Has there ever been a really successful film version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland? There have been many and many of them are very entertaining, but I would say there has never been a really successful version. There are several problems with trying to turn this witty, wacky world into a film and the first one is that there’s no story and no heroine. Alice wanders around Wonderland and meets people and things happen to her, but she’s never proactive. And the wandering around makes it very episodic, with nothing to tie the episodes together but her search for her missing cat.

So, why am I talking about Alice in Wonderland? Well, I’ve been meaning to post this piece for a while, but my buddy Mark Evanier has forced my hand with this. Scroll down to the last two paragraphs, where he talks about a Hanna-Barbera special titled Alice in Wonderland or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

This is another version that still has a lot of the same flaws as other versions. But it also has some things going for it. The main one is the score and songs. More about that in a minute.

Here are some original cels from the film. First up is the White Rabbit, voiced by Howie Morris, remembered as one of the players on Your Show of Shows and Ceasar’s Hour and probably best known for his five appearances on The Andy Griffith Show as Ernest T. Bass. Search around Mark’s sight and I think you can find the story of why this was the last voice Howie did for the studio for quite a few years. It was over being replaced on the record album of this special. You can click on any of these pictures to see a larger version.

Here’s another view of the Cheshire Cat, voiced by Sammy Davis, Jr., who was also replaced on the record by Scatman Crothers, but was still somehow welcome at the studio. They even made him resemble Sammy by making his whiskers look like a moustache and giving him a goatee, a look that Davis was sporting at the time.

This is the Queen of Hearts, and again, she resembles her voice, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Unfortunately, some of this show dates by using celebrity voices and likenesses. There was a Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper who wrote from the 1930’s through the 1960’s and was known for her flamboyant and omnipresent hats. Hanna-Barbera cast her as the Mad Hatter. Anyone under the age of 40 will never understand this reference.

The one reference that doesn’t really date is Bill Dana as The White Knight doing his Jose Jimenez character. Even though it’s another caricature, if you’ve never seen him before, the character is funny on his own.

The caterpillar in this version has two heads, belonging to the stone-age duo of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. They perform one of the best numbers in the show, “They’ll Never Split Us Apart”. The track appeared on the Flintstones soundtrack album I produced for Rhino Records, which unfortunately, is now out of print. An interesting piece of trivia - Alan Reed, the original voice of Fred, performed the dialogue in the show, while Henry Corden, who would take over the voice after Alan died, did the singing.

Which brings us back to the music. As Mark has already pointed out, it was written by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse of Bye, Bye, Birdie fame. But here is a rare item, the cover of a book of sheet music from the show. WARNING: Only click on the next two items if you have a fast connection, they are rather large. Note that the artwork looks nothing like the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. My guess is that the publisher only licensed the music and not the art.

Here is the inside front cover with bios and a picture of Adams and Strouse. It says in the first paragraph that “they’ve written together ever since”. This didn’t continue to be the case as Charles Strouse teamed with Martin Charnin in 1977 to write the Broadway musical Annie. The melody for the show-stopping “Tomorrow” was something he had written for an Arrow Shirt commercial, but that’s a story for another time. Adams and Strouse would reteam for the disastrous Bring Back Birdie, an attempt at a sequel starring Donald O’Connor in the Dick Van Dyke role. It ran 4 performances.

Like Mark, I’m looking forward to seeing this show again when it plays on Cartoon Network later this month. I’ve been bugging Warner Home Video to release a DVD of this and the other H-B special, Jack and the Beanstalk, starring Gene Kelly. I remember enjoying that one, too, although it’s a bit disconcerting hearing Dick Beals’ (Speedy Alka-Seltzer) voice coming out of a real little boy.

One last note, if you’re in the L.A. area today or tomorrow, you can actually meet Bill Dana at the Hollywood Collectors Show, which takes place at the Burbank Marriott (nee Hilton).

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 11:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.