Lewis Carroll (source) ALICE IN WONDERLAND [1933] Film script

Alice in Wonderland. 1933. Film script. [Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, 1933]. Vintage original film script, unbound, 14 x 8 1/2″ (36 x 22 cm), 642, [4] pp. Various extensive tears to half titles, marginal tears to title page and page 1. Mimeograph, printed on rectos only, overall near fine.

Although the film was released under the title Alice in Wonderland, the title page reads: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll / screen play by Joseph L. Mankiewicz / Six Hundred and Forty-Two Illustrations by William Cameron Menzies“. The script is, indeed, a massive visual record of the film’s intricate design by Menzies.

Menzies was one of the foremost film art directors of the twentieth century. His work on such films as Gone with the Wind won him six Academy Award nominations and two actual Oscars.

For this film, Paramount made the decision to adapt both of the Alice books into a single production. Enormous resources were put into the filmmaking process, which included virtually all of the stars at the studio (for example: W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle and Gary Cooper as the White Knight). Mankiewicz and Menzies, in creating this adaptation, also drew heavily from Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus’ then-recent and very successful stage adaptation. It is all live action, except for the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, which was animated by Harman-Ising Studio. The film was seen by Walt Disney, and inspired him to create his company’s 1951 animated adaptation. (Wikipedia)

Menzies is known to have functioned as an uncredited co-director of the film. This screenplay, with its massive visual archive, is virtually unique among all the screenplays of the 1930s which I have ever handled–it is, in fact, the only ’30s script I have ever seen which contains the screenplay as well as the visual design for the film. Given Menzies’ importance as a forward-thinking film innovator, his vision of Lewis Carroll’s work is of special significance.

WorldCat records only two known examples of this script; auction records show only one sale (Sotheby’s London, 2021, where it made GBP 4,788.00, which at the time was equivalent to USD 6,700.00).