Alice In Wonderland
(or What's a Nice Kid Like You
Doing in a Place Like This?)

(aka THE “NEW” ALICE IN WONDERLAND*)
(1966, U.S.) color animated 60 minutes
first telecast on March 30, 1966 on ABC TV networks
Hanna-Barbera Productions
Story: Lewis Carroll (from his novel, "Alice in Wonderland")
Screenplay: Bill Dana
Produced By Joseph Hanna, William Barbera
Directed by Alex Lovy

With: Sammy Davis Jr. (The Cheshire Cat), Zsa Zsa Gabor (The Queen of Hearts), Bill Dana (The White Knight), Howard Morris (The White Rabbit), Janet Waldo (Alice), Hedda Hopper (Hedda, the Mad Hatter), Alan Reed (The Talking Caterpillar, Fred Flintstone), Mel Blanc (The Talking Caterpillar, Barney Rubble), Harvey Korman (The Mad Hatter), Allan Melvin (Alice's Father/Humphrey Dumpty), Daws Butler (The King of Hearts/The March Hare), Doris Drew (Alice, singing voice), Don Messick (The Dormouse/Fluff), Henry Corden (singing voice: Alan Reed, uncredited)

***

A look by “Dr. Mark” Hill, The Doctor Of Pop Culture.

Hanna-Barbera’s, THE “NEW” ALICE IN WONDERLAND premiered on ABC-TV: Wednesday, March 30, 1966 at 8pm, and I was there. I saw the original ABC broadcast, remembering that it was followed by an episode of THE BIG VALLEY. I have the original REXALL mini-comic book tie-in, too. It seems to me, a lot of TV advertising, led me to get my Grandpa to take me to Rexall to get one.

I also have the original HBR label tie-in album, which is not really the soundtrack, but close. I bought it ten years after the fact, after I discovered a stack of copies at my local Rexall drugstore, where it sat on a dusty back shelf for all that time! The record substitutes Scat Man Crothers for Sammy Davis Jr. Presumably for contractual reasons. Sammy was signed to Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label at the time.

The Scat Man version of “What’s A Nice Kid Like You Doing In A Place Like This” was released as a Hanna-Barbara label single (HBR 476) and actually charted at #134 (05-21-66) (Flip side: “Golly Zone! It’s Scat Man.”) I don’t ever remember hearing it on the radio.

Just the year before, in 1965, HBR records released “MAGILLA GORILLA Tells OGEE The Story Of Alice In Wonderland.” On both LP and a 45 condensation

The last time I saw this ALICE on TV, it was syndicated, c.FALL 1989 and just suddenly appeared one Sunday afternoon on WGN from Chicago. I only got the last 8 mins. Don’t think it’s been seen since then. I wonder if the rights are owned by Rexall? More recently, I got to view a fair quality, 16mm film print, transferred to video. And WOW! What a trip back in time. It opens with the ABC color logo and has all the original REXALL ads. This is exactly as I remember seeing it, one cold, March night in 1966.

We open in a very modern 1960s neighborhood. Janet Waldo (the voice of Judy Jetson and Josie, of The Pussycats) is Alice. Like the live ALICE THOUGH THE LOOKING GLASS special from later in the year (November 1966), this one also adds a dad. He’s voiced by Allan Melvin. (Sam The Butcher/Magilla Gorilla). She has to do a book report on ALICE IN WONDERLAND. (“And no television until you finish.”) Fluff keeps wanting to play and causes her to bump her head on the end of the fireplace.

Did her dog Fluff (barks by Don Messick) just go right thru the TV? Yessir! Then Alice also gets to Wonderland by JUMPING THROUGH HER TV SET, ala. VIDEODROME! How cool it looks inside the TV. Like a big computer. Roll the opening credits…

The shows’ music and lyrics are by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams. Arranged by Marty Paitch and Hoyt Curtin. Together, Strouse and Adams wrote "Annie," "Applause," "Bye Bye Birdie," the theme to ALL IN THE FAMILY, the ill-fated SUPERMAN musical. Strouse co-wrote a song “The Ballad Of BONNIE AND CLYDE” for the 1967 movie.

There’s another connection here because H-B’s episode of THE JETSONS called, “A Date With Jet Screamer” was clearly based on BYE BYE BIRDIE by Strouse and Adams. Alice’s 1st hallucination in the cave, is seeing REXALL and COCA COLA ads float in the air. Whoops! That’s a commercial.

