What this is, is a newspaper supplement from 1950 (nearly a full year before the film's release) called Pictorial Review, dated October 29th, 1950. Pictorial review is one of several newspaper supplements of the time that appeared in (usually) the Sunday paper. These kind of supplements still exist today, but I don't think this particular one does.
Again, very nice art on the sleeve illustrating the story.
I really like the art on these sleeves, wish I knew who did it.
Take a listen!
Check out that cover, our old friend Figaro-as-Dinah makes another appearance.
The storyteller singles came in two speeds, 45 (WY prefix) and 78 (Y prefix). This is the 45, and all the 45s were this cool transparent yellow vinyl (the transparent quality does not show up well in this scan).
The gatefold sleeve opens up to some pretty nice art illustrating the story segments told on this single, Alice meeting the White Rabbit, and entering Wonderland. Love those red-striped stockings!
These singles have some of the original cast from the film recreating their roles, but the dialog is not lifted from the soundtrack, these were all new recordings. Hard to imagine that they would go to the expense to re-record dialog...something I'm sure they would never do now, unless they used alternate cast. Some of the alternate cast on THIS recording is ... interesting. I must say that I find the Doorknob particularly annoying ... but I love the name of the vocal quartet - Three Beaus and a Peep! Quintessentially 1950s!
The 'gold' highlights on this cover are not really gold, or rather they are not an applied metallic highlight. On the US (and Dutch) editions the highlights are actually metallic gold, but here on this Australian edition, they are merely gold colored, they are not metallic but just a golden color, like a goldenrod color, and part of the printed paper cover, not applied. Except for that one very odd difference, the rest of the book is identical to the first printing of the US edition, down to the A100100 on the inside front cover. Published by Golden Press Sydney.
This version is from 1955, and at first glance looks to be an early US edition since the title in Dutch is the same as in English and the cover has the same gold highlights. But, the Dutch apparently really liked the whole 'gold highlighting' motif, because they continued it on every interior page.
It was quite surprising when I first saw this, seeming a bit much, but has acquired a certain charm for me in years since.
To the best of my knowledge this is a first printing coincident with the original release of the film, but as there is no printing information within, I cannot be certain.
The set was put out by Encyclopedia Britannica Films (EBF). It is difficult to find the complete set, and quite frankly I'm not sure there is anyone other than me that would really be interested in it. The book is a rebound Unbreakable Binding edition, complete with funky endpapers. This one happens to be a C printing. Truly uninspiring cover, but the line art of Alice is quite nice.
The back cover has this cool logo for the Goldencraft Edition which shows children entering a what is presumably a school. These editions are difficult to come by as they would have only been distributed to schools or libraries, so only via some sort of library sale would these ever see the light of day ... or perhaps someone 'forgot' to return it ... it has been known to happen.
This is a second printing, or "B" printing. Unbreakable binding editions are about the same size as a standard edition, but the construction of the book makes it look like a very large Little Golden Book, with the hard cardboard covers that are trimmed even with the pages, and the gold foil spine, just like their Little cousins.
The end papers of these editions are wild, with lots of red and yellow flower-like things on a white background. The printing information is a little odd too, it is a single letter, just like a Little Golden Book, and it can be located in one of two areas. The first is on the last page near the gutter at bottom right, just like a Little Golden Book.
The second is just like the standard edition, on the third page, which reprints the endpapers of the standard edition, in the same location, to the left of the baby oysters.
I'm not exactly sure of the dates of this edition, but my guess is that it is much later than the standard edition. This "B" copy here has a Golden Press imprint, and I have a "C" copy that has a gift inscription dated 1964.
So how do you tell? Follow along with me, it is pretty simple. Pictured above is a first print standard edition (there are 4 editions of the Big Golden Book for Alice, although 2 are variations of the other 2). There is an easy way to tell if you have an early printing just at a glance. The first TWO printings have gold highlights on the cover, making it instantly obvious that you have an early printing.
Secondly, the interior pages on early printings have this funky floral border. Also, the stock number (located at the top of the spine) for the first 7 printings was 3 digits (426), and afterwards it was 5 digits (10426). Additionally, the imprint for the early printings is Simon and Schuster, whereas for printings as early as 7th (G) the imprint changes to Golden Press. Early printings also have fully illustrated endpapers, in fact the same art used as the backdrop for the Whitman Stand-Up Figures set (stay tuned for a future post) whereas later printings have plain white endpapers.
And finally, although only useful if you have several various printings side by side, the earlier printings are taller, a fact that remains true throughout the print run: the taller the book, the earlier the printing.
But, the only sure fire way to determine if you have a first printing or not is to look in the lower left hand corner of the inside front cover, and you'll see printed just to the left of the baby oysters the text A100100. The 'A' is the printing (A = first, B = second, etc), and the 100100 is the price in cents twice ($1). The last printing to use the code was the thirteenth printing (M). Beginning with the fourteenth printing, the print information was located at the bottom of the title page and lists printing number and year - e.g. Fourteenth Printing 1968.
The Florida Theater is still in existance today, one of the few remaining movie palaces originally built in the 1920s. If you are interested in the history of that theater, look here.
This mag is chock full of live action reference photos, some of which I've not seen in any other publications, and lots of art taken directly from model sheets too.
If you look closely at some of the photos, especially the large one of Kathryn Beaumont holding the kitten and the one with Walt, you can see some Mary Blair concept art.
The photos of Kathy and Bobby Driscoll in various locations are pretty fun too, since they were probably already recording the voices for Peter Pan at this time. The photo of them outside the Brown Derby is particularly cool.
They changed voices when they re-released the film in 1974, don't know why.
I do really like this watch, with his head spinning as the second hand.
Bill Hayes is probably most famous in the wonderful world of Disney for his recording of the Davy Crockett theme song. After that HUGE smash hit, the dollar signs started rolling, so they figured they'd have him record a bunch of other Disney tunes. This collection features songs from Alice, So Dear to My Heart, Song of the South and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The track they chose from Alice is 'Twas Brillig. Why on earth they would have chosen that track is beyond me, but they did. Take a listen for yourself. Oh, and if you go back to previous posts here and here, you can listen to those tracks too.
Front of house cards are slightly smaller than their American counterparts, they are 8 x 10 inches, the size of a standard American publicity still. The images on these English cards are also completely different from the American lobby cards, for one thing the colors are correct to the film whereas the RKO lobby cards are notorious for their bizarre colors.
The images for the FOH cards are taken directly from publicity stills, in fact you can actually see the negative numbers in some of the cards.
Normally I would spread these out over several days, but I don't really have any clever commentary on most of the images, so you get them all at once.
This is one of the cards where the negative number is quite visible in the lower right corner of the image, A-224.
I made the distinction in the title as 1951 FOH cards, because there are sets of cards from both the 1969 re-release and another later re-release, possibly 1970s or 1980s, I'm not sure which. And yes, there really was a 1969 re-release in the UK, a full 5 years prior to the first re-release in the US.
