ANIMATION of "Alice in Wonderland" presented the most formidable problem we have faced in translating a literary classic into equivalent screen entertainment. The first necessity was to concentrate the many characters and the caching incidents of Alice's adventures into a definite story that could play in conventional programme time. This required re-arrangements and retiming, elimination of some characters, more coherence among the others and Alice.
The loosely related incident in the two classics – "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" – had to be tightened very considerably. We reorganised the material to 75 minutes running time without, I believe, losing any of the flavour or character of the original.
There are some 80 figures, semi-human and animal-like, in the author's fascinating pageant of adventure. They move in and out of the sprawling narrative in erratic fantasy. In combining certain characters and rearranging some episodes and speeches, on were careful not to distort the author's whimsical viewpoint. An example of the transference of familiar scene and dialogue for the sake of economy will be noted in the famous tea party as we have animated it. We have the Mad Hatter and the March Hare chant the "Unbirthday," lines which Carroll gives "Humpty-Dumpty" in his colloquy with Alice in the "Looking Glass." The occasion is perfectly appropriate for the tea party celebration. And by this act we eliminate Humpty-Dumpty.
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