Walt Disney and Alice in Wonderland had such a long-standing relationship that it was inevitable that he and his artists would adapt author Lewis Carroll’s books.
Years before his 1951 animated feature adaptation of the author’s work, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this month, Walt had found inspiration from the stories, as far back as 1923, for his live action/animated silent short, Alice’s Wonderland. Ten years later, Walt looked to partner with actress Mary Pickford on a live action/animated film based on Alice in Wonderland, which never came to be; it was even a vehicle for his biggest star, Mickey Mouse, in 1936 for the short Thru the Mirror.
After the landmark success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt purchased the film rights to Carroll’s Alice books, in hopes that they could be adapted as a follow-up feature. British artist David Hall was hired by the Studio in 1939 and created beautiful concept art for the film.
Alice in Wonderland continued through a slow production process that was eventually halted due to the lackluster box-office performance of Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), as well as a loss of an overseas market, with World War II.
It was after the challenging decade of the 40s that Alice in Wonderland was chosen as one of the full-length features to go into production. Noted British author Aldus Huxley was hired to pen another live-action/animated version, which never materialized.
Legendary Disney artist Mary Blair contributed concept art, with her unique style that partnered bright colors with a more modern look, inspiring Walt and his artists to see the possibilities of Alice in Wonderland as a full-length animated feature. So much of what Mary created was translated to the final film.
Based on Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland centers on the title character, a young girl who, when we first meet her, sits bored during an outdoor lesson with her older sister and begins daydreaming. As she does, she spots a White Rabbit running by, stating that he’s “late for a very important date.” Alice follows him down a rabbit hole, into Wonderland.
Once there, she meets a cast of increasingly strange characters: the talking Doorknob; the Dodo; Tweedledum and Tweedledee (who relay the story of “The Walrus and the Carpenter”); and the hookah-smoking Caterpillar.
She also encounters the mischievous Cheshire Cat and crashes the Mad Hatter and March Hare’s chaotic “unbirthday” tea party, eventually finding her way into the garden belonging to the tyrannical Queen of Hearts, who’s obsessed with beheading anyone who displeases her.
Alice is accused of wrongdoing and put on trial that descends into absurdity, and Alice wakes up back under the tree with her sister, realizing it may all have been a dream, as the film ends.
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, Alice in Wonderland featured a voice cast that included Kathryn Beaumont as Alice, Richard Haydn as the Caterpillar, Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts, Bill Thompson as the White Rabbit, and J. Pat O’Malley as four characters: the Walrus, Carpenter, Tweedledee, and Tweedledum.
(poster image via Matt Crandall)
These characters wind up contributing what has become some of the film’s most memorable and iconic scenes. Many of them were thanks to tour-de-force animation from Disney Legend Ward Kimball.
Noted author and animation historian John Canemaker wrote, in his book, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & The Art of Animation: “Animating bizarre and insane Wonderland characters, Kimball was literally in his element. The Tweedles Dum and Dee, moved like water-filled balloons in patterned choreography reminiscent of an early Silly Symphony; the Mad Hatter and March Hare turn a jolly tea party into an anarchic Marx Brothers romp; and the purple, striped Cheshire Cat, speaking in a cool Peter Lorre-like monotone, with a dazzling smile pasted on his face, is perhaps the maddest of all.”
Carroll’s many other characters, from the books, were planned for Alice in Wonderland, but never made the final film. The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon were ultimately cut, but were later brought back by Disney, appearing alongside Alice in animated Jell-O commercials.
The songs in the film by Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard included the title song, “Alice in Wonderland,” “All in the Golden Afternoon,” and what would become one of the classics connected with Alice, the White Rabbit’s “I’m Late.”
Another of the film’s renowned songs, “A Very Merry Un-Birthday” (The Unbirthday Song) was written by Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. For more on the music of Alice in Wonderland, check out Greg Ehrbar’s 2020 article.
Released on July 26, 1951, in London and July 28, 1951, in New York, Walt and his Studio did quite a bit to promote the film, including making it the centerpiece of his first-ever TV project, the special, One Hour in Wonderland. Shown on NBC on Christmas Day, 1950, it centered on the Disney Studio Christmas party, with Walt hosting, and Kathryn Beaumont as one of the guests.
During the special, Walt conjures up the Magic Mirror, from Snow White (played by Hans Conried), who shows scenes from Disney features and shorts, and then, at the end of the special, provides a sneak peek at Alice in Wonderland by showing the film’s Mad Tea Party sequence.
