Mary Pickford and Walt Disney planned a combination live action and animated feature, but Paramount beat them in securing the rights to the story on 9 May 1933.
Virtually the entire star stable was thrown into this movie because Paramount was trying to keep from going bankrupt and thought that such a star-laden movie could save the studio. It didn't work since most of the stars couldn't be recognized because of their costumes. Instead, two Mae West movies, Lady Lou (1933) and I'm No Angel (1933) saved the studio from bankruptcy.
Sterling Holloway, who played The Frog in this movie, later went on to be the voice of The Cheshire Cat in the well known Disney adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1951).
Although much of the technical crew of the film is left completely uncredited (standard practice at the time), the opening credits sequence is one of the longest up to that time, lasting almost a full three-and-a-half minutes. Its length is due to the fact that practically every character was played by a major star or character actor of the time, and all are listed, one by one.
The running time, 76 minutes, is the length of the time Alice is through the looking glass: the clock on the mantelpiece starts at 3:40 and she returns at 5:00.