‘Colossal disappointment’: Walt Disney hated one of his animated films

In addition to having a weirder world than most other Disney films, Alice in Wonderland features a gallery of characters that are sometimes quite destabilizing for children, and perhaps this is one of the reasons it failed at the box office. But did you know that Walt Disney himself didn’t like the movie, even when it was just a project in the stable of his animation team?

in his creation Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American ImaginationAuthor Neal Gabler goes back in detail to the making of the film and the origins of the project and explains this denial.

Back in 1933, it was actress Mary Pickford who asked Walt to adapt Lewis Carroll’s novel by mixing animation and live action, as Disney had done with the Alice Comedies of the 1920s.Alice in Wonderland. The actor offers Walt a significant amount of money to finance the project and distribute it through the company he created, United Artists. The producer does not answer. Three years later, it broke a distribution deal that merged with United to switch to RKO, with a much larger number of theaters.

Ნovela Alice in Wonderland passed into the public domain, but Walt bought the rights to publish the same in 1938. Book illustrated by John Tenniel. We are then just after the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a huge success. The project would remain a development project for many years, with the script changing from a live-action/animated mix to a purely animated film, and the writers slowly pulling their hair out.

One of them, the novelist Aldous Huxley, spends time being interrupted by Walt during meetings and slams the door after five writing sessions. The other, Bob Carr, discovers that the novel has no plot and that Alice has none “No character, he’s a white clown who dates a lot of comedians. No main character should be put in that unbearable position.”

Walt is well aware of the problems: he can’t get Alice’s final look right in the animation department. He finds character “Too cold, no heat”. Animators are working in parallel on this project and Cinderella, which should be released in the same waters. And Ben Sharpstein whispers that Walt feels compelled to lead the project. “does she like it” because of “very sophisticated people” THE Ask for it to be removed.

The writers keep moving and Walt admits that he would quit if Peter Pan was willing and able to take the place, except he isn’t. His brother, Roy Disney, hated the project and was the sole decision-maker. In short, everyone sees disaster coming, but the film still comes out on July 28, 1951, a year and a half after Cinderella and seven months before Peter Pan.

At the time of its release, Alice in Wonderland Meets Another Alice, also released in July, directed by Dallas Bauer, starring Carol Marsh, combines live action and puppetry. Walt tries to confront him, to no avail. At the box office, the feature film only brought in $2 million for a $3 million budget.

In an interview about this failure, Walt judges himself “in his trap”describes the film as a “big disappointment”. “It’s terribly difficult to bring fantasy to the screen”. He adds in another interview, which is still quoted in Gabler’s book: “We didn’t feel anything, but we forced it.

At least the film will be discovered and re-evaluated by the 60s counterculture. Its VHS release would promote its popularity for generations to come and prove that the film, like many Disney classics, was ahead of its time.