Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Bored by her sister's history lesson in an English park, Alice daydreams of a world of nonsense, then sees a White Rabbit in a waistcoat hurrying by, complaining that he is late. She follows him down a rabbit hole and falls into Wonderland. A potion makes her shrink and a cake makes her grow enormous; she cries a sea of tears and floats through a keyhole. She meets Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who tell her the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter; is mistaken for a housemaid by the White Rabbit and grows so large she fills his house; is snubbed by a garden of singing flowers; and gets sensible-sounding nonsense from a hookah-smoking Caterpillar and the grinning, vanishing Cheshire Cat. At the Mad Hatter and March Hare's endless tea party she celebrates an "unbirthday". Lost in the Tulgey Wood, she weeps and wants to go home. At last she reaches the court of the Queen of Hearts, plays croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs, and is put on trial. Growing again, she defies the Queen, is chased by the whole of Wonderland, and wakes up on the riverbank beside her sister.
Why It Matters
- The design is the attraction. Inspired by the colour styling of Mary Blair, Wonderland is a flat, bright, modern world of saturated colour, and the Mad Tea Party, animated with frantic energy, and the Cheshire Cat's dissolving grin remain among Disney's most inventive set pieces.
- Disney had wanted to make Alice since the 1930s, and it was planned at one point as live action combined with animation. It was a box-office failure in 1951, but its psychedelic reputation made it a hit with college audiences in the 1960s, and its 1974 reissue turned it into one of the studio's classics.
Notes and Trivia
- Many episodes from Carroll's books, including Jabberwocky, the White Knight, the Duchess, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, were planned and then dropped.
- It was shown on television as one of the first episodes of Disney's Disneyland series in 1954.
- See also: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia (1940).