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25 curiosities about Alice in Wonderland (1951)

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• One of the jurors is José Carioca.
• Originally, Alice was to sing a song different from "In a World of My Own". It would be a slow ballad entitled "Beyond the Laughing Sky", and it was a song about Alice dreaming of a new world, a world better than her own, very much in the spirit of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. However, Kathryn Beaumont had difficulty singing, and it was decided that starting the film off with a slow ballad would be a little risky on audiences. The song we hear today, "In a World of My Own", is livelier, and was easier for Beaumont to sing.
• 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 movie took five years to complete, but was in development for over ten years before it entered active production.
• This movie is actually a combination of Lewis Carroll's two "Alice" books, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass".
• The Doorknob was the only character in the film that did not appear in Lewis Carroll's books.
• This was the first Disney theatrical film to be shown on television, in 1954. It was shown as the second installment of the Disneyland TV show, edited to fit into a one hour time slot. It is also the only Disney feature-length cartoon film to have its first theatrical re-release after it had already been shown on television (although the film had been televised only in an edited, one-hour version).
• Early drafts of the script had Alice encounter the Jabberwock (to have been voiced by Stan Freberg), from Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky". The sequence was rejected, either because it slowed the story down, or because of concerns that it would be too frightening. Elements of "Jabberwocky" remain in the film, however: the Cheshire Cat's song "T'was Brillig", consisting of the opening stanza; and the Tulgey Wood sequence, which includes at least one of the creatures mentioned in the poem, "The Mome Raths".
• Lewis Carroll wrote the riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" as nonsense - it has no answer. This has not stopped people, despite being repeatedly told that there is not, nor should there be, any answer, from trying to contrive one. Among the suggestions are, "Because Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both" and "Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes" (the second of which is very similar to a solution that Carroll himself wearily suggested when he grew tired of people asking him about it).
• This was the first feature film for which Walt Disney was able to use television for cross-promotion. Disney's very first television program, One Hour in Wonderland, which was broadcast on Christmas evening of 1950, was devoted to the production of this film. Naturally, the entire program, including the clips from the movie, was in black and white.
• "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the Walt Disney version on December 24, 1951 with Kathryn Beaumont, Jerry Colonna, and Ed Wynn reprising their film roles.
• 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.
• 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.
• As Alice is helping paint the roses red, they sing, "not pink, not green, not aquamarine." Immediately thereafter, the queen's card army arrives, and after the first rank of normally-colored cards, the following three ranks of cards are pink, green, and aquamarine.
• Though Alice in Wonderland was said to be written by Lewis Carroll, that is actually a fictitious name. The author’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and one may consider him a "Renaissance Man". He was not only a successful author, but also a mathematician, photographer, and philosopher.
• For those who have read the original Alice books, you may recall the illustrations throughout the story. However, Disney opted against using those illustrations and instead hired Mary Blair as the concept artist. Her art can also be seen in the movies Peter Pan and Cinderella, and the ride “It’s a Small World”.
• 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.

Sources: IMDb and Saving Every Day

Favorite Disney movies (in no order) [11/??] - Alice in Wonderland

Release Date: July 26, 1951

Directed by: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske