Disney and Carroll:
A Wonderful Collaboration
By Kelvin
Cedeno
There are some things in life that work wonderfully
on their own, but when fused together with something else, make for
a special dynamic that few could dream of. Take the imaginations of
two people, for example. One of them: a mathematician and
photographer who wrote a novel for a dear friend of his and was
persuaded to publish it (along with a sequel). The other: a film
producer and studio chief who made his mark in animation,
live-action, and theme parks. The two would never meet, but their
combined talents would make for a long and rich history that would
inspire millions of people around the globe. The men in question
are, respectively, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis
Carroll) and Walter Elias Disney.

Carroll was friends with the Liddell family, and on
a fateful boating trip with the three children on July 4th, 1862,
told a story to them about the strange and fantastical adventures of
a little girl who discovered an underground world. He named the
heroine of the story after the middle Liddell daughter: Alice. Her
insistence at him putting down all the stories on paper led to him
writing Alice's Adventures Underground, a
hand-written-and-illustrated book he gave to Alice November of that
year. With some modifications and a title change, the book was
published on November 26, 1865 as Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland. The success of it inspired Carroll to publish a
sequel six years later: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice
Found There. The world of children's literature was never the
same again.
Disney was always inspired by the Alice
books, and that's clear both in his personal career and in the
legacy of the studio he founded. Throughout his lifetime, he would
create three properties directly inspired by Carroll's works: the
'Alice Comedies', the Mickey Mouse short Thru the Mirror, and
(most famously) his 1951 animated feature version. Even after his
passing, the Walt Disney Company would continue to find inspiration
for projects such as the Donald Duck short Donald in
Mathmagicland, the Disney Channel series 'Adventures in
Wonderland,' and most notably, a live-action sequel to the original
stories directed by Tim Burton.
This series will be examining the films, shows, and
featurettes listed above along with a few others. In doing so, it's
hoped that a greater appreciation will be had for the indelible
combination that is Disney and Carroll.

Part 1: Alice's Wonderland (1923)
In 1922, Walt Disney at the age of 20 established
Laugh-O-Gram Films, a production company in Kansas City, Missouri
tucked away behind a real estate office. The shorts under this
banner were primarily made of modernized fairy tales. Unfortunately,
his distributor, Pictorial Clubs, swindled him in paying only a
small percentage of the money owed as they were facing financial
woes of their own. Laugh-O-Gram films was taking a nose dive fast,
but a local dentist commissioned an educational short film from the
studio called Tommy Tucker's Tooth. The $500 made from the
short was used by Walt to make one final short for his languishing
studio: Alice's Wonderland.
His idea was to film a live-action girl and place
her in an animated world, a reversal effect to the typical shorts of
the time which placed animated characters in live-action. Walt found
just the Alice he needed in Virginia Davis, a four-year old whose
image on a Warnerker's Bread advertisement caught his eye. Because
his studio was filing for bankruptcy, Walt managed to convince
Davis' mother Margaret to film the short at her house. He himself
appeared at the beginning of the short as an animator showing Alice
how his drawings come to life. Contrary to popular belief, the
actress playing Alice's mother is not Virginia Davis' actual mother,
Margaret, but is instead her aunt. Money was running so tight that
not only could Walt only use one take for each scene, but he wasn't
even able to complete the short. The short would be the end of
Laugh-O-Gram Films.
$40 in his pocket and his studio equipment sold off,
Walt moved to Los Angeles, shopping around for a distributor for
Alice's Wonderland. He finally found one in the first female
producer and distributor of animation: Margaret J. Winkler of
Winkler Pictures. She was enchanted by the short and put Walt and
his brother Roy under contract for a year. On October 13, 1926, the
two started a new production company called The Disney Brothers
Cartoon Studio, better known today as The Walt Disney Company.

The rest, as they say, is history. Virginia Davis
would go on to make 13 more shorts for Disney in what would be
called the 'Alice Comedies' (and outtake footage from Alice
Hunting in Africa was later used for another short titled
Alice in the Jungle, thus bringing her total to 15). 42 'Alice
Comedies' would follow, 31 starring Margie Gay, one starring Dawn
O'Day, and the final 10 starring Lois Hardwick.
Watching them, one thing is clear: these aren't
adaptations of the Lewis Carroll books. However, the inspiration is
still noticeable. Obviously, the title of the pilot (Alice's
Wonderland) is a dead giveaway, and it does deal with the idea of a
girl from our world dreaming of a world of fantasy. Like Carroll's
stories, talking animals are present and occasionally dress as
humans. The notable difference besides characterization and plot
mechanics, of course, is that in the Alice books, Alice is
usually ignored at best or antagonized at worst. She and the
denizens of Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land don't see eye to eye,
and thus the books are filled with situational humor from these
opposing forces. In Alice's Wonderland, however, Alice is
immediately welcomed with great fanfare and adoration. In that way,
it makes more likely to be the dream of a child than the strange
happenings Carroll's heroine concocts.

For years, portions of the short were missing
(reducing it to eight minutes), but for the Walt Disney Company's 75thanniversary
in 1998, the short was restored to its full 12-minute length by
Scott MacQueen. Because the ending had never been shot, Alexander
Rannie, the appointed composer of this and six other restored Alice
Comedies, arranged for an ending to be created using footage from
the beginning of the short. This complete version can only be found
on the 2005 DVD release of Disney Rarities: Celebrated Shorts
1920s-1960s as part of out-of-print Walt Disney Treasures series. On
the Masterpiece Edition DVD, Un-Anniversary Edition DVD, and 60thAnniversary
Edition Blu-ray of the 1951 Alice in Wonderland, the
abbreviated version of the short is included as a supplement as it's
merely been transferred from release to release dating all the way
back to Alice in Wonderland's Exclusive Archive Collection
laserdisc from 1995.
As for the other 'Alice Comedies,' the Disney
Rarities release contains an additional six shorts while 2007's 'The
Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit' (also a Walt Disney Treasures
release) holds another three. Because the shorts are now public
domain, four more of them can be found on VCI Home Video's 'Alice in
Cartoonland' release along with shorts that have also appeared on
the other two aforementioned DVDs. Below is a breakdown of which
shorts are on which release.
Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities ' 1920s -
1960s: Alice's Wonderland, Alice's Wild West Show, Alice Gets in
Dutch, Alice's Egg Plant, Alice in the Jungle, Alice's Mysterious
Mystery, Alice the Whaler
Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures of Oswald the
Lucky Rabbit: Alice Gets Stung, Alice's Balloon Race, Alice in
the Wooly West
Alice in Cartoonland: Alice in the Jungle*,
Alice Solves the Puzzle, Alice's Eggplant*, Alice's Tin Pony, Alice
Chops the Suey, Alice the Jailbird, Alice Ratted by Rats, Alice's
Balloon Race*, Alice's Oprhan, Alice the Whaler*
* Indicates overlap with the Walt Disney Treasures
In the next part of this series, we'll be taking a
look at the classic Mickey Mouse short Thru the Mirror (1936).