Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 British/American animated comedy feature produced by Walt Disney and based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Thirteenth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was released in London July 26, 1951, and in New York City July 28, 1951. by RKO Radio Pictures. The film features the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice (also voice of Wendy Darling in the later Disney feature film, Peter Pan 1953) 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 United Kingdom. Alice in Wonderland was on VHS October 14, 1997 Fully restored limited edition on DVD. Join Alice as she follows the White Rabbit and into the curious, madcap, magical world of Wonderland, a place where nothing is what it seems and everything is nonsense.
Plot
On the bank of a tranquil river in Oxford, England on a summer day, a cute, sweet and unbearably beautiful 10 year old girl named Alice, gets bored of listening to her lovely big sister read aloud from a book about William I of England. Zoning out on what her sister is saying, Alice makes a daisy-crown and places it on her adorable and pretty pet kitten Dinah's head. She giggles as Dinah shakes off the crown. Annoyed, her older sister tells Alice to pay attention to the history lesson. Alice then asks her how one could pay attention to a book that has no pictures in it. Her sister points out that there are a great many good books in the world without pictures. Alice then remarks that in her world, the books would be nothing but pictures. Slipping away from her sister and the history lesson, Alice carries Dinah in her arms and tells her all about the world of her own, in which everything would be nonsense and nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what is isn't. Suddenly, Alice and Dinah both spot a talking white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying an enormous golden pocket watch, along with an umbrella. He is seen whistling and walking peacefully without a care. He then looks at his pocket watch, and sees that he's late, he's late for a very important date. He runs off in a great hurry while frantically saying how late he is. Curious to know where he is going, Alice and Dinah chase after him down a dirt path, with Alice begging the rabbit to wait. Alice tells Dinah that it must be awfully important, like a party or something. The duo end up seeing the White Rabbit hurry into his rabbit-hole. Alice remarks that it is a peculiar place to have a party, and Dinah meows in agreement. As Alice squeezes inside the rabbit-hole and crawls after him, she tells Dinah that they shouldn't be doing this, for they haven't being invited, but Dinah and Alice just can't help themselves, and they kept on crawling through. Suddenly, the ground that Alice is crawling on abruptly gives away, causing her to fall down an absolutely deep, dark, mysterious abyss. After waving goodbye to Dinah (who almost tumbled down the hole as well and watched Alice fall), Alice's dress inflates like a parachute, and she begins to slowly float down through the darkness. As a lamp drifts past her, Alice immediately turns it on and looked about her. She saw something rather curious- she floats down through what seemed to be a literally upside down hallway. She sees cupboards, book-shelves, coffee tables, paintings, mirrors, maps, bowls, cages, nails, rocking-chairs, and other objects that one would normally see in a house that are adorning the walls of the rabbit-hole. She then takes a book off a floating table and began to read it, when she suddenly landed in a passing rocking chair. As she kicks back and relaxes in the rocking chair, she falls forward and her long skirt inflates again. Alice then asks herself if she shall fall right through the center of the earth when her long skirt inflated again, and come out the other side where people walk upside down. As she laughs at her silly comment, she suddenly landed to the ground with a thump with her skirt deflating and in a completely madcap, nonsensical world called Wonderland. She spotted the White Rabbit once again and followed him to a door. She opened the door but was quite shocked to see that there was another door behind it, only smaller. She opened that door and found another even smaller door. She kept on opening the doors as they got smaller and smaller. Finally, she opened the last door that led into a tiny passageway. She crawled through it and entered a very long, low hall. At the end of the hall was a tiny door that the White Rabbit had escaped through. Alice immediately twisted the doorknob, only to find that the Doorknob can speak! The Doorknob told Alice that she is much too big to fit through. He then suggested that Alice tries the bottle on the table. A table with a glass bottle labeled "Drink Me" then magically appeared out of nowhere. After asking to herself if the bottle's liquid was poison or not, Alice drank from the bottle and suddenly found herself shrinking down to a minuscule fraction of her original size, much to her surprise and shock at what