Having been written by a superstar theatrical writing team, the musical moved easily to the stage and began opening in theaters across the US in Since the original had been done live, it had to be redone for the new broadcast. Richard Rodgers served as Executive Producer. First shown in February , this restaged Cinderella was presented on CBS eight more times over the next 9 years.
Cast recordings are available from both performances. Cinderella continues to enchant audiences on the stage as well. As Cinderella questions the meaning of love and romance, her stepmother reminds the girls that going to the ball has nothing to do with finding love, but everything to do with getting a husband by any means necessary "Falling in Love With Love". Her stepmother, Calliope, and Minerva depart for the ball in their garish ballgowns.
Responding to Cinderella's tears, her Fairy Godmother appears and encourages her to start living her dreams "Impossible". She transforms a pumpkin into a gilded coach , rats into footmen, mice into horses, and adorns Cinderella in a gorgeous ballgown, complete with a bejeweled tiara and glass slippers.
She cautions her that magic spells have time limits, and so she must leave the ball before the stroke of midnight. She finally begins to believe "It's Possible". At the ball, Lionel dutifully delivers eligible maidens to Prince Christopher on the dance floor, and Cinderella's stepmother fiendishly schemes behind the scenes on behalf of Calliope and Minerva.
Prince Christopher is unimpressed by Minerva, who breaks out in an itchy rash, and Calliope, who snorts uncontrollably at everything he says. Cinderella appears at the top of the stairs, and Prince Christopher has eyes only for her. King Maximilian and Queen Constantina are intrigued by this mysterious girl. Embarrassed by questions about her background, she escapes to the garden in tears, where her Fairy Godmother magically appears for moral support.
Cinderella flees, leaving behind a single clue on the palace steps: a glass slipper. Cinderella's stepmother, Calliope, and Minerva return home telling exaggerated stories about their glorious adventures with Prince Christopher.
They speak in envious tones of a mysterious "Princess Something-or-other" who, they concede, also captured Prince Christopher's attention. Cinderella "imagines" that her evening at the ball was "A Lovely Night". Her stepmother coldly reminds her that she is common and should stop dreaming about a life she will never have.
In the face of such cruelty, she decides to leave and goes to her room to pack her meager belongings. So the team took no chances. In early March, Julie Andrews recorded six songs from Cinderella for a special disc that was sent to an extensive list of TV news editors and radio disc jockeys.
And finally, on March 19, in the midst of rehearsals, the entire Cinderella company dashed over to the Columbia Record Studios to make an original cast album. Produced by the venerable Goddard Lieberson, the Cinderella album was in stores on April 1, the morning after the broadcast. Three entire performances were filmed and analyzed; the first two, dubbed "New Haven" and "Boston," led to some key changes in costuming, wigs, line readings, and the repositioning of the opening number.
The third filming was a strict record of the hoped-for final product, available to the CBS technicians as back-up if anything went wrong during the live broadcast.
One traditional form of coverage was dismissed by these men with nerves of steel, however: understudies. Finally, it was air date: Sunday, March 31, Starting at 8 PM, Cinderella was broadcast live in Eastern, Central, and Mountain standard time in both monochrome and compatible color; the West Coast received a delayed broadcast starting at 8 PM local time, a videotape format that was transmitted in black and white.
The ratings, based on the "Trendex Survey" in use at the time, were astonishing then, and almost incomprehensible today. According to Variety, the million American viewers for Cinderella , factored into the number of televisions then known to be in existence, indicated that Jon Cypher later recalled heading out of Studio 72 on that cold early spring night, a few minutes alter the broadcast had ended, and finding the streets deserted.
No one was out; everyone had stayed in, huddled around their TV sets. According to the Hollywood Reporter , the audience of million for a single-network event was the largest in U. A few weeks after the broadcast, Hammerstein revealed to Variety that he and Rodgers were planning on expanding Cinderella into a full-fledged Broadway musical.
It never came to pass, though the team stayed with the Cinderella theme for their next and final two works: Mei-Li of Flower Drum Song and Maria of The Sound of Music both make the rags-to-riches journey, and each one finds true love with her personal Prince. Though Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't bring it to Broadway themselves, Cinderella made an easy transition to the stage. With its stage success on track, CBS wanted to bring Cinderella back to television.
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