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The 1947 Broadway adaptation starring Bambi Linn
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 Richard Addinsell
1914 - 1977 |
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THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM
The production wasn't really a musical in the usual sense of the word. There were songs, certainly, but, apart from the opening and closing choruses, they were in context and used Lewis Carroll's lyrics. The music for these and indeed all the incidental music was written by Richard Addinsell (below left), and a fine job he made of it. Angus Cairns' rendition of his "Beautiful Soup" melody is a show-stopper.
RCA Victor released a specially recorded version of the play as a set of six 78 rpm records, packaged very nicely in a very collectible book-style album format. Each 12" 78 rpm record side ran for about five minutes. The production was preserved, to some extent, as a one-hour abridgment and some scenes were not recorded, such as the croquet match which was certainly part of the stage production.
You can hear some extracts from the performance by clicking the "play" buttons below. They were taken from my original 78 rpm discs prior to the newly restored version being made available (see below), so the sound quality is hardly hi-fi. NB: Allow a little time for each selection to load.
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Record album cover art
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THE 1947 "ALICE" REMASTERED
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Alan Bunting has written to say, "You may be interested that I recently restored and re-mastered the RCA Broadway cast recording of Alice In Wonderland from the original 78s for the Richard Addinsell Will Trust. This was as part of his centenary celebrations and the resulting CD is released by Must Close Saturday Records.
The only set of these discs we managed to find in Britain was in rather poor condition so a mint condition set was borrowed from the University Of Syracuse sound archives in New York and transferred to CD by Canadian expert David Lennick. I then used CEDAR and other restoration processes to do the audio restoration and create the complete version on this CD.
I think that you will be very pleasantly surprised at just how good it sounds."
Details may be found at: http://www.must-close-saturday-records.co.uk/erol.html. The CD costs £13.99 plus post and packing and can be shipped anywhere in the world.
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 This remastered recording is well worth getting hold of, it's a rare opportunity to experience an historic performance which has been unavailable for over fifty years. True to his word, Alan Bunting has done a superb job in taking what must have been a very noisy original set of twelve separate record sides and turning them into a coherent, virtually noise-free, presentation.
The oddly named record company, "Must Close Saturday Records" specialise in re-releasing obscure and long-neglected show recordings and the presentation of the "Alice" CD is excellent.
I've only one small gripe in that the original record sleeve artwork wasn't used for the front cover. The record company says that the relatively large sized artwork used on 12" record sleeves doesn't always transfer well to the smaller CD format but I'd much rather have seen Bambi Linn on the cover than that vastly over-used Tenniel illustration.
The back cover of the CD booklet features six uncaptioned cast photographs, and the six internal pages carry information on the 1947 production, it's cast and writers, a feature on Richard Addinsell and a critique of the music.
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Not much else remains of this production. There's an old issue of "Life" magazine (far left) which has an article on the play with some great photos - worth getting hold of.
Some of the original music was published - Richard Addinsell's version of "Turtle Soup" made it to the sheet music shops (left) and copies of it (and the magazine) occasionally surface on Ebay.
The adaptation has been revived a number of times and made it onto TV twice. The best-known of these was the 1982 version starring Kate Burton as Alice and her father Richard Burton playing the White Knight. Bambi Linn was also involved in this production as "movement co-ordinator".
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 Bambi Linn was a well known dancer, performing regularly in Broadway productions. She began her career in Ballet Theater in 1941 and in 1947 danced with the American Repertory Theater, appearing in the original stage production of 'Carousel' as Billy Bigelow's daughter. Perhaps her most prominent role was in the 50's film version of "Oklahoma" as the "dream" Laurey (above and panel
right). She and her dance partner Rod Alexander appeared weekly on TV's "Your Show Of Shows."
She continued her dance career for many years appearing in Broadway productions, television shows and "showcase" night clubs.
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