just happened. She happily realized that she is just the right size to fit through the door, but the Doorknob just chuckled giddily with delight and told her that he's locked, and the key to unlock him suddenly shows up on the table(the Doorknob magically appeared the key on the table when he said to Alice : now don't tell me you lef It the table up theereee ). After a failed attempt of trying to climb one of the table's legs due to it being too slippery, Alice sadly wondered what she'll do now. The Doorknob suggested to try the box, and a box of cookies (cakes) that have the words "Eat Me" and also "Take One" and "Try Me" frosted onto them materialize out of nowhere! Alice eats one and grows so gigantic that her head almost hits the ceiling and her arms and legs are cramped in the hallway. She could reach the key now, but she was so big that she couldn't fit through the door! Alice started to cry hysterically; her massive tears flooded the room. The Doorknob pointed out that the "Drink Me" bottle still has some fluid left inside, so Alice stops crying finishes off the last drop. She shrinks to such a tiny size that she drops into the empty "Drink Me" bottle. She floats through the Doorknob's keyhole in the bottle and into a vast, salty ocean of made out of her tears. While bobbing up and down in the bottle on the water, Alice sees a large jolly singing Dodo bird seated on a crow and being pushed by a parrot. He then instructs the parrot to go three points to starboard. Alice calls out to the Dodo bird for help, but he did not hear her. She kept on calling out for help to other talking curious creatures that had slipped into the ocean of tears, but they ignore her as well. Alice then gets swept away onto the shore of a beach by a massive wave of her tears. She finds herself in a very unusual race, called a Caucus Race, that was led by the Dodo so that he and the other talking creatures could get dry. They attempted to get dry while the waves still kept them wet. During the strange race, Alice spots the White Rabbit washed up on the beach and runs after him inland. She loses him once again in the woods. As she searches for him, Alice meets an odd, insane pair of identical twins that were named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They try to have some unusual games with her, but Alice tells them that she must be going. When they ask her why, she replies that she is following a White Rabbit because she is curious to know where he is going. This makes the twins think of the little Oysters, as they sigh sadly about what happened to them. This intrigues Alice and asks them about the Oysters. The twins then proceed to tell Alice a story about the Walrus and the Carpenter, who were one day walking on the beach and decided to fish for little Oysters to eat. They lured the curious oysters with them and the Walrus ended up eating them all before the Carpenter even had one bite. After the story, Alice then tries to leave to go back to searching for the White Rabbit, but the twins began to say another recitation called "You Are Old, Father William". As they recite, Alice quietly sneaks away from them and into a clearing. She stumbles upon a neat, pretty little pink cottage. The White Rabbit then appeared inside the house, calling out for his housekeeper, Mary Anne. As he frantically dashes out of his house, Alice asks him on what he is late for. The White Rabbit notices Alice but instead of answering her question, he mistakes her for Mary Anne. After being angrily ordered to fetch him a pair of gloves, Alice hastily goes into his house and walks upstairs to the White Rabbit's bedroom. As she searches his room for a pair of gloves, Alice's eye falls upon a box containing cookies. She eats one of them labeled "Eat Me", completely forgetting what happened last time she ate a cookie. She instantly grows until her arms and feet stick out the White Rabbit's cottage and she gets stuck. She tries to pull herself out, but is too big. The frightened White Rabbit thinks she is a terrifying monster and calls the Dodo bird, who orders a talking lizard called Bill to go down the chimney and drag out the "monster". As he comes down, Alice sneezes which caused him to shoot up through the chimney and way up into the sky like a rocket. The Dodo then decides that they must burn the house down, much to the White Rabbit's horror. Wanting to escape this serious situation, Alice picks up a carrot from the White Rabbit's nearby garden, thinking that it might make her smaller. Sure enough, after taking a bite out of the carrot, Alice shrinks down to the size of a toothpick. She resumes back to her pursuit of the White Rabbit. She follows the frantic bunny just as he's leaving his house into a large patch of tall flowers. The garden was full of many extremely queer creatures, such as bread-and-butterflies and rocking-horse flies. As the flowers towered over the ground, Alice found that the flowers can talk! The flowers notice Alice and excitedly sing her lovely song called "All in the Golden Afternoon." After the song, the flowers question Alice what