Cinema: In Wonderland

(See front cover) It took Paramount 56 days to wrap up Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of nonsense and deliver it to U. S. cinema audiences for Christmas. As a prize package for the holidays the picture presented great problems to match great possibilities. To begin with, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass had to be telescoped into one script. A cast of Big Names had to be assembled for publicity purposes and yet a Nobody had to play Alice. Artist John Tenniel’s familiar characters had to be imitated if not exactly copied. And finally the screen production had to stand comparison with Eva Le Gallienne’s excellent stage adaptation for her Civic Repertory Theatre. When Alice in Wonderland was released this week simultaneously in 120 cities throughout the land. Paramount could well feel that it had done its level best to make Christmas bright and merry for millions of youngsters. Who was to play Alice was Paramount’s Problem No. 1. Charles Laughton, not altogether facetiously, suggested that Jean Harlow would make an ideal Carroll heroine. Paramount settled the matter by means of a ‘”contest” in which some 7,000 would-be Alices were considered. After a minimum of hemming and hawing the prize role was given to a pretty round-faced 17-year-old girl from Brooklyn, N. Y. named Charlotte Henry. The direction of the picture was assigned to Norman McLeod (Horsefeathers, If I Had a Million) and real actors were engaged for all parts except those of the Walrus, the Carpenter and the Oysters. Two days after Miss Henry got her contract, the picture started in the Victorian drawing room where Alice is lolling in an embroidered armchair and chatting to her cat about the enchanted room which she is sure exists on the other side of the fireplace mirror. When her governess tiptoes out of the room, Alice climbs up on the mantelpiece, presses her snubnose hard against the looking glass and suddenly finds that she has walked through it. She floats softly to the floor of the other room. There she has a conversation with her Uncle Gilbert (Leon Errol) whose portrait naturally shows only his rear and the patch on the seat of his trousers. She argues politely with the Clock (Colin Kenny). She investigates goings-on among the members of her father’s chess set, who are squealing on the hearthstone because the White Queen’s (Louise Fazenda) pawn has climbed dangerously to a tabletop. Alice straightens out this difficulty and sets off to examine the other rooms of the looking-glass house. A curious wind whisks her down the stairs, through the front door, down the garden path. There she picks up the White Rabbit (Skeets Gallagher) on— his way to the” party. When she has followed the Rabbit down his hole, the first person Alice meets, swimming about in a puddle of the tears which she has wept before eating the cake which reduces her to appropriate Wonderland size, is a Mouse (Raymond Hattonj who dislikes her instantly. Next she encounters the Dodo; the supercilious Caterpillar (Ned Sparks); the Frog-Foot-man (Sterling Holloway); the hideous Duchess (Alison Skipworth) maltreating an infant; the Cheshire Cat (Richard Arlen).

As Alice wanders on, she meets still more Wonderland characters. The Queen of Hearts (May Robson) orders off with her head. The King of Hearts (Alec Fran cis) countermands the order. At the tea-party of the Mad Hatter (Edward E. Horton), Alice is duly depressed when he and the March Hare (Charles Ruggles) try to put the Dormouse (Jackie Searl) into the teapot. The Gryphon (William Austin) introduces her to the Mock Turtle (Gary Grant) who sings for her his gloomy accolade to soup. When preposterous, pot bellied Tweedledee (Roscoe Karns) be gins to recite his poem, Tweedledum (Jack Oakie) opens the door of a small contraption resembling a birdhouse to exhibit Walrus, Carpenter and Oysters capering sadly in a Walt Disney cartoon. She meets the lugubrious White Knight (onetime Cowboy Actor Gary Cooper) who, between falls from his horse to which a stepladder is attached, explains to her about his invention for getting over fences. When Humpty Dumpty (W. C. Fields) falls off his wall, the calm cavalry of the White King (Ford Sterling) arrives to re assemble him. Finally, Alice arrives at a wild dinner party, where the Leg of Mutton (Jack Duffy) sneers at her, the Plum Pudding (George Ovey) objects to being sliced, and where, in a sudden state of nightmare alarm, the White Queen screams “Take care, something’s going to happen!” Alice, squirming in her chair at the table, suddenly finds herself back in the embroidered chair in her own drawing room with her own placid cat purring in her lap. Partly because his gnarled, poetic non sense refreshes a realistic age and partly because it contains the key to a character that would now be a wonderland for any well-informed psychiatrist, Lewis Carroll has become the idol of a cult. What Carroll cultists will think of the cinema version of Alice in Wonderland is even more difficult to predict than the reactions of normal U. S. cinema audiences. One thing in the picture which neither class is likely to object to and which children will probably like best of all is Alice herself. In a script sequence the King of Hearts asks Alice: “What do you know about this business?” If the King were speaking of the cinema business, Charlotte Henry would have been obliged to answer him truthfully: “Not much.” That factprincipally explains the charm of her performance.

