Alice In Wonderland

T.V. Guide, Toronto, Dec 1985

    On a soundstage in Los Angeles stood many powerful stars who, in the name of creative control and artistic integrity, had exercised ego's force with impunity over the years. They had come together to be supporting players in the two-part “Alice in Wonderland,” a TV-movie built around a 9-year-old star, Natalie Gregory.
    

    It was not at all a production where these hefty Egos could fill the screen and shine incandescently. The luminaries, who together represented the largest starring cast in the history of prime-time dramatic television, included Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., Karl Maiden, Jack Warden, Telly Savalas, Ringo Starr, Jonathan Winters, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Robert Morley, Pat Morita, Lloyd Bridges, Beau Bridges, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Red Buttons, John Stamos, Scott Baio, Patrick Duffy, Sherman Hemsley, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Anthony Newley, Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Roddy McDowall, Ann Jillian, Sally Struthers and Merv Griffin.
    

    Among them were many Emmys and reputations for perfection, power and petulance. Surely, the time would come when the Egos would rise up against the producer and director, raving, “Off with their heads!” or some Hollywood equivalent, such as “You'll never work with me in this town again.” The early days of production did nothing to deter the doubters.

      When Shelley Winters, the Dodo Bird, arrived to do her scene, she did not know her lines. Neither the producer nor the director had the temerity to point this out, quite content, as it were, to pretend that the Empress still wore clothes. But 9-year-old Natalie, who always came prepared and knew this woman only as an older actress who had had a bit part in "The Poseidon Adventure," finally tired of the charade and, during rehearsal, began whispering lines to Winters.
    

    Winters half-snapped at the child: "You don't have to do that. I know my lines."
    "Then why don't you say them?" replied the little girl coolly.
    An electric silence followed.
 

    The actress sat stone-faced, - talking to no one, as wardrobe fussed with her costume. Then a strange thing happened. Gradually, Winters took notice of her new self, her fuzzy limbs, her bird-like features, old her exotic colors, and she laughed. She turned around to show off her costume and muttered something to herself, giggling. She told a joke. She played with Natalie. She made a strange sound that may have been a bird-call. She jumped around in the Dodo Bird suit and flapped her wings. This was playtime; this was the best Halloween costume on the block.
   

     It's hard to take one-self seriously in a Dodo Bird costume. Complaining about camera angles and lighting does not come to mind while parading around as a walrus or a talking flower. Instead, there was much giggling and horseplay, and if someone in the cast made a mistake, a chorus of childlike snickers and cackles arose.
    

    Many of the cast members had never worked together before, did not know each other, but they giggled just the same: Hollywood decorum had no place inside the costumes. The truth, though no one but a 9-year-old dared say it, was that you did not see much of Imogene Coca or Sid Caesar any more. Television had effectively jettisoned most older stars, except that Irwin Allen, producer of "Wonderland," had brought them back to star alongside the young and the venerated. Red Buttons (the White Rabbit) and Arte Johnson (the Dormouse) huddled with Anthony Newley (the Mad Hatter), and the ritual swapping of old stories began.

    On-camera, Red Buttons had settled into a zany portrayal of the White Rabbit, which pleased Irwin Allen, who had encouraged the veterans to lay their own comic styles and eccentricities upon the fairy-tale characters. Jonathan Winters invested Humpty Dumpty with such lunacy that one crewman said admiringly, "That's really demented, isn't it?" When Carol Channing asked whether Allen thought she should develop an English accent for her role as the White Queen, the producer wailed, "I don't want any accent. I brought Carol Channing to do Carol Channing…"
    

    "The most amazing thing to me," said one actress, "was that with all these big stars and big reputations, nobody tried to do a star turn on anybody else. I've started thinking that there's something to this 'You are what you wear.' Actors did things in these outfits that they'd never have otherwise done."
    

    And so, freed from themselves, they delivered strangely enchanting performances: the Cheshire Cat, Telly Savalas, who had never sung before in a movie, doing it now in a beautifully operatic voice; the Red Queen, Ann Jillian, stifling the urge to cry while singing an emotional number to Natalie; the Mock Turtle, Ringo Starr, unabashedly doing a ditty that sounded as if it would have fit right aboard a Yellow Submarine. Perhaps some of the childlike wonder of it all had rubbed off from little Natalie.

    "The day after this comes out," intoned Irwin Allen, "Natalie Gregory is a superstar." He had looked at more than 600 children for the part of Alice, some from as far away as England and France, when a friend called him to say that he should audition a young child who had shone in episodes of Cagney & Lacey and Magnum, P.I. The girl lives, ironically, not in Paris or Liverpool but in Southern California's Orange County—and the producer examined her with a scrutiny approaching microscopic, knowing that no matter how many older stars he had signed, the production would die without a charismatic child in the central role. Natalie neither looked nor sounded like his vision of Alice—her hair was not sufficiently blonde for one thing—but she had a presence that no other child possessed, a star quality. And so Allen gave her the role and ordered a blonde wig designed.
    

    Suddenly the little girl found herself the focal point of an estimated $14 million production, falling through a rabbit hole on an MGM set, not far away from the place where Judy Garland had done "The Wizard of Oz," and beginning an adventure that would lead to encounters with Lewis Carroll's otherwordly characters. She danced with Father William (Sammy Davis Jr., who also plays the Caterpillar), and she sang with the Mad Hatter (Anthony Newley). She did not spend time eyeing and gushing over the celebrities, only Wonderland awed her. So in love was she with its mock forest and the living chess game that sometimes she would be simply staring wide-eyed, a little girl biting her finger and giggling over a chess piece magically walking off the board. You could see older people gravitating to her, the King of Hearts (Robert Morley) and the White Rabbit (Red Buttons) and, finally, Irwin Allen himself; she embodied something that they had wanted to find from the beginning - some innocence, a sense of wonderment.

The production was shown on television as a two-parter. Part one was largely "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", while part two covered "Through the Looking Glass". Both incorporated some re-writing and the story's "frame" revolved around Alice not being allowed to take tea with the grownups until she demonstrated she had grown up herself.

     It includes scenes not shown in some other versions of "Alice", such as the sheep shop transformation, the scene aboard the train, Humpty Dumpty, and the Jabberwock.

    When the show was re-edited and released as two separate videos, it suffered some cuts. The Lion and the Unicorn and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are absent, and, despite being on the rear cover, the singing flowers are missing.

    The special effects aren't anything special, this was mid-eighties TV after all. However, the changes in size were very well achieved. Of course, Irwin Allen had had lots of practice with his "Land Of The Giants" TV series. Allen made his reputation in all his television series and "disaster" movies by achieving the impossible with very little money and, had there been the opportunity to insert stock shots of photographically enlarged lizards with fins glued on them, I'm sure they would have been there!

    However, despite the effects (or lack thereof), the acting is cheery and makes it an good family movie. The songs are perhaps the weakest point, they aren't based on Lewis Carroll's words and have been described as 'incredibly preachy'. None of which detracts from the undisputed popularity of this production.

Article taken from Alice Site :

http://www.alice-in-wonderland.fsnet.co.uk/

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