ABC Press Release for Disneyland TV Show "Alice in Wonderland" Premiere - October 25th, 1954

Now this is the kind of thing that I just love.  In 1954 Walt Disney created the Disneyland TV show to promote the upcoming Disneyland theme park.  The show premiered on October 27, 1954, and featured Walt talking all about the park under construction.  An historic event, the first episode of a weekly Disney television show.  But, the second episode was just as much of an historical event as it featured the very first time a Walt Disney feature film was broadcast on television, and that film was "Alice in Wonderland."

This press release is dated two days before the series premiere and details the second episode featuring Alice.  It is comprised of three separate 'stories' that could be used to promote the show.  I especially love the letterhead featuring Donald behind the television camera.

The "Alice" episode was broadcast on Nov 3, 1954 and was heavily promoted, even the TV guide from that week had an extra large listing for the show!

 

Tele-Views Magazine - Week of March 17th, 1951

In the spring of 1951, the Disney studio was in full swing promoting the upcoming release of Alice in Wonderland.  I've previously posted about the Fred Waring TV show that was almost entirely dedicated to Alice, including a full adaptation complete with live musical accompaniment featuring Kathryn Beaumont and Sterling Holloway.  This issue of Tele-Views features an article on that episode.

Interestingly, the photograph - while not associated with the article - pictures Mindy Carson, who recorded a version of I'm Late and Twas Brillig that I'm particularly fond of.

TV Forecast Magazine - Week of December 30th, 1950

By now most of you faithful readers should be aware of the Christmas Day television broadcast of Walt Disney's One Hour in Wonderland, Disney's very first TV show. This edition of TV Forecast magazine (predating TV Guide by a couple of years), is from the week of Christmas 1950.

Inside is a one-page article with photos from One Hour in Wonderland, featuring Kathryn Beaumont, Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy & Mortimer Snerd, Bobby Driscoll, and the Firehouse Five + Two.

The exceptionally brief article - practically a caption - says that NBC expects there to be more of these kinds of programs.  They were certainly correct!

Article on Disney Commercials

Over the past several years I've posted about Disney Alice commercials in the 1950s, and shown some of the actual commercials and original art.  If you are interested in more information about these fairly bizarre commercials, I highly recommend reading this article by my friend Jim Korkis.

Merry Christmas! One Hour in Wonderland Advertising Poster

This is one of those things I had known existed for a long time, but never thought I'd own.  This is the in-store advertising poster for One Hour in Wonderland, sponsored by Coca Cola.

 This was distributed to Coca Cola retailers in the weeks leading up to Christmas for display, usually on windows judging by the adhesive tabs present on the front of the poster.

I first learned of this poster when my friend Paul over at the Disney History Institute saw one in a shop about 20 years ago.  He took a photo of it for me.   About 5 years ago I managed to acquire two in a lot, this being one of them.  It is about 16x24 and very colorful.  I am also aware of another version of this poster, much larger, 41x59.  I do not have that one, but as the image is exactly the same, I'm not that concerned.  Well, ok, I do want it, being the ultimate completist, but having the small one does alleviate my suffering somewhat.

This poster is quite rare, which is a little surprising to me.  Coca Cola advertising has always been avidly collected, and this being both Coke and Disney, I would have thought lots more would have been saved over the years and made available on the collector market, but such is definitely not the case.  I have only see four of the small posters in the last 22 years, and two of the large - I'm not even sure if the two large posters I saw were not the same poster.  Compared to other 1950s Coca Cola advertising posters, that is ridiculously rare.

Merry Christmas to all my readers, may your holidays be filled with cool Alice stuff!

One Hour in Wonderland Promo Photo

As featured on the cover of the TV Forecast from yesterday's post, here we have the promo photo itself.

The photo features all the guest stars of the show in cutout form, and the snipe on the back lists details of the show.  Again notice the handwritten identification of Walt Disney as a Cartoonist.  Very odd.

TV Forecast - December 23, 1950

Back in the days before TV Guide, local newspapers or regional periodicals produced their own TV schedule magazines.  This is a copy of one such magazine, TV Forecast for the week of December 23, 1950, for the New England region, specifically Boston and Providence.

This is particularly nice in that it sports a cover of Walt with cutout photos of all the guest featured on One Hour in Wonderland, including a tiny head of Kathy at the bottom.

Inside features a quick blurb about OHiW, and a small paragraph featuring a few more details.  I find it interesting that they keep referring to Walt as a cartoonist rather than a film maker.

The listing itself offers a few more details about cast appearing.  By and large, this issue has quite a bit on OHiW, more so than most publications of the day.  See how it compares to another copy of the same magazine, TV Forecast, this time for the Great Lakes region.

The cover is completely different, and there is only a single mention of the show outside the listing itself, which is little more than an ad..

I sometimes wonder what the world was like back then, when someone with the fame and power of Walt Disney was entering the new media world of television, and the majority of the TV news seems to have pretty much ignored it.

TV Magazine - Detroit News Supplement December 20, 1959

From Christmas week 1959 comes this newspaper supplement TV guide-like magazine called TV Magazine (how original).