There was also Operation Wonderland, a short promotional featurette featuring behind-the-scenes footage on the making of the film that aired as part of NBC’s variety series Ford Star Revue on June 14, 1951. Operation Wonderland featured live-action footage of Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, and Jerry Colonna acting out the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which was used as reference by the animators.
Amid all this promotion, Alice in Wonderland didn’t ignite the box office and had a lukewarm critical response.
It was a over a decade later that Alice in Wonderland made a comeback. The film did well in the 16mm rental market on college campuses during the 1960s and 1970s. Disney then pulled it from that rental market for a full theatrical re-release. Much like Disney’s own Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland was a hit during the psychedelic age.
Since then, appreciation of and a following for the film has only grown through the years, particularly thanks to its release on VHS in the 1980s, and subsequent showings on television. Many have now embraced the offbeat characters and the surrealistic story. When it comes to the film, seventy-five years later, audiences continue to be, as the title character herself said, “curiouser and curiouser” about Alice in Wonderland.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
“Alice in Wonderland”, like “Robin Hood”, was one of the few Disney features to air regularly on television, often on weekend afternoons when a ballgame had been rained out. I suppose its episodic structure and prevailing lighthearted tone meant that it was less adversely effected by commercial interruptions than other features might have been. Because of this, I have no clear memory of exactly when I first saw it, or whether that was before or after I first read the Lewis Carroll books. My first introduction to the Wonderland story would have been from one of the many TV specials that came out every few years, with celebrities of the day filling the iconic roles; I recall one, for example, in which the Smothers Brothers played Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Disney’s version, with its cast of familiar radio actors, was much in the same vein, though it was Paramount’s all-star production of 1933 that set the template for all that followed.
Some projects suffer from having too little time lavished on them, others from too much; and Disney’s “Alice”, whose planning spanned literally decades, is an example of the latter. (All right, I’ll admit that “suffer” may be too strong a word here.) Thousands of working hours were spent creating concept art and story treatments that were considered, evaluated, revised, reconsidered, and then, in most cases, ultimately rejected. At least a dozen songwriters contributed over thirty songs, many of which didn’t make it into the film; other songs did, but only in fragmentary form. With such a long and arduous buildup, the finished product was bound to come as a letdown for many of the people who had worked on it. Walt Disney was disappointed in the completed film. So were Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. The rest of us can only see it for what it is, not for what it might have been, and make our judgments accordingly.
Alice is one of the most appealing of all Disney heroines thanks to Marc Davis’s animation and Kathryn Beaumont’s acting, on top of Lewis Carroll’s source material. Beaumont was not as strong a singer as, say, Darlene Gillespie, and I always find myself shaking my head in dismay at her few sour notes like the matronly iris in the floral chorus. I gather that she was directed to compensate by putting extra emotion into her singing — especially in “Very Good Advice” — much as Emma Stone did in “La La Land”, and overall she does a creditable job.
There’s a lot to like about “Alice in Wonderland”, though it’s far from my favourite Disney feature and not even a contender for my top ten. For me, it simply lacks the emotional power of Disney’s greatest achievements. But it’s a Disney classic that I can enjoy watching again and again, and a fun way to pass the time on a rainy afternoon — or a golden one!
The Amount Of Effort Walt Disney Put To Get His Own Version of This Beloved Classic Story,With All The Years Of Production Stages,Re-Writes,And Many Many Many Story Meetings,This Film Is Really One Of The Disney Classics,I Loved It As A Little Kid,And I Still Love It now As A Teenager,With Every Re-Watch,I All Ways Discover Somthing New To Enjoy About The Film,And I’m Happy To Say The 4K Restoration is Amazing,The Disney Team Did A Great Job Restoring This Timeless Masterpeice,Here’s To Another 75 Years Of Wonder From Wonderland
The thumbnail to this story has me curiouser and curiouser.
It’s the standard still of Alice meeting the Tweedles, excepting Alice is now wearing a pink dress, and the Tweedles are now in blue (not red and yellow).
A standard google picture search does not help –
No negatives of colo(u)rs used –
Did Cartoon Research receive assistance from The Mello Men painters?
Or was the artist in a world of their own?
It’s from the original “colorized” set of Lobby Cards from the 1951 release.
Thanks Jerry –
With your assistance I have now found them online.
I was aware that colorized versions of lobby cards were made for black and white films.
Reading online today it appears it was common that lobby cards up to around the 1960’s for colour films did not necessarily reflect those that were on screen.
I have a complete set of 1974 reissue lobby cards of Alice (with the correct colours),
The oldest animated set I own, Lady And The Tramp (1962) is also correct.
