Alice in Wonderland
Although there had already been over a dozen adaptations as silent film, radio and on television, the film animation of Alice in Wonderland from Walt Disney is arguably the most well known of them all.
It was released on the 28th July 1951, and is today considered to be one of Disney's great classics.
It's certainly the movie which I remember the most. Although, I have enjoyed listening to several old time radio adaptations too - in particular the classic tale of Alice in Wonderland from NBC University Theater, starring the lovely Dinah Shore, which includes music, singing and wonderful sound effects.
The tale begins in England, when Queen Victoria was on the throne. There lived a dignified gentleman named Reverend Charles Dodgson MA, who taught mathematics at Oxford, and wrote books with titles like, The Condensation of Determinants.
But the Reverend Dodgson had another name, which perhaps almost everybody has heard at least once...
In the year 1862, near to the University, there lived three little girls, who were the daughters of the Dean of Christchurch.
In the summer, the good Reverend used to take the girls for picnics along the Thames river. After the hard boiled eggs were eaten, and the lemonade was all gone, the girls would leave off picking flowers and chasing butterflies, and gather around their host.
The middle one, whose name was Alice, would say firmly "tell us a story!".
And on the riverbank in the shadow of a haystack all in the golden afternoon this young man would begin to spin a story. Prodded by his best listener, Alice, he went on to spin more tales about another Alice, a young lady who fell down a rabbit hole and emerged in a land as magical and wonderful as any child has dreamed.
Alice begged him to write the story down, and so he did, eventually publishing it in 1865 with the title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. However, as he was afraid the officials at Oxford might raise their eyebrows at a mathematics professor who told stories of rabbits carrying gold watches in their coat pockets, he signed it Lewis Carroll.
Happy listening my friends,
