Charlotte Henry & Ethel Griffies Alice in Wonderland 1933 Original Photograph

Description

ITEM: This is a vintage and original Paramount Pictures production still photograph of 19-year-old actress Charlotte Henry appearing opposite Ethel Griffies in a scene from the 1933 adventure fantasy film "Alice in Wonderland".
Over the years, Lewis Carroll's two children's books,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and
Through the Looking Glass
, have served as the inspiration for numerous moviemakers who have attempted to capture Carroll's bizarre imagination on film. To be expected, the various interpretations vary drastically in tone from Walt Disney's audience-friendly animated version in 1951 to Jan Svankmajer's
Alice
(1988), a dark and disturbing version which is NOT recommended for children. Falling somewhere in between is the 1933 version of
Alice in Wonderland
which alternates between being a whimsical children's film and a nightmarish satire of English royalty with images which wouldn't seem out of place in a Salvador Dali painting.
Photograph measures 10" x 8" on a glossy single weight paper stock.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Charlotte Henry:
Charlotte acted on stage from the age of five. At thirteen, she made her Broadway debut in 'Courage' (1928), two year later reprising her role for the screen version. Paramount wanted to cast an unknown actress in the title role of Alice in Wonderland (1933) and picked Charlotte from 7000 applicants worldwide (she was 57th to audition). Unfortunately, the picture flopped -- despite an excellent supporting cast which featured the likes of W.C. Fields, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Edna May Oliver. Charlotte then appeared as Bo-Peep in March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) with Laurel & Hardy, but, thereafter, finding meatier roles few and far between. She had one final fling with the movies as the perfunctory female lead in Monogram's Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941), opposite the East Side Kids. She seems to have lost heart after that and returned to acting in stock theater. Charlotte eventually left L.A. and relocated to southern California where she had a lengthy tenure as the executive secretary to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Diego.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
More about Ethel Griffies:
The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. She was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in "Havoc" (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1934 (Jane Eyre (1934)) and 1943 (Jane Eyre (1943)) versions of "Jane Eyre" and "Mrs. Bundy", the amateur ornithologist in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Every so often she'd take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England's oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel was a frequent guest on TV's The Merv Griffin Show (1962), never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide