I don’t know how many 52-year-old guys would do what I did last night. Having just gotten home from the Carthage Obbligato Club Recital (for which I provided some last-minute emergency piano accompaniment) and with my wife gone to a friend’s jewelry party, I had an hour entirely to myself. . . and spent it watching the DVD of the 1965 CBS production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s CInderella. I suppose that part doesn’t sound terribly strange. True, I wasn’t watching something manly like Monday Night Football (is there such a thing anymore – I don’t even know) or Jersey Shore Jerks (or whatever that horrific reality show is called) but I know plenty of men who enjoy a good musical. . . especially one that’s short and sweet, with some great tunes.
The part where I start looking rather strange is when I start hitting the rewind button again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again . . . You get the idea. There are a couple of places in Cinderella that grab hold of me and just won’t let go, and I find myself watching them over and over, like a rat in a maze, nudging that little bar to get another kernel of food out of the dispenser.
But where I start looking not just rather strange but REALLY strange is when I start to cry . . . and not just a stray sniffle or two, but the kind of full-bore crying which most people probably reserve for watching something like Schindler’s List or for when they’re walking their daughter down the aisle for her wedding. I’m talking about the kind of crying that emerges from the deepest inner reaches of your soul, and the kind of crying you couldn’t possibly stifle – and wouldn’t really want to, even if you could.
So why in the world does this quaint little television production from 1965 affect me so powerfully? I think a big part of it is that it pulls me back to my own childhood- and because I have very few photographs from those years in Decorah (either we didn’t take that many, or did a terrible job of keeping them) and almost nothing in terms of toys or clothes or other keepsakes from those years, I think programs like this represent perhaps the single most powerful, tangible means for me to reconnect with my own past. (It would be interesting to see if my siblings feel the same way.) So when I’m watching this in my own living room as a gray-haired college professor, I’m also an 8-year-old kid in Decorah, Iowa.
Beyond that, of course, is this timeless story wed to the irresistible score of Rodgers and Hammerstein, which I count among their finest works. They wrote it for CBS television in 1957 and that live world premiere telecast (starring Julie Andrews) was seen by 107,000,000 people- which was 60% of the American population at the time. By some measure, this is still the most-watched single program in television history, in terms of how many television sets in the country were tuned in to the same show. That first production was impressive, but it was hobbled by a few technical glitches, plus a prince that could barely sing at all – and there was also no technology to properly preserve the telecast for repeat presentations. (In fact, that first telecast was believed to be lost until a few years ago, when a kinescope was discovered and eventually released to the public on DVD.) So it was practically a foregone conclusion that Cinderella should be done again…. and this time, in bright living color. And the cast for the 1965 remake featured all kinds of big names…. Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, Celeste Holm, Pat Carroll, Barbara Ruick, and as Cinderella and her Prince, newcomers Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon.
It’s a good cast – and a colorful production that bedazzled me back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when I watched it as a youngster. In 2012 it’s not nearly as impressive looking (with sets that appear to be made out of cardboard- and cheap cardboard at that!) and the choreography veers between tolerable and dreadful, most of the time. But the performances are genuinely heartfelt, with Lesley Ann Warren achieving exquisite poignancy as Cinderella, with a winning combination of spunk and sadness that both wins and breaks our hearts.
But the other key to this version’s powerful impact is the beautifully crafted script, which is careful to underscore KINDNESS as the virtue which sets Cinderella apart from all of the other maidens vying for the Prince’s hand in marriage. A key scene (which I’ve never seen in any other version of the musical) is at the beginning, when the Prince is seen returning to his kingdom after being away for a year’s worth of travel. He stops by the home of Cinderella’s cruel stepmother and stepsister, who are all gone- and it is left to Cinderella to offer the Prince (whom she does not recognize until he’s riding away) a cup of cool water from their well. That gesture of kindness is recalled at the end of the show, when the Prince is on his quest to find the mysterious woman who visited the ball and left one glass slipper behind- and it is when Cinderella again offers the tired Prince a cup of water that he recognizes her, even through her tattered clothes and coal-smudged complexion- and the fitting of the glass slipper confirms that she is indeed the woman with whom he has fallen madly in love. But the whole business of the cup of water gives kindness a central place in the story, and I love that.
The other central theme of the story – and the musical – is HOPE . . . that amazing things are possible even for people whose lives are utterly dark and destitute. That’s a powerful theme in many fairy tales, but I’m not sure it’s told more beautifully than in Cinderella. There are really two anthems of hope in the musical. One of them Cinderella’s song “in my own little corner” in which she sings about the way that her imagination spirits her away from her unhappy home and makes all kinds of amazing things possible. And of course, the song “Impossible” is sung when the Fairy Godmother appears to literally whisk Cinderella away. But my favorite moment with that particular song is not when it’s actually sung in the show- but rather at the very very end of this particular production, when the Prince is presenting Cinderella to his father and mother, the King and Queen. Right after they have exchanged tender hugs and kisses, the Fairy Godmother reappears in the background just to sing, one last time, “Impossible Things are happening Everyday!” There is something about the way Celeste Holm sings that line so sweetly, with this radiant smile on her face, that just makes me melt – and even when I’ve hit rewind and watched that moment twenty times, I still melt. And I still cry- in part because I’m a child again, and in part because I so want those words to be true, especially for children who so desperately need them to be true.
I’m writing all of this backstage at the Racine Theater Guild during the preview performance of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” – which in many ways is another story about someone whose life of poverty is dramatically transformed . . . not because of luck but because of their kindness and goodness. In the wake of Powerball Fever, which swept our country like an awful flu epidemic, it’s nice to know that there are stories like Cinderella and Willy Wonka (or A Christmas Carol or Annie or any number of others) that are not about lady luck or striking it rich. . . but about kindness, the force which can change our lives and our world more than anything else possibly could.
pictured above: Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella, as she offers a cup of cool water from the well for the Prince.