Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
| Alice in Wonderland (or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?) | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Bill Dana (book), Charles Strouse (music), Lee Adams (lyrics) |
| Directed by | Alex Lovy |
| Starring | (See below) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Running time | 48.5 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
Hanna-Barbera Productions Screen Gems |
| Release | |
| Original network | ABC |
| Original release | March 30, 1966 |
The New Alice in Wonderland (or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?) is a forty-eight-and-a-half-minute animated TV-movie, written by Bill Dana (who also appears in its cast), produced by Hanna-Barbera, and broadcast on the ABC network on March 30, 1966, in an hour slot (including commercials). The songs were by the then-hot Broadway team of 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 most significant (and at that time sole) in-house composer Hoyt Curtin had written for various animated series. (One example: When the Caterpillar makes its entrance, the underscoring is the familiar bassoon rendition of the Flintstones theme song—a cue employed for reasons that will be made clear below.)
This adaptation of 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's 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.
With this being Wonderland through the "looking glass"—and more meaningfully, the tacit "prism"—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'd often employed in sketch comedy (most famously in Your Show of Shows) 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.
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Wikipedia