Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?


The New Alice in Wonderland was a 1966 American animated television special written by Bill Dana and produced by Hanna-Barbera. It was broadcast on the ABC network on March 30, 1966, in an hour slot. The songs were written by composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams, who were most famous for Bye Bye Birdie. The songs were orchestrated by Marty Paich, who also provided musical direction; plus devised and arranged that part of the underscoring that was drawn from the musical numbers. The rest of the underscoring was drawn from the vast library of cues that Hanna-Barbera's in-house composer Hoyt Curtin had written for various animated series.

Storyline

This adaptation of the 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is essentially, and very intentionally, a modern riff on the classic tale: while trying to read the original Lewis Carroll book for a book report, Alice tries to fend off her little white dog Fluff, who is in a very playful mood, and tosses a ball for him to chase. It bounces toward and magically through the living room TV screen—and Fluff, in hot pursuit, disappears right after it. Alice goes after Fluff and of course winds up falling through herself, and entering Wonderland.

Characters

With this being Wonderland through the "looking glass" of a TV screen, the creative team had all the excuse they needed to reinterpret all the iconic Wonderland characters as TV celebrities. In some cases, this merely involved a celebrity voice and persona: Howard Morris lent the shy, sweet, impish persona he had often employed in sketch comedy to the White Rabbit. Harvey Korman brought his take on effete eccentricity to the Mad Hatter. Perhaps most transparently, Zsa Zsa Gabor played a glamorous Queen of Hearts replete with Hungarian accent and a penchant for calling people "darling". And perhaps most famously, Sammy Davis, Jr. assayed the Cheshire Cat as a groovy, rockin', swingin' feline beatnik.

Cameos

There were some celebrity cameos too: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble literally play themselves as the Caterpillar, which is re-interpreted as two veteran vaudevillians in a caterpillar costume with heads on either end. Bill Dana's portrayal of the White Knight is a manifestation of Jose Jimenez, the Hispanic immigrant character he perfected in standup routines and on sitcoms. Character actor Allan Melvin provided a voice inspired by Humphrey Bogart for the "hard-boiled" criminal egg, Humphrey Dumpty. And Hedda Hatter is voiced by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. It would be her last "public appearance"; she died two months prior to the film's initial broadcast.

Broadcast history

and Coca-Cola sponsored this feature, and characters from the movie appeared in the Rexall commercials. The show was repeated on ABC primetime only once, a year later, and has occasionally, rarely been rebroadcast since, most recently on Cartoon Network. To date, it has never been officially released on home video in any format.

Audio adaptation

After the movie was broadcast, Hanna-Barbera Records did commercially release a vinyl LP, whose content is likewise currently out of print, which is often misidentified as a soundtrack album but is in fact a completely re-recorded audio adaptation, with a largely different cast, somewhat abridged, employing much re-worked dialogue to aid the compression and to fill in for absent visuals, and a slightly reduced orchestration of the songs. It is likely that Bill Dana's teleplay was adapted for records by Charles Shows, a ubiquitous and major animation writer of the period, who wrote most of the story albums produced by Hanna-Barbera Records, and retains his usual "stories" credit on the back of the album cover. There has never been a second printing, re-release or digital release of the album.

Audio cast changes

Where Sammy Davis Jr. supplied the speaking and singing voice of the Cheshire Cat in the movie, he was constrained from appearing in the audio adaptation because he was under exclusive contract to Reprise Records at the time; but Scatman Crothers provides the vinyl voice of the Cat, giving a rendition of the character and the title song that is at least as delightfully hip and funky.
Where others of the TV show cast were concerned, there may have been additional issues involving contracts and royalties, because except for Bill Dana, all of the original celebrity performers were likewise replaced on the album by actors from Hanna-Barbera's stable of reliable A+ voice over actors: Don Messick voiced the White Rabbit ; Henry Corden not only reprised Fred Flintstone's singing voice, but assumed his speaking voice as well ; the character of Hedda Hatter was cut, her material combined with that of the Mad Hatter, and the latter was voiced by Daws Butler ; and with Butler assuming the Hatter, Mel Blanc moved into Butler's previous role as the March Hare. Janet Waldo, the speaking voice of Alice, does uncredited double duty as the Queen of Hearts, via a better-acted impression of her predecessor Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Voices and characters

The following voice actors and celebrities provided the voices for the following characters in the TV show:
Cast changes for the LP audio adaptation:
Incidental music composed and arranged by Hoyt S. Curtin. Songs arranged by Marty Paitch . Music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams.