Alice in Wonderland (1951) ft. Christine Duncan and Kieran B.

https://youtu.be/oLHzWIdEUK0

Guests:

• Christine Duncan (20x Club Member)

  • Wife of Dana, Mother of Tom

  • 21x guest

• Kieran B (15x Club Member)

  • Host and Creator of the Best Picture Cast; @bestpicturecast on X, IG, Letterboxd - BPC, Personal Letterboxd 

  • 19x Previous Guest

Cast:

• Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske; Directors

• Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, Bill Peet, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Milt Banta, Bill Cottrell, Dick Kelsey, Joe Grant, Dick Huemer, Del Connell, Tom Oreb, John Walbridge; Writers

• Oliver Wallace, Music

• Lloyd L. Richardson, Editing

• Kathryn Beaumont as Alice

• Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter

• Richard Haydn as the Caterpillar

• Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat

• Jerry Colonna as the March Hare

• Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts

• J. Pat O'Malley as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Walrus, and the Carpenter

• Bill Thompson as the White Rabbit and the Dodo

• Heather Angel as Margaret

• Joseph Kearns as Doorknob

• Larry Grey as Bill the Lizard

• Dink Trout as the King of Hearts

• Jimmy MacDonald as Dormouse

• Clarence Nash as Dinah

Background:

• Based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

  by Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland opened on July 28, 1951 in New York.

• On a budget of $3 million, the film would earn roughly $2.4 million domestically and not finish inside the top 10 of the year.

• It was mostly critically dashed at the time with many critics decrying the lack of adhesion to the Lewis Carroll books as well as the lukewarm entertainment of the film.

• Yet, it was still nominated for one Oscar, Original Score for Oliver Wallace.

• The film and/or book though still holds some cultural sachet for phrases such as "down the rabbit hole," "a cheshire grin," and popular characters names like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

• Disney has still included Alice throughout its theme parks, has made a stage musical of the film, and authorized a live-action adaptation by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in 2010 that grossed over a billion dollars.

• Alice in Wonderland currently holds an 82% among critics on RT, a 68 score on Metacritic, and a 3.8/5 on Letterboxd.

Plot Summary: Bored with her lessons, young Alice follows a fretful White Rabbit down a hole into Wonderland, a topsy-turvy world where she shrinks, grows, and meets a cast of eccentrics: a riddling Caterpillar, a grinning Cheshire Cat, and the tea-mad Hatter and March Hare. Her quest to find a way home leads to the court of the fearsome Queen of Hearts, whose short temper and cry of "Off with her head!" threaten Alice at every turn. After a chaotic trial, Alice finally stands up for herself — and wakes up, realizing it was all her own dream.

Did You Know:

• 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.

• The movie took five years to complete but was in development for over ten years before it entered active production.

• The Mad Hatter is apparently based on the phrase "mad as a hatter" which has a historical basis. In the hat industry of the 19th century there was extensive use of mercury. Liquid mercury is one of the causes of mercury poisoning, which (among other things) causes brain damage. Among the symptoms are slurred speech, memory loss, tremors, and behavior that can be seen as insane.

• This movie has more songs and characters than any other Disney animated film.

• 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.

Best Performance: Animators/Kathryn Beaumont (Alice)

Best Secondary Performance: Kathryn Beaumont (Alice)/Bill Thompson (White Rabbit)/Ed Wynn (Mad Hatter)

Most Charismatic Award: Ed Wynn (Mad Hatter)/Bill Thompson (White Rabbit)/Jimmy MacDonald (Dormouse)/Jerry Colonna (March Hare)/Walt Disney

Best Scene:

• Down the Rabbit Hole

• Doorknob

• The Walrus and The Carpenter

• White Rabbit's House

• The Caterpillar

• Tea Party

• Queen of Hearts

Favorite Scene: White Rabbit's House/Tea Party

Most Indelible Moment: Queen of Hearts/The Walrus and The Carpenter

In Memorium:

• Chuck Russell, 74, American film director (The Mask, The Blob, Eraser), producer and screenwriter.

• Glen Hansard, 56, Irish musician (member of The Swell Season and The Frames, starred in Once) Oscar winner (2007) for "Falling Slowly".

Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

Doorknob: Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.

March Hare: Ah, that's just it. If you don't think, then you shouldn't talk.

Alice: It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change.

Alice: Of all the silly nonsense, this is the stupidest tea party I've ever been to in all my life.

Alice: If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

Alice: I give myself very good advice. But I very seldom follow it. That explains the trouble that I'm always in.

Alice: Curiosity often leads to trouble.

Dodo: Ahoy and other nautical expressions.

White Rabbit: [singing] I'm late / I'm late / For a very important date. / No time to say "Hello, Goodbye". / I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.

Cheshire Cat: I'm mad. You're mad.

Queen of Hearts: I warn you, child... if I lose my temper, you lose your head! Understand?

White Rabbit: Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Walrus: The time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things / Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings / And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings / Calloo, Callay, come run away / With the cabbages and kings.

Alice: I simply must get through!

Doorknob: Sorry, you're much too big. Simply impassable.

Alice: You mean impossible?

Doorknob: No, impassable. Nothing's impossible.

The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 5.13

Impact/Significance: 4.13

Novelty: 6.13

Classic-ness: 6.13

Rewatchability: 3.63

Audience Score: 7.55 (7.3 IMDB, 78% RT)

Total: 32.7

Remaining Questions:

• N/A