Inside we get a nice piece of winter-themed Alice art accompanying the blurb on the Christmas night episode of Walt Disney Presents which aired Alice in Wonderland. This was the fourth time the film was on the Walt Disney show, and the second time a Christmas night Disney show featured Alice - the first being One Hour in Wonderland. Notice that the Walrus in this piece of art was later rendered as a pin in a Disney Store advent set somewhere around 2005 or so.

Interesting to see who's in the picture above the Alice blurb. Besides the obvious Lucille Ball is a young up and coming actress name Majel Barrett in the red outfit with white polka dots. She would of course later become famous as Nurse Chapel on the original Star Trek series, and Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: Next Generation.

TV Today March 18th, 1951 - Fred Waring Television Preview

Today is the 58th anniversary of the preview appearance of Alice in Wonderland on the Fred Waring television show March 18th, 1951. Below is a copy of TV Today from the week of March 17th, featuring a blurb on the preview show.

The Fred Waring show was pretty amazing, it devoted the final 30 minutes of their 1 hour broadcast to a fully staged Alice musical vignette, complete with sets designed by Mary Blair! Kathy Beaumont and Sterling Holloway were live and in person acting out their various parts, all to the music from the film as performed by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. That score was later released on Decca records as a two record set with illustrated sleeve (stay tuned for that).

But what was most amazing to me as I again watched this segment today (available in the supplemental material on the most recent DVD)

was the filmed introduction by Walt Disney. My cel makes another guest appearance - almost. The still from my earlier post was actually taken during the filming of this segment, and Walt is frames away from showing my cel on live national television! Stupid editor, would it have killed you to let Walt show all three cel setups he was holding?

Jello Commercial Cels - Alice and Caterpillar

The last of my cels from the Jello ads, first up is the Alice that I got along with the Gryphon. The white headband seems to be a trademark feature of cels from the Jello ads. The effects cel of the water is interesting, and certainly not from the two video clips I have.

Next is another Art Corner setup, this time with Alice and the Caterpillar as a butterfly. This originally had another cel as well, Toughy from Lady and the Tramp (go figure). Again, the two clips I have do not feature the Caterpillar, so there must be more Jello ads out there somewhere.

I do not have a reliable date on the ads. The video collection I have says 1956, but I have no other evidence of that date. The campaign materials I have from the original release do not mention Jello anywhere, in fact one of the larger campaigns for the original release was with a competitor, Royal Desserts.

Gryphon and Mock Turtle - Jello Commercial Cels

This Gryphon cel I acquired a very very long time ago, before I even knew of the existence of the Jello commercials. It came with another Alice cel that had the same heavy black lines, so it seemed like it belonged. I'm very glad I bought it when I did!

This next cel setup of Alice and the Mock Turtle is a Disneyland Art Corner setup as it is on a Sleeping Beauty background print, something that they did a lot of at the Art Corner.

Gryphon and Mock Turtle - Jello Commercial

Ok, so when I said that the Gryphon and Mock Turtle were forgotten characters, that was only partially true. They never appeared on the big screen...but they did appear on the little one. This is a Jello commercial from the same video collection as this post. But unlike the previous one, this one is almost entirely new animation, including the Gryphon and Mock Turtle!



Alice sounds like Kathryn Beaumont, but still need to verify.

Jello Commercial with Cheshire Cat - 1956?

Here is one of two Jello commercials that I have featuring Alice in Wonderland animation. This first one is pretty standard stuff, it re-uses feature film animation exclusively (with some new live action of a little girl with Jello), but re-rendered for TV with thick black lines for the crappy TV pictures in the 1950s. This originally came from a collection of commercials entitled Cartoons Celing Commercials. The jacket of this collection lists the date of these commercials as 1956, but I have no other corroborating evidence to support that date.



Voice over is by Sterling Holloway, which is pretty cool, and Alice's voice sounds like Kathryn Beaumont, but have not confirmed that.

TV Junior - December 1959

What a great idea, a TV Guide-like magazine strictly for kids. Man, I wish I had had a subscription to something like this when I was a kid.

This is the special Christmas issue from 1959, featuring an article on the upcoming episode of Walt Disney Presents on Christmas Day. The feature presentation - Alice in Wonderland.

This would be the second time a Christmas Day Disney TV show was centered around Alice in Wonderland, the other show being the very first Disney TV show One Hour in Wonderland back in 1950 (click here for a great article by Wade Sampson on this groundbreaking TV show). Alice would go on to be presented on the various broadcast network incarnations of the Disney show a total of nine times (that I am aware of) through 1992.

1955 Hudson Commercial

My new toy is finally installed, called VCR2PC it digitizes video tape directly to digital files on disk so you can edit and upload or burn to DVD. Woohoo! I can finally transfer some of my rare video to a more stable medium. First up is this bizarre Hudson commercial for the 1955 model year, so probably actually from 1954. Quality is not that great, but cool to see nonetheless.

TV Today - Week of June 9, 1951

I had originally meant to post this on June 14th - but I forgot. Oh well. This is a TV listing magazine (prior to the existence of TV Guide) for the week of June 9th, 1951. "Why are you posting this?" I hear you ask. Because, in addition to the magazine, newspaper, and radio promotions that were in full swing for the release, Walt Disney was availing himself of the newest mass-market media available to him - television. And that particular week, the Ford Festival had a filmed segment on the upcoming film.