So there is an Alice in Wonderland craze right now what with the release of
Tim Burton’s version. I did a quick Wikipedia search and whaddaya know: here have been multiple versions of this film. Not only that, but Disney went toe to toe with Souvaine Selective Pictures, whose Alice project being headed by Lou Bunin. Essentially, each side declared the other was trying to swindle them out of money. Disney went so far as to sue Souvaine and the movie house that was going to show Souvaine’s Alice in the US. He declared, as this time magazine article of the day put it, “Bunin’s ‘inferior’ Alice would deceive the public into going to see the wrong picture, thus spoiling his nice new Alice’s box-office take”. Disney and Bunin continued to squabble over Alice in Tweedledee and Tweedledum fashion as the article notes, but in vain. Both films were shown in theatres in the US in 1951, as noted in this Wikipedia entry. Both films were also resounding failures.

Bounin’s Alice:

Disney’s Alice:

Disney, scrappy as ever, did not take this flop lying down, “Disney saw to it that the fame of its version was kept alive by showing an edited version of it on network television as part of their Disneyland  series and issuing two record albums based on the film. The Disney version eventually reached classic film status and was re-released in the 1980s. The British version, meanwhile,  also was sold to television, but only to local stations, where it was eclipsed by showings of the all-star Paramount 1933 live-action film version of the story, which, incidentally, had also flopped in movie theaters”. So while both films flopped in theatres and then went on to enjoy minor success (or at the very least, to live another day on screen), Disney seems to have won the battle. I had never even heard of this version of Alice in Wonderland until I researched the issue. Then again, Disney’s Alice was widely criticized in England (Bunin’s Alice was released mostly in England and France) so perhaps Northern Europe is more familiar with Bunin’s.

I commented on Gerard’s blog and Danyael’s blog

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