Director: Robert Iscove
Genre: Children's Fairy Tale
Premiere: Nov 2, 1997 (US TV)
Produced by BrownHouse Productions / Citadel Entertainment
/ Storyline Entertainment / Walt Disney Television
PLOT SYNOPSIS
Seen on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney, this $12-million
production is the only musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote for television.
The CBS-TV original, with 21-year-old Julie Andrews in the title role
and Edie Adams as the Fairy Godmother, played on live television March
31, 1957 to TV's largest audience ever to that date (107-million viewers).
That historic production, captured on kinescope, can still be seen today
on library monitors at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York
and Los Angeles. Hammerstein died in 1960 and did not get to see 18-year-old
Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella in the February 22, 1965 restaged production,
repeated annually on CBS until 1977 and later made available on videotape
from CBS/Fox Video and Facets Multimedia. Added to the 1965 show was "Loneliness
of Evening", a song actually written for South Pacific but cut before
the Broadway opening.
Running a half-hour longer, this third interpretation premiered November 2,
1997. Filmed over a 28-day period, it stars Brandy Norwood as Cinderella and
Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, with Bernadette Peters as the Stepmother,
Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen (wearing $60 million worth of borrowed Harry Winston
jewelry), Paolo Montalban as the Prince, and Jason Alexander as the Prince's
steward, Lionel. Scripter Robert L. Freedman provided a rewrite of the original
Oscar Hammerstein book, and three other Richard Rodgers songs were added to
the existing score: "There's Music in You" (from the 1953 movie musical
Main Street to Broadway), "The Sweetest Sounds" (a Brandy/Montalban
duet), and "Falling in Love with Love". Originally set in motion
as a follow-up to the highly successful TV Gypsy (1993) with Bette Midler,
this 1997 multicultural version (sometimes referred to as the "rainbow
Cinderella") was years in the making, since it was initiated in 1994 when
Houston joined executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (the team responsible
for the TV Gypsy). — Bhob Stewart
CAST
Whitney Houston - Fairy Godmother
Brandy - Cinderella
Jason Alexander - Lionel, the steward
Whoopi Goldberg - Queen
Bernadette Peters - Stepmother
Veanne Cox
Natalie Desselle
Victor Garber - King
Paolo Montalban - Prince
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Robert Iscove - Director
Mike Moder - Producer
Ralf Bode - Cinematographer
Oscar Hammerstein II - Songwriter
Richard Rodgers - Composer (Music Score)
Debra Martin Chase - Executive Producer
David R. Ginsburg - Executive Producer
Whitney Houston - Executive Producer
Neil Meron - Executive Producer
Craig Zadan - Executive Producer
Bud Alper - Sound/Sound Designer
Rob Marshall - Choreography
Valorie Massalas - Casting
AWARDS
Emmy "Outstanding Art Direction in a Variety, Musical or Comedy Specia"l