painting the Roses Red" - The Playing Cards and Alice
 * "Who's Been Painting My Roses Red?" - The Queen of Hearts and The Playing Cards
 * "The Unbirthday Song (Reprise)" - The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, The Queen of Hearts, and The Playing Cards
 * "The Caucus Race" (Reprise)" - The Entire Cast Minus Alice
 * "Alice in Wonderland" (Reprise)" - The Jud Conlon Chorus

Songs written for film but not used

 * "Beyond the Laughing Sky" - Alice (replaced by "In a World of My Own"; this melody was later used for "The Second Star to the Right" in Peter Pan)
 * "Dream Caravan" - The Caterpillar (replaced by "A-E-I-O-U")
 * "I'm Odd" - The Cheshire Cat (replaced by "Twas Brillig")
 * "Beware the Jabberwock" - Chorus, referring to deleted character
 * "So They Say" - Alice
 * "If You'll Believe in Me" - The Lion and The Unicorn (deleted characters)
 * "Beautiful Soup" - The Mock Turtle and The Gryphon (deleted characters) set to the tune of the Blue Danube.
 * "Everything Has A Useness" - Meant for the Caterpillar, in which he explains to Alice that everything has a purpose—in this case, the use of the mushroom.
 * "Curiosity" - Unknown purpose
 * "Humpty Dumpty"
 * "Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy" - From the original book, meant for the 1939 pitch with grotesque character designs.
 * "Will You Join The Dance"
 * "It's Crazy To Be Sane"- From the 1939 pitch

Release and Reception
All of these creative decisions were met with great criticism from fans of Lewis Carroll, as well as from British film and literary critic who accused Disney of "Americanizing" a great work of English literature. Disney was not surprised by the critical reception to Alice in Wonderland – his version of Alice was intended for large family audiences, not literary critics – but despite all the long years of thought and effort, the film met with a lukewarm response at the box office and was a sharp disappointment in its initial release, earning an estimated $2.4 million at the US box office in 1951.

Though not an outright disaster, the film was never re-released theatrically in Walt Disney's lifetime, airing instead every so often on network television. In fact, Alice in Wonderland aired as the second episode of Walt Disney's Disneyland TV series on ABC  in 1954, in a severely edited version cut down to less than an hour. In The Disney Films, Leonard Maltin relates animator Ward Kimball  felt the film failed because "it suffered from too many cooks – directors. Here was a case of five directors each trying to top the other guy and make his sequence the biggest and craziest in the show. This had a self-canceling effect on the final product." Walt Disney himself felt that the film failed because Alice the character had no "heart."

Almost two decades after its original release, after the North American success of George Dunning's animated film Yellow Submarine (1968), Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland suddenly found itself in vogue with the times. In fact, because of Mary Blair's art direction and the long-standing association of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with the drug culture, the feature was re-discovered as something of a "head film" (along with Fantasia and The Three Caballeros) among the college-aged and was shown in various college towns across the country. The Disney company resisted this association, and even withdrew prints of the film from universities, but then, in 1974, the Disney company gave Alice in Wonderland its first theatrical re-release ever, and the company even promoted it as a film in tune with the "psychedelic" times (mostly from the hit song "White Rabbit" performed by Jefferson Airplane). This re-release was successful enough to warrant a subsequent re-release in 1981. Its first UK re-release was on July 26, 1979.

On the film aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes, the overall rating of the film is a "fresh" 77% from 26 critical reviews with an average rating of 6.6/10. Its consensus states that "A good introduction to Lewis Carroll's classic, Alice in Wonderland boasts some of the Disney canon's most surreal and twisted images.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, but lost to An American in Paris.
 * American Film Institute lists
 * AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated
 * AFI's 10 Top 10 – Nominated Animated Film