Film 946: Alice in Wonderland

Film 946: Alice in Wonderland

Trivia: Color screen tests of Mary Pickford as Alice were made for a proposed live-action/animation version of the story.

Kathryn Beaumont, who was the voice of Alice, narrates the "Alice in Wonderland" ride at Disneyland.

In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the R in the word "March" on the mother oyster's calendar flashes. This alludes to the old adage about only eating oysters in a month with an R in its name. That is because those months without an R (May, June, July, August) are the summer months in England, when oysters would not keep due to the heat, in the days before refrigeration.

Continuing the pattern of film versions of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" not being commercially successful, this movie was a huge box office failure. However, it did become something of a cult film during the 1960s, where it was viewed as a "head film". Several years later it became the Disney studio's most requested 16mm film rental title for colleges and private individuals. In 1974, the studio took note of this fact, withdrew the rental prints, and reissued the film nationally themselves

The Doorknob was the only character in the film that did not appear in Lewis Carroll's books.

In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the dates on the calendar are the same as they would be in March 2010, when Disney would release Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton.

HIDDEN MICKEY: In the scene where Alice grows and gets stuck in the White Rabbit's house, if you look closely at the DoDo bird's flame as he lights his pipe, there is a hidden Mickey flickering in the flame.

The English novelist Aldous Huxley worked with Walt Disney on early scripts for this project in late 1945. The original idea was for a cartoon version of Alice embedded in a flesh-and-blood episode from Lewis Carroll's life. Huxley's mother, Julia Arnold, was one of the little girls that Carroll used to enjoy photographing, and to whom he told the Alice stories. The project was close to Huxley's heart, but Disney found his work too intellectual, and it was not used. Huxley received no credit on the finished picture.

During a break in the recording sessions, Ed Wynn ad libbed the speech where the Mad Hatter tries to "fix" the White Rabbit's watch. ("Muthtard? Leth not be thilly!") Walt Disney, who was listening in a nearby sound booth, saw that the recording tape was still recording Wynn's speech. He told the sound technicians, "Hey, that stuff's pretty funny. Why don't you use that speech in the movie?" The sound men objected. "We can't use that speech. There are too many background noises on the tape." Disney smiled, and told them, "That's *your* problem," then walked out of the room. Eventually, with much labor, the sound technicians managed to erase all the background noises from the recording tape so that Ed Wynn's ad libs could be used in the film.

Every time the White Rabbit's watch is seen, it is always 12:25.

The only Disney animated film that had to wait more than 20 years for its first theatrical re-release.

The Mad Hatter was drawn to resemble Ed Wynn.