Cinderella (1950)

Original theatrical release poster

***Cinderella*** is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault, it is the 12th Disney animated feature film. The film was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wilfred Jackson. Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman wrote the songs, which include "Cinderella", "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes", "Sing Sweet Nightingale", "The Work Song", "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo", and "So This is Love". It features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, Luis van Rooten, Don Barclay, Mike Douglas, William Phipps, and Lucille Bliss.

During the mid to late 1940s, Walt Disney Productions had suffered financially after losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II. During this time, the studio endured box office bombs such as *Pinocchio* (1940), *Fantasia* (1940), and *Bambi* (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video. Due to this, 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. After two years in production, *Cinderella* was released on February 15, 1950. It became the greatest critical and commercial hit for the studio since *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* (1937) and *Dumbo* (1941), and helped reverse the studio's fortunes. It received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Music, Original Song for "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".

Decades later, it was followed by two direct-to-video sequels, *Cinderella II: Dreams Come True* (2002) and *Cinderella III: A Twist in Time* (2007), and a 2015 live-action adaptation directed by Kenneth Branagh. The castle is duplicated at Magic Kingdom park in Disney World and with Sleeping Beauty Castle at the center of Disneyland is the basis for one of the production logos for Walt Disney Pictures. 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".

## Plot

Cinderella is living a dissatisfying life, having lost both parents at a young age, and being forced to work as a scullery maid in her own château. Her stepmother, Lady Tremaine, is cruel to her, and she is jealous of Cinderella's charm and beauty. Additionally her two stepsisters, Drizella and Anastasia, cruelly take advantage of her. In spite of this, Cinderella is a kind and gentle young woman. She is friends with mice and kind to birds that live in and around the château. Meanwhile, at the royal palace, the King is frustrated that his son, the Prince, still is not married. He and the Grand Duke organize a ball in an effort to find a suitable wife for the bored and picky Prince, requesting every eligible maiden attend. Upon receiving notice of the ball, Lady Tremaine agrees to let Cinderella go if she finishes her chores and can find a suitable dress to wear.

Cinderella finds a gown that belonged to her mother and decides to refashion it for the ball, but her step-family impedes this by giving her extra chores. Cinderella's animal friends, including Jaq and Gus, refashion it for her, completing the design with a necklace and sash discarded by Drizella and Anastasia, respectively. When Cinderella comes downstairs wearing the dress, the stepsisters are upset when they realize Cinderella is wearing their accessories and tear the dress to shreds before leaving for the ball with their mother. Heartbroken, Cinderella rushes out into the garden in tears, where her Fairy Godmother appears before her. Insisting that Cinderella go to the ball, the Fairy Godmother magically transforms a pumpkin into a carriage, the mice into horses, Cinderella's horse, Major, into a coachman, and dog, Bruno, into a footman, before turning Cinderella's ruined dress into a shimmering ballgown and her shoes into glass slippers. As Cinderella leaves for the ball, the Fairy Godmother warns her the spell will break at the stroke of midnight.

The Prince rejects every girl at the ball until he sees Cinderella, who agrees to dance with him, unaware of who he is. The two fall in love and go out for a stroll together in the castle gardens. As they are about to kiss, Cinderella hears the clock start to chime midnight and flees. As she leaves the castle, one of her slippers falls off. The palace guards give chase as Cinderella flees in the coach before the spell breaks on the last stroke of midnight. Cinderella, her pets, and the mice hide in a wooded area as the guards pass. The only remaining piece Cinderella has of her costume is the one glass slipper on her foot.

The Grand Duke informs the King that Cinderella, who remains anonymous, has escaped, and that the Prince wishes to marry her. The lost glass slipper is the only piece of evidence. The King issues a royal proclamation ordering every maiden in the kingdom to try on the slipper for size in an effort to find the girl. After this news reaches Cinderella's household, Lady Tremaine overhears Cinderella humming the waltz played at the ball. Realizing that Cinderella is the mysterious girl, Lady Tremaine locks her in her attic bedroom. Later, the Duke arrives at the château, and Jaq and Gus steal the key from Lady Tremaine's dress pocket and take it up to the attic as Anastasia and Drizella unsuccessfully try on the slipper. Lady Tremaine's cat, Lucifer, ambushes the mice, but Bruno chases him out of the house, allowing the mice to free Cinderella. As the Duke is about to leave, Cinderella appears and asks to try on the slipper. Knowing it will fit, Lady Tremaine trips the footman as he brings the Duke the slipper, causing it to shatter on the floor. Much to her horror, and the Grand Duke's profound relief, Cinderella presents the Duke with the other slipper, which fits perfectly. The film ends with a now-married Prince and Cinderella at their wedding, sharing a kiss as they leave.

## Animators

* Marc Davis, Eric Larson, and Les Clark were the supervising animators of Cinderella
* Frank Thomas was the supervising animator of Lady Tremaine
* Milt Kahl was the supervising animator of Fairy Godmother
* Ollie Johnston was the supervising animator of Drizella Tremaine and Anastasia Tremaine
* Ward Kimball, Wolfgang Reitherman, and John Lounsbery were the supervising animators of Jaq and Gus
* Ward Kimball, John Lounsbery, and Norm Ferguson were the supervising animators of Bruno and Lucifer
* Milt Kahl and Norman Ferguson were the supervising animators of The King
* Frank Thomas, Milt Kahl, and Norman Ferguson were the supervising animators of The Grand Duke

## Production

### Story Development

In 1922, Walt Disney produced a Laugh-O-Gram cartoon based on "Cinderella", and he had been 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. However, the story proved to be too complicated to be condensed into a short so it was suggested as a possible animated feature film as early as 1938 starting with a fourteen-page outline written by Al Perkins. 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 imprison 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.

