"Alice In Wonderland - with Viola Savoy as Alice

Film and TV productions across the years

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Alice In Wonderland silent feature film starring Viola Savoy made in 1915

s the Mock Turtle ends his history lesson with a song, the White Rabbit enters, announcing that "The trial's beginning". Leaving the Mock Turtle to finish his song, Alice follows the White Rabbit to the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts.
There is no dramatic size changing in this version of the story, Alice merely defies the Queen's "off with her head" and calls everyone "just a pack of cards". This does not, of course, go down too well with the assembled multitude.
Alice awakes. She's back on the riverbank with her sister, realises she's been dreaming and the film ends.

he screenplay of William Young's "Alice in Wonderland" is creditably close to Lewis Carroll's original story, albeit with a new 'frame', and the differences are mainly those caused by the lack of facilities for special effects. Although it was done in the earlier films, producing a convincing size-change might have been considered too complicated, so sequences such as those with the "Drink Me" bottle and the pieces of mushroom were simply dropped, although how she gets to be the same size as the Mouse in the 'hall of doors' is a bit of a mystery. Films of this vintage were usually quite short, so even at 60 minutes or so, this one was getting on for an epic. The exteriors for the film were shot on an estate just outside New York City and the Gryphon/Mock Turtle scenes on a rocky beach at Cape Ann on the Massachusetts coast.

Illustrations for this article were derived partly from screengrabs from the actual film, and partly from a book edition containing both of the 'Alice' stories (not the screenplay itself), published by Grosset & Dunlap in New York and illustrated with stills from the film.

The book has a small write-up and review, which refers to the film as being "First produced as a MOVING PICTURE PRODUCTION before an invited audience at the Strand Theatre, New York."
It goes on to say that "The huge audience at the Strand Theatre received this first production .... with all the enthusiasm which the rare good judgment shown throughout by both the director and the scenario writer merited".

Intriguingly, the book has three stills which indicate that a version of the "Through the Looking Glass" story was filmed, using some of the same cast. The picture below right looks as though it's the banquet The Tweedle Brothers

scene from 'Looking Glass', but all of the 'Wonderland' cast are also in there. It appears therefore, that more than one version of the film was distributed - one with "Looking Glass" scenes and one without - an early example of the "Directors cut" perhaps (!) Not all existing prints are complete in any case.
Nothing of these scenes appear in the print I used for this review, which was a simple "Wonderland" version, ending exactly as it should (ie) the trial, followed by Alice waking up on the riverbank. The book referred to above has a synopsis which includes 'Looking Glass', but it isn't clear if this was all part of one film. It would have been an unusually long production if so, which is perhaps why the extra scenes were removed for general distribution.

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