Revisiting Cinderella (1997): A Cultural Reset
If your childhood was anything like mine, than you were also eagerly awaiting Brandy’s announcement that her star turn as the titular character in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella would be brought to our tiny screens on Disney+.
Revisiting a childhood favorite is always risky business. Can a movie you loved when you were six ever be as good as it was before your eyes were opened to the cruelties of the world? Often not, dear reader, but I am glad to say that Cinderella is a glowing exception at every level.
First of all, the source material is impeccable. It would take a whole other blog post, nay, a series of blog posts, to explain the importance of Rodgers and Hammerstein to the musical theatre canon, the Great American Songbook, and the music, theatre, and film industries at large, but let it be known that they produced hit after hit, and originally wrote Cinderella for television in 1957. The first made for TV film starred the iconic Julie Andrews, and was brought to TV again in 1965 starring Lesley Ann Warren.
Allow us to take a moment to deviate from the history of Cinderella while I place you in the historical context. The 1930s-1950s are canonically known as the Golden Age of Musicals on both stage and screen, and this is when most of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work was produced. In the early to mid 1960s, movie musicals were still dominating at the box office and achieving critical acclaim, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music in 1965.
However, the decline of the of the musical in American mainstream popular culture was imminent. In 1968, Oliver! became the last musical to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in the 20th century, and Broadway was delving into more experimental territory through out the late 60s and 70s, with hits such as Hair, A Chorus Line, Company, and Sweeney Todd. While there is work in the musical theatre canon to be celebrated from the 80s and 90s as well, it’s impossible to look back on that time and not notice a huge gaping wound left by all those in the community lost to the AIDs crisis.
So the 90s were not a hip happening time for Broadway or movie musicals. ENTER Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, two eagle eyed producers who want to remedy this issue. In 1993, they brought the musical Gypsy, a Broadway staple since it’s original production in 1959, to TV, starring Bette Midler. They aired the program on CBS, and while it was largely a success, CBS kept delaying the start of their next project, Cinderella. With Whitney Houston in tow as another member of the producing team, they took the project to Disney, where they decided to use it to relaunch their anthology series The Wonderful World of Disney on ABC. They updated the script, secured their dream cast, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I honestly don’t even know where to start. You all know the story of Cinderella. Hopefully you’ve all seen this movie. I don’t think I need to explain the cultural significance of the production team’s casting choices. Brandy was the first Black woman to ever play Cinderella on screen. Victor Garber and Whoopi Goldberg play King and Queen and parents to Prince Christopher, played by Filipino-American actor Paolo Montalban. Disney and the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate, controlled by the composers’ children, were fully supportive of their casting decisions. Little girls and boys got to see people look like them amongst all different types of people live out a fairytale. How fucking magical is that?
BUT. Would any of that matter if it wasn’t good? The music is beautiful and performed perfectly by the entire cast, most noticeably by once-in-a-generation voice of Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother and canonical musical theatre queen Bernadette Peters as Cinderella’s abusive stepmother (a role that was appropriately beefed up for this version). The comic cast is rounded out by the always brilliant Jason Alexander as Lionel, a vaguely foreign valet to the royal family, and Veanne Cox and Natalie Desselle as the vapid, vain, and hilarious stepsisters.
The production and costume design is vivid, delightful, colorful, and grand, and clearly harkens back to Old Hollywood artifice in a fun and intentional way. My favorite fun fact from the art department is that the palace set was built on the same sound stage as the yellow brick road from (my favorite movie of all time) The Wizard of Oz, so they painted the courtyard bricks yellow to pay homage to the film. Of course a lot of the design and editing elements are funny and cute and very “this was made for TV in the 1990s” but nostalgia ages them well. When Houston appears to Cinderella out of thin air it looks like a graphic from a 90s computer game and I am here for it.
Now from some quick bullet points about legacy cause my brain is thinking really fast and I need to get it all out of here:
Cinderella paved the way for other successful made for TV musicals, such as 1999’s Annie (also for The Wonderful World of Disney, produced by Zadan and Meron, directed by Rob Marshall, and also starring Victor Garber!). The success of televised musicals led to movie studios taking a chance on the 2002 film adaption of Chicago, also directed by Rob Marshall, which would become the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar since Oliver!. Enter, the movie musical renaissance of the early aughts and 2010s, seen on the small screen with juggernauts High School Musical and Glee and on the big screen with adaptations of Broadway shows like Mamma Mia! and Hairspray and, sometimes, original musicals like La La Land. Thankfully, the musical is alive and well in the 21st century, and we have Cinderella to thank for getting that ball rolling.
In their lifetime and beyond, Rodgers and Hammerstein have had a tremendous impact on the musical theatre canon, but one of their most important ongoing contributions is their openness to adaptation and reinterpretation. Although they are no longer with us, unlike many dead white guys, their legacy is not preserved in amber by their estate, but is rather constantly reinvented. In recent years we’ve seen a queerified Oklahoma! as well as Daniel Fish’s critically acclaimed modernized Broadway revival. Their children’s execution of their own mindset towards inclusivity and progressiveness allowed for Cinderella to be cast the way it was without anyone batting an eye, and you see that legacy in the works of other prominent composers, like Stephen Sondheim, who was mentored personally by Oscar Hammerstein, demonstrating a similar philosophy towards adaptation and modernization in their own work. Now if someone could just get the ghosts of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Samuel Beckett on board…
At the end of the day, without Cinderella it is reasonable to assert that we wouldn’t have gender bent Company, we wouldn’t have racially diverse Regency romance Bridgerton, and we maybe would not have the insane gift that is the 21st century musical theatre renaissance. And it’s a really fucking delightful movie during these terrible times, so go watch it, have a smile on your face for ninety minutes, and then go about your day. You won’t regret it.