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. However, by 1945, their preliminary story work was halted. During the writing stages of *Song of the South*, Dalton S. Reymond and Maurice Rapf quarreled, and Rapf was reassigned to work on *Cinderella*. 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 it 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."

In spring 1946, Disney held three story meetings, and subsequently received a treatment from Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, and Harry Reeves dated on March 24, 1947. In the treatment, the Prince was introduced earlier in the story reminiscent of *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, 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."

Following the theatrical release of *Fun and Fancy Free*, Walt Disney Productions' bank debt declined from $4.2 million to $3 million. Around this time, Disney acknowledged the need for sound economic policies, but emphasized to the loaners that slashing production would be suicidal. In order 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*, and *Peter Pan*—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. Nevertheless, production on *Alice* resumed so that both animation crews would effectively compete against each other to see which film would finish first.

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*. 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.

By the late 1940s, Disney's involvement during production had shrunken noticeably. As he was occupied with trains and the filming of *Treasure Island*, the directors were left to exercise their own judgment more on details. 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. 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.

### Casting

Mack David and Jerry Livingston had asked Ilene Woods to sing on several demo recordings of the songs. They had previously known her from her eponymous radio show "The Ilene Woods Show" which was broadcast on ABC. The show featured fifteen minutes of music, in which David and Livingston had their music presented. 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 awhile, and he said, 'How would you like to be Cinderella?'," to which she agreed.

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*".

### Animation

#### Live-Action Reference

Starting in spring 1948, actors were filmed on large soundstages mouthing to a playback of the dialogue soundtrack. Disney had previously used live-action reference on *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, *Pinocchio*, and *Fantasia*, 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. 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. 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."

Walt Disney hired actress Helene Stanley to perform the live-action reference for Cinderella, that she before artists began sketching, playing the role of Cinderella in a particular scene, and artists to draw animated frames based on the movements of the actress. She later did the same kind of work for the characters of Princess Aurora in *Sleeping Beauty* and Anita Radcliff in *One Hundred and One Dalmatians*. Animators modeled Prince Charming on actor Jeffrey Stone, who also provided some additional voices for the film. Mary Alice O'Connor served as the live-action reference for the Fairy Godmother.

#### Character Animation

By 1950, the Animation Board—which had been established as early as 1940 to help with the management of the animation department—had settled down to nine supervising animators. Although they were still in their thirties, they were jokingly referred by Walt Disney as the "Nine Old Men" after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's denigration of the Supreme Court. Including Norman Ferguson, the principal animators included Les Clark, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Frank Thomas, and Wolfgang Reitherman.

Larson was the first to animate the title character whom he envisioned as a sixteen-year-old with braids and a pug nose. Marc Davis later animated Cinderella, in which Larson observed as "more the exotic dame" with a long swanlike neck. Because the final character design was not set, assistant animators were responsible for minimizing the differences. When Disney was asked what was his favorite piece of animation, he answered, "I guess it would have to be where Cinderella gets her ballroom gown", which was animated by Davis.

Milt Kahl was the directing animator of the Fairy Godmother, the King, and the Grand Duke. 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*), but Milt Kahl disagreed with this characterization. Following the casting of Verna Felton, Kahl managed to convince Disney on his undignified concept of the Fairy Godmother.

Unlike the human characters, the animal characters were animated without live-action reference. 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". Reitherman animated the sequence in which Jaq and Gus laboriously drag the key up the flight of stairs to Cinderella.

## Music

In 1946, story artist and part-time lyricist Larry Morey joined studio music director Charles Walcott to compose the songs. Cinderella would sing three songs: "Sing a Little, Dream a Little" while overloaded with work, "The Mouse Song" as she dressed the mice, and "The Dress My Mother Wore" as she fantasizes about her mother's old wedding dress. In an effort to recycle an unused fantasy sequence from *Snow White*, the song, "Dancing on a Cloud" was used as Cinderella and the Prince waltz during the ball. After the ball, she would sing "I Lost My Heart at the Ball" and the Prince would sing "The Face That I See in the Night." However, none of their songs were used.

Two years later, Disney turned to Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston to compose the songs. They were the first professional composers to be hired outside the production company. The trio had previously written the song "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba" that Walt heard on the radio and decided would work well with the Fairy Godmother sequence. They finished the songs in March 1949.

Oliver Wallace composed the score, but only after the animation was ready for inking, which was incidentally similar to scoring a live-action film. This was a drastic change from the earlier Disney animated features in which the music and action was carefully synchronized in a process known as mickeymousing.

The film also marked the launching of the Walt Disney Music Company. The soundtrack was also a first in using multi-tracks for vocals. With the song "Sing, Sweet Nightingale", Ilene Woods records a second and third vocal track to enable her to sing harmony with herself.

### Sound Effects

* *Main article: Cinderella (1950)/Sound Effects*