J On The Spectrum - Disney's 100th Anniversary - Enchanting Into The 1950s

Disney's 100th anniversary is this year, and to celebrate, I'm going to tell the story of this legendary animation company over a yearlong period.

Entering into the 1950s, Cinderella made big bucks. The movie that was in production at the same time as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, wasn't so lucky. This was too bad because Walt Disney wanted to make an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland ever since he became fascinated with Lewis' Carroll's two books as a schoolboy, and ever since he made the first Alice's Wonderland shorts of the 1920s, and ever since he wanted to make an Alice live action animation combo feature with Mary Pickford, which he ditched to make Snow White, and ever since he wanted to make an Alice in Wonderland movie after the success of Snow White but World War II inevitably dashed his hopes of making such a film. Finally, he decided that to do these two books justice, he would make it into a full fledged animated feature.

This would be, according to Walt Disney, his first proper post war feature. The usual suspects turn up once again. Visual design is once again provided by Mary Blair, an absolute master, Sterling Holloway voices yet another character in a Disney movie (that of the Cheshire Cat), Ed Wynn also makes one of his first collaborations with Disney during the early years of the studio, playing the Mad Hatter, and once again Walt's master animators, the Nine Old Men as they were now known among the studio, provided the A class animation under the budgetary constraints.

The film was promoted through the new medium of television with "One Hour in Wonderland" starring Walt Disney himself, along with a 10 minute feature "Operation Wonderland" which talked about the making of the movie. The film premiered in July 26, 1951, and on a $3 million budget, took in only $2.4 million, lower than the box office receipts of Cinderella a year prior. This resulted in a million dollar write off, and rather negative reception from critics. However, it would regain popularity in rereleases and be viewed as a film in tune with the psychedelic early 1970s, being viewed on college campuses across the nation, and become another wonderful Disney classic.

However, by this time Walt's attention was starting to turn elsewhere. He wanted to really recapture the innocence of some of his childhood, and began to become fascinated with trains, and television, and other stuff. RKO was now a burden he wanted to escape himself from, since he knew RKO was in dire financial straits under one Howard Hughes.

Next week, Disney's last movie with RKO.