Howard Morris (TV’s Ernest T. Bass and the voice of Mushmouse, Jet Screamer and Jughead Jones) is the White Rabbit. At the time, my sister had a Little Kiddles, Alice In Wonderland doll and I thought the toy white rabbit that came with it looked a lot like this one. The White Rabbit is full of wordplay jokes, such as mistaking Cinnamon for Synonym. After eating some Cinnamon cake, Alice shrinks and grows.

After lots of sports/game scoring references, and a setup that practically screams, “and now a place for a song” (“Why don’t you sit down and let me explain...”) The White Rabbit sings a game referencing song, “Life’s A Game.” With corny lyrics like: “Life’s a game. So try your luck. Go chase a hockey puck” and… “Life is like, a game of quoits. Cause when you lose it hoits!”

At this point, there’s a reference to THE WIZARD OF OZ. The White Rabbit says, “Follow the unwinding road. I could have got you a yellow brick road, but that’s another story!” So ALICE slides down a big winding road thru the sky and is welcomed to Wonderland by the beatnik-inspired, Cheshire Cat, played by Sammy Davis Jr. At one point, he says, “Can you read me now?” Sounding a bit like the wireless phone ad phrase from 3 decades later.

Sammy has a great line here. The set up: “There’s fluff inside a pillow and there’s fluff outside a willow.” Alice asks, “A willow?” And Sammy answers, “Pussy Willow darlin. Pussy Willow. There’s pussy-willow GALORE around here.” That’s a pop cultural reference to Honor Blackman’s character, “Pussy Galore,” in the then-recent James Bond movie, GOLDFINGER (1964).

Next, Sammy sings the immortal, “What’s a Nice Kid Like You, Doing In A Place Like This?” The lyrics to this song still gets stuck in my head some 40 years later. The number is very psychedelic. With 60s dance references. Sammy says, “Do The Monkey with me” and “Let’s do The Jerk!”

“I got a hunch, you won’t like it here.
The potato chips are soggy and they water the beer.”
“Now you could be in pictures with that cute little face.
So how come you hangin’ round this… funky place.”

COMMERCIAL: “Alice In Rexall Land.” Ah, the good old day when the cast of the show would be in the commercials, too. We hardly realize we’ve left the show. Alice is waking up again, finds herself in a REXALL! “Oh, dear, here we go again. NOW, where am I?” The White Rabbit shows her all the drugs she can buy for such cheap prices. And “A penny more buys 2!”

In the next scene, the existential backdrop of “The Lonesome Trail” look like it was taken from the Warner Bros. cartoons with Porky and the DoDo Bird. Suddenly Alice is at the Tea Party. The Mad Hatter is Harvey Korman. (Who was also The Great Gazoo on THE FLINTSTONES and The Green Goose in A MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE, just before he started on THE CAROL BURNETTE SHOW.) An added guest at the Tea Party is “Hedda Hatter,” a 2nd, female Mad Hatter character voiced by Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Who, like the Hatter, is crazy about hats. Hopper was an unusual pick for a star voice. Would anyone have still known who Hedda was in 1966? She’d been in movies since the 1915! Including WINGS (1927), DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936) and TOPPER (1937). But except for her recent, brief appearance in THE OSCAR (1966), she had not appeared on screen since PEPE (1960) and before that SUNSET BLVD. (1950) I sure didn’t remember her being here, until this recent viewing. This was the beginning of Hanna-Barbera relying on “celebrity” voices, like Disney had been doing.

Now ALICE encounters FRED AND BARNEY, celebrities of a sort, as the 2-Headed Caterpillar. They sing, “They’ll Never Split Us Apart.” Which sounds vaguely like the later, Strouse and Adams-penned theme, from “All In The Family.” Now we cut to ads and a camera with ABC on the side. “We’ll be back after station Identification.” (Remember when they did this?)

Alice finally finds Fluff. And now she meets The White Knight. Played by Bill Dana, who also wrote the wacky script. Bill Dana (aka "Jose Jiminez") The humor here is pretty weak. Dana pronounces knight, “Kuh-Night!” and says things like, “My cuticles, have become ‘uglicles’.” Those in the know, know that Bill Dana was under contract to HB at this time. He also appears on “THE FLINTSTONES IN THE TIME MACHINE” lp on the H-B label. Playing numerous historic characters, like Confucius.

