Cinderella (1937)
The Cinderella story had existed for nearly 2,000 years, even though the fairy tale by Charles Perrault did not exist until 1697. The classic rags to riches tale was also something personal to Walt himself. He grew up in a relatively poor family on a farm in northern Missouri. He helped his family out monetarily by doing the local newspaper route his father owned. Even in his early 20s, he endured financial hardship through the bankruptcy of his Laugh-O-Gram Company. This was why Walt, by the end of his life, would recall
Cinderella, his very first film, to be the film he was the most fond of and Cinderella herself as his favorite princess. It certainly helped that it was always at the back of his mind since he had produced a Laugh-O-Gram cartoon based on the fairytale in 1922 and was interested in producing another version of
Cinderella by 1933.
Despite being the first animated feature released,
Cinderella was not the first to be greenlit. That honor would go to
Alice in Wonderland as Walt Disney purchased the rights to the Alice books in 1933, beating out Paramount. Originally intended to be a mixture of animation and live-action, Walt realized the story wasn’t working and that he could only do the source material justice in strictly animated form, so it was shelved in 1934. In its place, the fairy tale of
Snow White by the Brothers Grimm was considered alongside the story of
Bambi based on a novel by Felix Salten. With the former, Walt could not find a suitable treatment for it at the time. As for
Bambi, the main issues were animating animals realistically animating animals and the novel itself being too adult for children. They would later be produced by Walt Disney Studios in the 1960s and the 2000s respectively, however. In the meantime, Walt confirmed that the proposed
Cinderella Silly Symphony would become a full-length film at a staff meeting in October 1934.
Of course, this announcement came with much ridicule when it became public. The film industry in Hollywood referred to
Cinderella as Disney’s Folly during production. His brother Roy and his wife Lillian even tried talking Walt out of making this film.
Cinderella’s budget ended up at nearly $1.5 million, more than six times the originally planned budget of $250,000. Disney and his staff spent a good chunk of this budget on animating human characters realistically for the first time. Due to the drastic increase in the budget, Disney eventually mortgaged his house to help finance production. Midway through development, Disney attempted to get another loan from the Bank of America to finish it and only got it after showing a rough demo of the film. While not the first animated feature film,
Cinderella would be one of the first full-length cel animated features ever made.
Cinderella follows a simple story. A young nobleman's wife dies; he then remarries a woman with two daughters (named Wanda and Ginette) about the same age as his daughter, Ella. After his own death, the new step-family cruelly abuses her and forces her to work as a servant, from which they give her the mocking nickname of Cinderella (as she usually slept by the fireplace at night and was covered in cinders). When the King calls for a royal ball, her stepmother, Lady Grimhilde, refuses to let her attend. A fairy godmother notices her plea of despair and grants her an outfit to attend the ball in, but with the caveat that the spell would break at midnight. At the ball, Cinderella wins the Prince's heart (unbeknownst to her at the time), but midnight looms and she loses one of her glass slippers running away from the palace. Now, the Prince must find the girl whom the slipper belongs to.
Cinderella opened at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. After the film’s conclusion, the audience, which included Judy Garland (who would later lend her voice to another Disney film) and Charles Laughton, among other celebrities, gave Disney a wild round of applause. This landed Disney on the cover page of Time Magazine. In January 1938, it premiered at theaters in New York City and Miami before being distributed nationwide on February 4. It earned $4.3 million in box office rentals in North America alone, earning $8 million in rentals by the end of its initial worldwide theatrical run. Critics praised
Cinderella as a work of art unlike anything else before it, more specifically across the board for its voice acting, music, dialogue, animation, and characterization. Eventually, Disney would receive an honorary Academy Award for
Cinderella. "Disney's Folly" would be remembered for years and decades to come.
Voice Cast:
- Adriana Caselotti as Cinderella
- Lucille LaVerne as Lady Grimhilde
- Deanna Durbin as Cinderella’s stepsisters Wanda and Ginette [1]
- Mel Blanc and Eddie Collins as Cinderella’s animal friends
- Harry Stockwell as Prince Charming
- Roy Atwell as the King
- Stuart Buchannan as the Grand Duke
- Moroni Olsen as the Narrator
[1] Deanna Durbin was actually one of over 150 girls who auditioned for
Snow White IOTL. Assuming Adriana Caselotti still gets the lead role here, I can imagine Walt Disney offering her the role of one or both stepsisters.