kind of flower species she is. She tells them she is not a flower which results in the flowers thinking she is a weed. After being rudely thrown out, Alice encounters a talking blue caterpillar who is smoking a long hookah and creating vowels into the sky. He repeatedly asks her, " Who are YOU?" Alice informs him that she would like to be a little larger. After inadvertently insulting the Caterpillar about his height, he turns into a butterfly and tells her that one side of a mushroom will make her grow taller, and the other side will make her shrink shorter. Alice nibbles on one piece of the mushroom and grows so tall with an immense length of neck, that she frightens a hysterical mother bird, who thought that she was a serpent trying to eat her precious eggs. After fruitless attempts of trying to reason with the crazy bird, Alice shrinks herself again with the other mushroom piece. She then restores herself back to her regular height by licking the mushroom piece that makes her grow big. With that, she puts the pieces of mushroom into her apron pockets. Alice then wanders through a vast forest where there were many mysterious arrow signs that directed her on where to go, but they did not help much as there were so many signs with different directions. Suddenly, Alice hears someone singing. She realizes that is was coming from a pink cat with purple stripes called a Cheshire Cat, an eerily grinning feline that can disappear and reappear at will. When Alice asks him where she should go, he directs her to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, who are both extremely insane. He tells her that almost everyone in Wonderland is mad before slowly vanishing, laughing and singing like a nut all the while. Alice hears some strange singing and finds the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and a sleepy dormouse sitting at a long table set out in a garden and having an Un-Birthday tea party while they sing. Alice, attracted to their singing, tries to join them, but they say that there is no room. Alice sits down anyway. She compliments their singing, and they delightfully offer her tea but never give her any. During the tea party, Alice asks them what an Un-Birthday is. They explain that statistics say that you've only one birthday every year, but there are 364 Un-Birthdays each year, which are days when you celebrate even though it is not your birthday. Alice excitedly tells them that it is her Un-Birthday today, and they all celebrate. Afterwards, Alice begins to get put out by the Mad Hatter and March Hare's insanity and rudeness. She is just about to leave angrily in a huff from the unusual tea-party, when suddenly the White Rabbit shows up once again, stating repeatedly that he is late- AGAIN. The Mad Hatter takes the Rabbit's pocket watch and claims that it is exactly two days slow. He and the March Hare proceed to "fix" the White Rabbit's watch by taking out all of the wheels and gears and shoving in various food items, such as butter, jam, lemon, and sugar. The watch goes completely mad, and the March Hare smashes it with a mallet. They literally throw the saddened White Rabbit out. Alice follows him again. Looking back at the tea party, she declares that it's the stupidest tea party that she has ever been to in all her life. Finally fed up with all if this strange nonsense and rudeness, Alice attempts to go back home. However, as she tries to go back home, she finds herself more and more lost in a spooky forest called Tulgey Wood. She encounters all of the unusual inhabitants there, such as Pencil Birds, an Accordion Owl, Umbrella Vultures, Horn Ducks, Drum Frogs, and Shovel Birds who either snap at Alice or pay no attention to her at all. They were practically THE most queerest- and unfriendliest- creatures that Alice had ever seen, which made her want to go back home even more and out of the weird nonsense world she was currently in. Alice then meets some strange plant-like creatures called the Mome Raths, who huddle together to form an arrow and direct her to a path that leads out of the forest. Alice happily follows it, excited to go back home and even be in time for tea. However, Alice sees a strange, dog-like creature that was made out of a broom walking up the path and sweeping it away, making it impossible to backtrack and caused Alice to get lost. Alice, distraught and on the verge of tears, sits down in despair and sings a sad, beautiful song called "Very Good Advice" to all of the weird Tulgey Wood creatures as they approach her and listen. Alice eventually breaks down sobbing after the song, while all of the creatures cry too for her, and slowly they disappear. As Alice sobbed, she saw the Cheshire Cat again on a tree. When she sadly tells him she wants to go home but can't find her way, the Cat tells her that all of the ways here were the Queen of Heart's ways. He opens a door in a tree that leads Alice to the Queen of Heart's royal garden. Alice goes through the entranceway and sees some strange Card Gardeners painting some white roses on a rose bush red, singing merrily as they painted. Alice