The Cheshire Cat, speaking in a cool Peter Lorre-like monotone?
Was John Canemaker smoking from the Caterpillar’s stash when he wrote that?
In 1954 “Alice” became the first Disney animated feature to air on television, cut down to fit the weekly “Disneyland” hour and presented by Walt as their version of a British Christmas panto (his episode intro is on the two-disc DVD).
That it reached the tube comparatively quickly (and was released on 16mm) suggests Walt didn’t expect it to be an evergreen. But as with most Disney creations, the characters lived on in comic books, merchandise, and theme park attractions, familiar to kids who hadn’t seen the movies.
Another animated sighting is in “Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land”. During a brief segment on chess, Lewis Carroll is mentioned and the duck finds himself costumed and wigged as Alice. There are no nods to the movie.
“Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan” are companion pieces, capturing the look and feel of all things Disney at a key moment. Both were long-brewing adaptations of British literary works, but reached the screen with an emphatic 1950s America vibe. Both appeared just as the baby boom turned Disney from a niche studio into an empire. Both show the studio’s animation at its smoothest and most polished (and, perhaps, complacent?). Renewed ambition and innovations lay ahead for the animators, but Walt’s personal vision was directed increasingly to live action, Disneyland, and building cities.
One of the few old Disney movies that is near perfect and aged well.
I wonder if Alice in Wonderland was promoted to college kids as a “a movie that’s like a drug trip”. I know Fantasia definitely was.
I’ve always loved this in my golden and not so golden afternoons. Alice was always a boyhood crush of mine. The Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit and a lot of others equally as good. Disneyland is still the only park with the dark Disney ride – though almost all Disney parks do have the Mad Hatter tea cup ride.
Andrew V, this is certainly a near perfect one (like another fine British Dinsey lady, a certain flying nanny who also took a very long time for Walt to make a movie out of). Also I remember the 1966 Hanna-Barbera one, starring their own stalwart regular Janet Waldo as Alice as Sammy Davis as the Cheshire Cat and other familiar HB voices.
The best version, and an absolute classic!
It should be remembered that “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” grew out of a series of tales improvised by Reverend Dodgson and told to the daughters of Dean Liddell over the course a few riverside picnics in the vicinity of Oxford. Therefore its dreamlike quality and minimalistic structure reflects the episodic nature of its origins. Crafting a coherent, structured film out of this type of patchwork quilt requires extraordinary insight and skill.
The sequel “Through the Looking-Glass” is a much more structured story which uses the journey across a chessboard to give it a coherence and shape not found to the same degree in the original work. Also, more than “Alice” it is a coming of age story in which she reaches her goal of becoming a queen at the end. The sequel was clearly more planned and thought out than its predecessor. Both books, however, maintain the dreamlike and episodic nature that has come to characterize Lewis Carroll’s work. Reading the two books together is like going from strength to strength. Little wonder that these have defied adaptation.
Disney’s Alice has always seemed to me to be undeserving of its reputation as a less than satisfactory adaptation of Carroll’s writings. The Disney Studio, in adapting the books, had to craft a storyline that would make some kind of sense out of Alice’s journey while at the same time preserving the flavor of the originals in terms of the episodic, dreamlike nature–and the delightful nonsense. As adaptations go, it is a worthy effort which certainly manages to capture much of the whimsey inherent in the books. Though some of the deviations from the text are regrettable–for example, the ending of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and the reduction of the king to a mere insignificant cypher–overall the film stays relatively true to the spirit of the originals.
My first introduction to “Alice” was through a small children’s book that reduced the text to a handful of large print pages and adapted the Tenniel illustrations in full color. After that, I saw the Disney film on “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” (ironically on a black-and-white TV set) and fell in love with it. I most remember the moment when Alice tries to wake herself up. I found the film enchanting then and still savor it today.
As far as film adaptations go, my personal favorites are the ones that take their own path through Wonderland, such as the Disney version and the far looser and wackier Hanna-Barbera version. A notable live-action example is the PBS version starring Kate Burton with her father Richard Burton in the role of the White Knight. There is also a Hallmark version which offers some unique visualizations. Also, for some background on the composition, though it takes liberties with actual fact, the film “Dreamchild” offers some powerful insight into how and why the stories were created (and which minimizes but does not entirely remove the “creep” factor from it). As for the later Disney remake done by Tim Burton, I have yet to warm up to it. My feeling is that there is “too much plot” and also Alice is clearly a young adult instead of a child. Of all of the versions, I think Disney’s animated classic perhaps comes nearest the mark.