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.
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]
When Cinderella is a young girl, her widowed father marries Lady Tremaine, a widow with two daughters of her own, but dies shortly after. Jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty and determined to forward her own daughters' interests, Lady Tremaine 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 and 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, where she is met by her fairy godmother, who has come to help. She transforms a pumpkin into a carriage; Jaq, Gus, and two other mice into horses; Cinderella's old horse Major into a coachman; and her bloodhound Bruno into a footman. The fairy godmother also bestows 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, although 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. 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, but the birds summon Bruno who scares Lucifer out of the house. 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 uncredited narrator in the prologue.[12] Lucille Williams, Thurl Ravenscroft, Clint McCauley, June Sullivan and Helen Seibert provided uncredited voices for Perla and the other mice. John Woodbury provided uncredited additional voices.
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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18][19] 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.[20]
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.[21] However, by 1945, their preliminary story work was halted.[22] 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.[23] 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."[24]
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),[25] 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".[25]
Following the theatrical release of Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Walt Disney Productions' bank debt declined from $4.2 million to $3 million.[26] 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.[27] Nevertheless, production on Alice resumed so that both animation crews would effectively compete against each other to see which film would finish first.[28]
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).[25] 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.[29]
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.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32]
Around 380 applicants auditioned for the role of Cinderella,[33] until Ilene Woods was cast in March 1948.[34]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.[35] 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.[36]
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".[37]
Walt [Disney] insisted we plan Cinderella more carefully than prior films. We shot it all in live-action first, so that we could evaluate it, because we couldn't afford to make changes in the animation. The animation had to be right the first time. The live-action was done without costumes or set. We'd work on a lonely soundstage to see whether the scenes were going to work. Would they be too long? Too short? Will it hold your interest?
—Frank Thomas on using the live-action reference for Cinderella[38]
Starting in spring 1948, actors were filmed on large soundstages mouthing to a playback of the dialogue soundtrack.[39] Disney had previously used live-action reference on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia (1940), but as part of an effort to keep the production cost down, the footage was used to check the plot, timing, and movement of the characters before animating it.[40] The footage was then edited frame-by-frame onto large Photostat sheets to duplicate, in which the animators found too restrictive as they were not allowed to imagine anything that the live actors did not present since that kind of experimentation might necessitate changes and cost more money. Additionally, the animators were instructed to draw from a certain directorial perspective to avoid difficult shots and angles.[41] Frank Thomas explained, "Anytime you'd think of another way of staging the scene, they'd say: 'We can't get the camera up there'! Well, you could get the animation camera up there! So you had to go with what worked well in live-action."[40]
Walt Disney hired actress Helene Stanley to perform the live-action reference for Cinderella, allowing artists to draw animated frames based on the movements of the actress.[6] She later did the same kind of work for the characters of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).[6] Animators modeled Prince Charming on actor Jeffrey Stone, who also provided some additional voices for the film.[42] Claire Du Brey served as the live-action reference for the Fairy Godmother,[43] although the design for the character was based on Mary Alice O'Connor (the wife of layout artist Ken O'Connor).[44]
By 1950, the animation board, which had been established as early as 1940 to help with the management of the animation department,[45] had settled down to nine supervising animators, including Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, John Lounsbery, and Marc Davis.[46] Although they were still in their thirties, they were jokingly referred by Disney as the "Nine Old Men" after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's denigration of the Supreme Court.[47]
Eric Larson and Marc Davis were both tasked with designing and animating Cinderella.[49] Larson was the first to animate the character whom he envisioned as a "sixteen-year-old with braids and a pug nose".[50] However, Disney grew displeased with this approach and assigned Davis as the second supervising animator,[38] whose designs suggested a "more the exotic dame" with a long swan-like neck.[50] To minimize the differences and set the final design, Disney assigned animator Ken O'Brien who, as Larson said, made "his gals and Marc's gals look like the same gal."[38] Due to the extensive use of the live-action reference for the film, Helene Stanley's physical features also influenced the character's final appearance.[51]
Frank Thomas was assigned as the supervising animator of Lady Tremaine,[52] which he was "astounded" with,[53] since he had previously mainly specialized in more "charming" characters, like Pinocchio or Bambi.[54]
Milt Kahl was the directing animator of the Fairy Godmother, the King, and the Grand Duke.[54] Originally, Disney intended for the Fairy Godmother to be a tall, regal character as he viewed fairies as tall, motherly figures (as seen in the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940)), but Kahl disagreed with this characterization. Following the casting of Verna Felton, Kahl managed to convince Disney of his undignified concept of the Fairy Godmother.[29]
Unlike the human characters, the animal characters were animated without live-action reference.[55] During production, none of Kimball's designs for Lucifer had pleased Disney. After visiting Kimball's steam train at his home, Disney saw his calico cat and remarked, "Hey—there's your model for Lucifer".[56] Reitherman animated the sequence in which Jaq and Gus laboriously drag the key up the flight of stairs to Cinderella.[57]