comes up to them and inquires them on why they are painting the roses red. They explain to Alice that the Queen of Hearts wanted a red rose tree to be planted, but they put in a white one by mistake. If the Queen found out, then she will have their heads cut off. As Alice helps them paint, the White Rabbit comes by and announces the Queen of Hearts and her diminutive husband, the King of Hearts. The Queen and King enter the garden. The angry Queen sees that the gardeners have painted the white roses red and screams,"Off with their heads!" She then notices Alice. She kindly asks Alice where she had come from, and where is going. Alice tells her that she is trying to find her way home, which angers the Queen. The Queen calms down when she learns that Alice plays croquet. With that, she announces, "Then let the croquet game begin!" Alice had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her whole entire life- it was all ridges and furrows. The players used very strange equipment- they used live flamingoes as mallets and live hedgehogs as the balls. The card soldiers were used to make the arches. During the game, the Cheshire Cat appears while the Queen is preparing for her shot. He plays a prank on the Queen by lifting her skirts while she swung her flamingo, causing her to fall over and reveal her underwear. The extremely furious Queen blames it on Alice, and is about to have her executed when her husband suggests a trial instead. With that, they all pile into the castle, and the trial began. The White Rabbit read the charge: Alice had caused the Queen of Hearts to lose her temper. The Queen then inquires Alice if she is ready for her sentence, even though there must be a verdict first. The King of Hearts then calls in several witnesses who had nothing to do with the affair that happened earlier. When the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse showed up as witnesses, they throw the Queen of Hearts an Un-birthday party and give her an Un-Birthday present-a purple crown which magically turns into the Cheshire Cat. Laughing, Alice points him out to the Queen, who screams, "Cat?!" This causes the Dormouse to freak out at that word. In all of the commotion, the King of Hearts hits his wife on the head with a mallet. This causes the Queen to get angry and blames it on Alice. She shouts "Off with her head," but Alice suddenly began to grow big again, thanks to the mushroom pieces. The King declared from the rule book that all persons more than a mile high must leave the court immediately. Alice refuses, and calls the Queen of Hearts a "fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant." However, as she said this, she shrank back down to her regular height. The Queen asks Alice what she just said, only to be answered by the Cheshire Cat what Alice called her. Hearing this enraged the Queen so much that she bellowed at the top of her lungs, "Off with her head!" All of the cards began to close in on Alice. Alice immediately escaped the castle while the cards and the Queen of Hearts chased after her in hot pursuit. This resulted into a nightmarish chase through Wonderland. Various characters that Alice met began to inexplicably join the Queen and the enchanted army of cards in the frantic chase after Alice. As Alice finds herself back into the ocean of her tears, she sees the Caterpillar again and asks him what will she do. In reply, he says, "Who are you?" The wisps of smoke swirl about, and while running for her dear life through the smoke Alice sees the little door with the Doorknob again. She twisted the Doorknob, but he tells her that he is still locked. Alice urgently tells him that she simply must get out. The Doorknob tells her that she is already outside. She peeks through his keyhole mouth and sees herself on the riverbank with Dinah, fast asleep. As the mob behind her drew nearer, she banged on the door screaming, "Alice, wake up! Please wake up, Alice! This results in Alice hearing her older sister's voice saying, "Alice! Will you please wake up and recite your lesson?" Alice immediately wakes up from her dream and quickly recites "How Doth The Little Crocodile," which was what the Caterpillar had taught her. Her sister asks her what she is talking about. Alice replies, "Oh, I'm very sorry, but you see the Caterpillar said-" Her sister just said, " Caterpillar? Oh, for heaven's sake! Alice, I- Oh, never mind dear." Her sister then tells her to come along, as it was time for tea. As Alice goes home with her sister for tea and carries Dinah, she thinks that maybe logic and lessons exist for a purpose.
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 Tweedledum and Tweedledee/The Walrus and the Carpenter/Mother Oyster
- Bill Thompson as White Rabbit/The Dodo
- Heather Angel as 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
- Mel Blanc (uncredited) as Dinah/Wonderland creatures[4]
- Lucille Bliss (uncredited) as Flowers[5]
- Pinto Colvig (uncredited) as Flamingos
- Tommy Luske (uncredited) as Young Pansy
- Marni Nixon (uncredited) as Singing Flowers
- Norma Zimmer (uncredited) as White Rose