Alice in Wonderland (1933): Dir: Norman Z. McLeod / Cast: Charlotte Henry, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, W.C. Fields, Edward Everett Horton: Early version of the famed tale of imagination, rabbits, Mad Hatters, evil Queens, caterpillars, and the reality that home isn't as far as one thinks. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod with an imaginative production that matched the time period. Charlotte Henry plays off the wonderment of Alice who goes through the looking glass to the enchanted world on the other side. She encounters brief but intriguing characters including Gary Cooper as the clumsy white knight who is totally accident prone. Cary Grant as the saddened mock turtle is another brief appearance as well as W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty who will obviously tumble off the wall and won't be put back together anytime soon. Edward Everett Horton plays an early version of the famous Mad Hatter character. This is a massive cast of impressive names, all of whom will become noted for greater film appearances but are together here in small roles. Production and special effects were imaginative for the time of released although may be seen as corny to modern audiences. Many more adapted variations will follow, many of which improve on visual technology while maintaining the story. This version is hokey but entertaining in its regard to reality and fantasy. Score: 9 / 10

I love Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, and for me my personal favourite film adaptations of this great story are the 1951 Disney animated film and this. This film is really quite interesting especially for its wonderful cast.This 1933 film also is to me one of the more faithful adaptations of the story, still maintaining the strange but colourful characters and episodic, oddball yet bewitching story structure while having a surrealistic and somewhat nightmarish element to it. The film does look great for its time, the costumes are quite wonderful and the scenery looks as though a lot of care has gotten into making it look good and presentable. Also the cinematography has a warm feeling to it.I also like the music very much. The incidental music is memorable and doesn't feel intrusive, while the songs are like little bon-bons. I am especially fond of Beautiful Soup. The characters are still fun and colourful, especially the White Knight, the writing is still nonsensical and witty and the story is delightfully strange and has many unforgettable scenes, Walrus and the Carpenter I am looking at you.The acting is fine too. Charlotte Henry is good and appealing as Alice, but she is overshadowed by the supporting cast who range from very good to just wonderful. Richard Arlen is a witty Cheshire cat and Mary Robson is a suitably shrill Queen of Hearts. The scene stealers though for me were Cary Grant(almost unrecognisable except for the voice) as the melancholy Mock Turtle and especially Gary Cooper who is amazing as the White Knight.All in all, while there may be parts of the beginning that feel slightly laboured, this is an enchanting and warm film adaptation of a fine story. 9/10 Bethany Cox

In the depths of the Great Depression, Paramount mounted this spectacular fantasy with a galaxy of top flight stars and just missed creating a classic. Like the stage ALICE IN WONDERLAND Eva LeGallienne had mounted the year before at her Civic Repertory Theatre in New York - only just closed when the film opened - which appears to have inspired this production, the sets and costumes are drawn heavily from the classic and by then in public domain illustrations from the original book by John Tenniel.The result is a dazzling world - starting with Alice's Victorian drawing room where she is waiting out a snow storm with her cat, Dinah and her aunt before beginning her explorations Through the Looking Glass (the film combines both of Lewis Carroll's most famous books) and continuing through most of the most famous incidents from the books in live action fantasy form. Only "The Walrus and The Carpenter," delightfully rendered by Max Fleischer's cartoon studio (one would love to have seen the cut footage of the similarly popular "You Are Old Father William" poem!) was deemed too hard to portray with live actors - the baby oysters lured from their bed for culinary conversation - "Shoes and ships and sealing wax" and all that. You've probably seen this cartoon edited from the film and issued separately! This was a separate Hollywood production, despite similarities with the Broadway play with music, and didn't use the any of that show's Richard Addinsell song score (recorded by RCA during the stage show's 1947 revival) but turned Dimitri Tiomkin loose on it, and it's nice to see that film's premiere composer could also turn out a nice enough song or two too. This was a first class production all the way - and like MGM's WIZARD OF OZ six years later, didn't make money in it's initial release - or initial RE-release in 1935. Lacking ...OZ's Technicolor and popular song score, this ALICE IN WONDERLAND didn't even carve out its classic niche when television came in, and is now almost lost - supplanted in the popular mind by the fine 1951 Disney animated version of the story, but is well worth seeking out for lovers of Lewis Carroll, classic fantasy or classic film.Technicolor or not, songs or not, the film still has elements which dazzle and only a few serious drawbacks for the "short attention span" set. Charlotte Henry is a fine, natural Alice (in an all too brief career of only 31 films, before retiring during WWII, she also did the Laurel & Hardy BABES IN TOYALAND in 1934 and the best of all the Chans, CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA in 1936 as Boris Karloff's daughter!) and she is ably supported by a cast of great actors - not all of whom have the luxury of costumes revealing their faces like Ned Sparks' Caterpillar, Edward Everett Horton's Mad Hatter or Edna May Oliver's Red Queen, but the voices of rising stars like Cary Grant (a wonderful singing Mock Turtle) and old pro W.C. Fields (Humpty Dumpty) won't really require seeing the faces in their "Tenniel come-to-life" costumes.The problem, if any, comes in the mad whirl of crazy fantasy that takes Alice deeper and deeper into Wonderland (and its sequel) and after a while can lose the audience's interest as they try clinging to a thru-story line. Stick around though, for Gary Cooper's appearance around an hour into the film as The White Knight (only the name is type casting)! It is one of the greatest treats in a motion picture packed with them - and arguably one of the crowning gems of Cooper's career. Quite wonderful.Modern audiences may cringe a bit in the opening scene seeing Alice, in a highly starched - and highly FLAMMABLE - dress and apron climbing on the grate in front of a burning fireplace to look in the mirror over the hearth, but someone at the studio did notice (and probably hoped the audience wouldn't). When Alice returns, the fire is out. After 75 years though, the fire is far from out on this fascinating extravaganza. If you get a chance to see it, grab it.

Whilst it's undoubtedly true to say that few (if any) members of the cast were ever again to play such weirdly offbeat roles, the performances generally rate as both captivating and fascinating. Adults will be enthralled. The film may, however, be regarded as too grotesque for children.Mary Boland, Bing Crosby and Charles Laughton were originally scheduled for the cast, while Jack Oakie was slated to play both Tweeledum and Tweedledee. Charlotte Henry was chosen to play Alice from over seven thousand applicants.Although the official writing credit is divided between Menzies and Mankiewicz, what Menzies actually did was to illustrate the script which Mankiewicz combined from the two Carroll novels. When I interviewed Mankiewicz, he was justifiably proud of the fact that he used Carroll's original dialogue and followed the original characters and incidents without the slightest deviation, except for the omission of the Lion and the Unicorn, the Live Flowers and the episode on the train in Chapter Three of "Looking Glass". (We were speaking, of course, about the original 90 minutes version, not the ruthlessly truncated parody that formerly plagued television airings).A striking film in every respect, this version also anticipates Disney with its excellent cartoon sequence, "The Walrus and the Carpenter".