Cinderella (1950 film)
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, it features supervision by Ben Sharpsteen. The film was directed by Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi. The film features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, and Luis van Rooten.
Cinderella
- William Peet
- Ted Sears
- Homer Brightman
- Kenneth Anderson
- Erdman Penner
- Winston Hibler
- Harry Reeves
- Joe Rinaldi
Donald Halliday
- February 15, 1950 (Boston)
- March 4, 1950 (United States)
74 minutes
United States
English
$2.2 million[1]
$182 million[2]
During the early 1940s, Walt Disney Productions had suffered financially after losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II. Because of this, the studio endured commercial failures such as Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940) and Bambi (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video. By 1947, the studio was over $4 million in debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Walt Disney and his animators returned to feature film production in 1948 after producing a string of package films with the idea of adapting Charles Perrault's Cendrillon into an animated film.[3]
Cinderella was released to theatres on February 15, 1950. It received critical acclaim and was a box office success, making it Disney's biggest hit since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and helping reverse the studio's fortunes.[3] It also received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, Best Sound Recording, and Best Original Song for "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".
The film was followed by two direct-to-video sequels, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007), and a live-action remake in 2015. In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4]
Plot[edit]
When Cinderella is a young girl, her widowed father marries Lady Tremaine, a widow with two daughters of her own, but dies shortly thereafter. Lady Tremaine, jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty and determined to forward her own daughters' interests, orders Cinderella to become a scullion in her own château, overburdening her with chores. Cinderella's stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella, also take advantage of her meekness, mocking her and adding to her workload. Despite this, Cinderella remains kind of heart, obediently doing her chores whilst taking care of the mice and birds that live in the château, making friends of them, mainly of two mice named Jaq and Gus. She also protects them from being eaten by her stepmother's cat Lucifer, who makes her duties even harder in retaliation.
One day, the local King becomes impatient for his son, the Prince, to provide him with grandchildren. Despite the objections of the Grand Duke, the King invites all the eligible maidens in the kingdom to a royal ball, so that the Prince will choose one as his wife. Wanting to attend, Cinderella finds a dress of her late birth mother's to fix up. Fearing she will upstage them at the ball, Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters deliberately keep her busy with no time to spare. Jaq, Gus, and the other animals decide to fix up the dress for Cinderella, using beads and a sash discarded by the stepsisters. However, when Cinderella attempts to go to the ball with her family, the stepsisters recognize their belongings and angrily tear the dress apart, before leaving Cinderella behind.
A distraught Cinderella runs out to the garden in tears, kneeling on a stone bench. There, she is met by her fairy godmother, who has come to help. She transforms Jaq, Gus, and two other mice into four white horses, an orange pumpkin into a white carriage, Cinderella's old gray horse Major into a coachman, and her bloodhound Bruno into a footman. The fairy godmother also gives Cinderella a shimmering ball gown and glass slippers, but warns her that all the magic will end on the stroke of midnight.
Cinderella arrives at the ball, and is not recognized by the stepsisters, though Lady Tremaine believes something is familiar about her. The Prince is instantly smitten, so the King orders the Grand Duke to make sure the romance goes without a hitch. The Duke prevents anyone from interfering as Cinderella and the Prince dance a waltz and wander out to the palace grounds, falling deeper in love. However, when Cinderella hears the clock tolling midnight, she runs away before she and the Prince can exchange names. Despite the efforts of the Grand Duke, Cinderella flees the palace, losing one of her slippers on the staircase. The palace guards pursue, but when the magic ends on the stroke of 12, Cinderella and the animals revert to their former appearances and hide in the woods. Cinderella discovers the other glass slipper is still on her foot, and takes it home with her.
The Prince promises he will marry none but the girl who fits the glass slipper. Elated, the King orders the Grand Duke to try the shoe on every girl in the kingdom until he finds a match. When the news reaches the chateau, Cinderella is shocked to realize it was the Prince she met. Hearing Cinderella humming the waltz from the ball, Lady Tremaine realizes the truth and locks Cinderella in her attic bedroom. While the stepsisters unsuccessfully try on the slipper, Jaq and Gus steal the key back from Lady Tremaine. As they take the key to Cinderella, Lucifer attempts to stop them by trapping Gus and battling the other mice. The birds summon Bruno who scares Lucifer out of the house, and a freed Cinderella hurries to meet the Grand Duke.
In a last effort to prevent Cinderella from overshadowing her daughters, Lady Tremaine causes a page to trip and break the glass slipper. Cinderella reveals she has the other slipper, which the Grand Duke places on her foot, much to Lady Tremaine's shock. Cinderella and the Prince are married, and share a kiss as they set off in a carriage for their honeymoon.
Betty Lou Gerson was the narrator.[12] Lucille Williams, Thurl Ravenscroft, Clint McCauley, June Sullivan and Helen Seibert provided voices for Perla and the other mice. John Woodbury provided additional voices.