Charlotte Virginia Henry was born in Brooklyn, brought up in Manhattan. When she was 9, she decided she wanted to be an actress. At 14, she contrived to get a part in the Manhattan production of Courage. The next year she persuaded her mother, separated from her father who is a surgical supplies agent, to take her to Hollywood. There she finished her schooling at the Professional Children’s School, performed as Mary Jane in Paramount’s Huckleberry Finn. For the next two years, she had few jobs. She was playing in a Pasadena Community theatre production of Growing Pains when another girl in the cast suggested that she apply to Paramount for the role of Alice. Only cynics who believe that nothing in the cinema industry is conducted honestly suppose that the fact that Charlotte Henry had worked for Paramount before was incontrovertible evidence that the result of the contest was prearranged. Says Charlotte Henry: “Once I had a very bad toothache. The dentist said it would have to come out. I had a sinking feeling and I began to hurt all over and I cried. That’s just what happened when they told me I was going to play Alice.”

As soon as she was selected for the part, she began to be badgered by writers for U. S., British, German, French, Italian, South American and Japanese cinemagazines. They discovered that she is five feet tall with blue eyes and flaxen hair worn down her back and tied with a ribbon; that she dislikes spinach, eats ham three times a day by preference; owns a Pekinese dog named Puddles; thinks boys talk too much; admires Rudy Vallee; considers rain lucky; that her diversions are scribbling on blackboards, reading detective stories, swimming, golf; that her nickname is Chotsie; that she has no favorite cinema star; that the first thing she does when she enters a room is to switch on the radio. More significant than such personal trivia is Charlotte Henry’s childish refusal to be impressed by the public curiosity which elicited them. Said she: “It’s the part of Alice, not me, that’s causing all the attention.”

During the two months that Alice in Wonderland was in production, she worked from eight to 16 hours per day with no days off, wore out 12 costumes, got hit by pots and plates in a scene with the violent Duchess, hurt her ankle jumping off the mantlepiece. Started two weeks late, the picture was finished two days ahead of schedule. Charlotte Henry and her mother, who staved away from the lot during the filming lest she be considered officious, were released from studio routine for a 30-day tour of the 20 largest cities where Alice is to be shown. Last week, the Henrys visited Kansas City, Washington, Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, Charlotte was disappointed because she just missed a touring Civic Repertory performance of Alice hi Wonderland. In Washington she lunched with House Speaker and Mrs. Henry T. Rainey.

Among the qualities that make Alice unique as a personage in fiction is the bland and dreamy indifference with which she comports herself in extraordinary circumstances. Though her small histrionic training has helped, what makes Charlotte Henry’s performance as Alice satisfactory is the fact that she possesses much the same quality in everyday life. When she arrived in Hollywood three years ago, she was disappointed. The sea was 27 miles away. Streets which she had expected to see thronged with celebrities resembled the streets of any other city. As she prepared to leave for Atlanta, Charlotte Henry had small time in Manhattan last week to wonder whether the glum prophecy of the White Queen would presently come true. Whether, as she herself hopes, she will presently become a cinemactress celebrated in her own right or whether her career will parallel that of Betty Bronson, who five years ago made a success as Peter Pan and now thankfully plays bit parts, will depend less on Alice than on Charlotte Henry’s subsequent performances. Her next, as planned at present, will be Lovey Mary in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.