We’re back and Alice meets The King (Daws Butler), who kind of talks like W.C. Fields. Then we start the wacky croquet game, which includes: hockey, football, chess, cricket, polo, wrestling, high diving, surfing (by King Kamayamaya) and Monopoly (Community Chest is shown and Don’t Pass GO.) The announcer sounds just like Hokey Wolf.

When I was a kid, I thought the Queen of Hearts was EVA Gabor, who I knew from GREEN ACRES, which had just premiered the year before (09-65). But it was actually sister ZSA ZSA, who had been THE QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958) and appeared in PICTURE MOMMY DEAD the same year as ALICE (1966).

As the show progresses, there’s an odd coupling of character design and size. A real world Alice, cartoon rabbit, a realistic Queen Of Hearts, yet the King is cartoon-like. And at times in different size perspectives. Uh, oh… Alice is tripping again… “NOW, Where Am I?” It’s another Rexall ad with the White Rabbit, the King, the Cheshire Cat and almost every character in the show.

Now Alice is put in a prison cell with Humpty (Humphrey) Dumpty. (Allan Melvin again.) In this version, Humpty is a criminal in prison. He is dressed in stripes and says. “I’m a bad egg, I’m hard boiled. A regular public enemy.”

Alice longs for “Home.” And Humpty says, “Why don’t you tell us about it?” A cue for a song, if I ever heard one. You could say this song was ALICE’s “Over The Rainbow” In the next few segments, we hear a lot of stock Hanna-Barbera library music. Running music and some Jetsons music- inside the TV again.

Alice is back home and all the characters appear in Alice’s living room to return Fluff, who she’s forgotten, to her. The credits roll with a reprise of “What’s A Nice Kid Like You…”. We close with the groovy, futuristic SCREEN GEMS logo and synthesizer theme.

All in all, pretty light stuff, but very memorable to a 6 year old kid in 1966.

- Mark Hill

copyright © 2005 Mark Hill, all rights reserved

* (The “New” part of the title is NOT actually on the TV print, nor the ads. It must just only appeared on the LP and some print sources.)

Links of related interest:

Toontracker
Toontracke
Wing Nut Toons
Get a CD of the soundtrack here
A GREAT site of Hanna-Barbera Record Covers, with ALICE
Children’ Records for sale, including ALICE
A Radio show that played “What’s A Nice Girl Like you…”
The Scat Man 45 with “Nice Girl” is reviewed here:
"Golly Zonk!" is the much better side, though with a title like that, how can it fail? Here we have Scatman rappin' with us that he's a too-man who can't say no to no wo-man! He says all this over a funky rhythm guitar track that keeps the whole thing groovin' throughout. Yeah, no one can say that Scatman wasn't cool, and this is one wild side.
A GREAT, existing page on the H-B Toon Alice. With great images

(02-05-06) Kevin S. Butler submits this additional information about ALICE IN WONDERLAND: I recall watching the show when it first aired on ABC TV back in the late 1960's. It was a fun and tuneful special. I should point out that the name of Hedda Hopper's character in the show was Hedda Hatter, not Hedda, The Mad Hatter. And Rexall was not the only sponsor of the show. Coca Cola did a series of commcercials with animated versions of the original illustrations from Lewis Carroll's book. The pictures were shown in different poses: e.g. "The White Rabbitt"dressed in fur muckluks and "The Queen Of Hearts" in her shower, pulling back the shower curtains and screaming at the top of her lungs, "Off With His Head!" The characters of Alice, The Mad Hatter, The White Rabbit and Queen Of Hearts spoke (English actors did the voices, which were superimposed on the drawings' lips, ala "Clutch Cargo"). The spot was shown only once on this special and it was never seen again. The last time that I saw this show was at The Museum Of TV & Radio in NYC back in the 1980's, as part of a tribute to William Hanna & Joe Barbera. The screening included the original commcerials from Rexall Drug Stores and "Coca Cola." Rexall doesn't exist anymore, but there was a Rexall's in my old neighborhood in The Bronx, NYC back in the 1950's and 60's. I got one of the "Alice In Wonderland"comic books, which I lost years later. The story is the same, except that the two-headed caterpillar was not drawn as Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.They were done as two vaudevillians, who simply told some corney jokes and danced off into the horizon. Yet the scene ended with Alice asking this strange but funny creature, "Can you tell me if you've seen my dog Fluff?" The caterpillar replied, "Oh, No! We don't usually work with animal acts!"