Production[edit]
Story development[edit]
Walt Disney first adapted Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale "Cinderella" as part of his cartoon shorts series for the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in 1922.[15] He was interested in producing a second version in December 1933 as a Silly Symphony short; Burt Gillett was attached as the director while Frank Churchill was assigned as the composer. A story outline included "white mice and birds" as Cinderella's playmates. To expand the story, storyboard artists suggested visual gags, some of which ended up in the final film.[16] However, by early 1938, the story proved to be too complicated to be condensed into a short so it was suggested as a potential animated feature film, starting with a fourteen-page outline written by Al Perkins.[17][18] Two years later, a second treatment was written by Dana Cofy and Bianca Majolie, in which Cinderella's stepmother was named Florimel de la Pochel; her stepsisters as Wanda and Javotte; her pet mouse Dusty and pet turtle Clarissa; the stepsisters' cat Bon Bob; the Prince's aide Spink, and the stepsisters' dancing instructor Monsieur Carnewal. This version stuck closely to the original fairy tale until Cinderella arrives home late from the second ball. Her stepfamily then imprisons Cinderella in a dungeon cellar. When Spink and his troops arrive at the la Pochel residence, Dusty takes the slipper and leads them to free Cinderella.[19]
By September 1943, Disney had assigned Dick Huemer and Joe Grant to begin work on Cinderella as story supervisors and given a preliminary budget of $1 million.[20] However, by 1945, their preliminary story work was halted.[21] During the writing stages of Song of the South (1946), Dalton S. Reymond and Maurice Rapf quarreled, and Rapf was reassigned to work on Cinderella.[22] In his version, Cinderella was written to be a less passive character than Snow White, and more rebellious against her stepfamily. Rapf explained, "My thinking was you can't have somebody who comes in and changes everything for you. You can't be delivered on a platter. You've got to earn it. So in my version, the Fairy Godmother said, 'It's okay till midnight but from then on it's up to you.' I made her earn it, and what she had to do to achieve it was to rebel against her stepmother and stepsisters, to stop being a slave in her own home. So I had a scene where they're ordering her around and she throws the stuff back at them. She revolts, so they lock her up in the attic. I don't think anyone took (my idea) very seriously."[23]
In spring 1946, Disney held three story meetings, and subsequently received treatment from Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, and Harry Reeves dated March 24, 1947. In the treatment, the Prince was introduced earlier in the story reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937),[24] and there was a hint of the cat-and-mouse conflict. By May 1947, the first rough phase of storyboarding was in the process, and an inventory report that same month suggested a different approach with the story "largely through the animals in the barnyard and their observations of Cinderella's day-to-day activities".[24]
Following the theatrical release of Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Walt Disney Productions' bank debt declined from $4.2 million to $3 million.[25] Around this time, Disney acknowledged the need for sound economic policies but emphasized to the loaners that slashing production would be suicidal. To restore the studio to full financial health, he expressed his desire to return to producing full-length animated films. By then, three animated projects—Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953)—were in development. Disney felt the characters in Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan were too cold, while Cinderella contained elements similar to Snow White, and greenlit the project. Selecting his top-tier animation talent, Ben Sharpsteen was assigned as supervising producer while Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, and Clyde Geronimi became the sequence directors.[26] Nevertheless, production on Alice resumed so that both animation crews would effectively compete against each other to see which film would finish first.[27]
By early 1948, Cinderella had progressed further than Alice in Wonderland, and was fast-tracked to become the first full-length animated film since Bambi (1942).[24] During a story meeting on January 15, 1948, the cat-and-mouse sequences began to grow into an important element in the film so much that Disney placed veteran story artist Bill Peet in charge of the cat-and-mouse segments.[28]
By the late 1940s, Disney's involvement during production had shrunken noticeably. As he was occupied with trains and the filming of Treasure Island (1950), the directors were left to exercise their own judgment more on details.[29] Although Disney no longer held daily story meetings, the three directors still communicated with him by mailing him memoranda, scripts, Photostats of storyboards, and acetates of soundtrack recordings while he was in England for two and a half months during the summer of 1949. When Disney did not respond, work resumed and then had to be undone when he did.[30] In one instance, when Disney returned to the studio on August 29, he reviewed Luske's animation sequences and ordered numerous minor changes, as well as a significant reworking of the film's climax. Production was finished by October 13, 1949.[31]
Casting[edit]
Around 380 applicants auditioned for the role of Cinderella,[32] until Ilene Woods was cast in March 1948.[33]
Mack David and Jerry Livingston had asked Woods to sing on several demo recordings of the songs. They had previously known her from her eponymous radio show, which was broadcast on ABC. The show featured fifteen minutes of music, in which David and Livingston had their music presented.[34] Two days later, Woods received a telephone call from Disney, with whom she immediately scheduled an interview. Woods recalled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "We met and talked for a while, and he said, 'How would you like to be Cinderella?'," to which she agreed.[35]
For the role of Lucifer, a studio representative asked June Foray if she could provide the voice of a cat. "Well, I could do anything," recalled Foray, "So he hired me as Lucifer the cat in Cinderella".[36]
Cinderella
February 4, 1997
