From Rags To Riches: The Making of Cinderella (Full Documentary)

[Music] cinderello goes back a long ways at the studio their scripts going back to the 1930s when they finally decided to do Cinderella in 1948 it was at a time when they weren't really sure what was going to happen to the studio financially the word believing is all the way through this movie and usually if Walt believes hard enough it worked for him I think that he was rolling the dice and praying I think he did a lot of that it was very typical of Walt to go out on a limb and take a risk and in some ways you know this was the biggest risk he took [Music] [Applause] [Music] Walt had not had a big financial success in snow white snow white that was it by the end of the second world war he was four million dollars in debt if Cinderella had lost money I think that would have been the end of Disney Animation or at least the end of Disney Feature animation because although Snow White had been such a huge hit Pinocchio and Fantasia had both lost money first time out it's true the the studio went through very hard times particularly during the war years in fact they were kept afloat by training films for the United States government and the South American films that they made for the good neighbor policy of Roosevelt so Walt and Roy decided that the way they could save the company would be through diversification so they started to do live-action films they started to put together short cartoons into a feature format that's why you see films like make my music and melody time [Music] and they did okay but there weren't really big hits and they didn't really establish Disney storytelling as he had done they made back their costs anyway but you can't keep him business very long it was a question of survival and let's let's make a feature or let's sell the business wall Ramon do we need a story with a girl in trouble that usually works in Snow White says worked [Music] everybody loves a story of an underdog we love a story where you are rooting for this girl to to rise up above the oppression well believe it or not I said I think that Walt identified with that Walt was from a humble background he had big dreams big hopes but he had nothing to start with except his imagination and with his imagination he built an empire he built a world Walt has had a pretty tough childhood he worked on a farm he delivered newspapers when it was 25 degrees below and yet he believed in the Hollywood dream the American dream he felt that he had achieved that dream himself and he somehow had this power to give it to people and here in capsule with this one little poor pathetic little girl who's been put upon and she has nothing some wonderful things happened to her I think part of the reason Walt Disney had to have been attracted to Cinderella does I mean the reason that I'm attracted to Cinderella is because it's not I'm a Cinderella story I started off as a poor kid and Here I am Walt started off as a poor kid and he became Walt Disney I think at the heart of all of the classic Disney films his transformation that's what we're animating we're animating those moments for Pinocchio to become a real boy for Cinderella to imagine herself as chosen by the prince and dressed in this beautiful gown the transformation scene of Cinderella and rags into Cinderella and that beautiful ball gown Walt Disney said was his favorite piece of animation I must say I've always felt very good about I don't think it's the best piece of animation ever done but it was something that hit the heart in the struggle which of course comes from a man who loved the idea of transformation in life into something better bigger grander more beautiful we all have dreams like that I think that's one major reason this story has been told for nine hundred years there's 90,000 variations of the Cinderella story and Walt Disney knew the power of it it has all the great elements every girl wants to meet a prince every Prince wants to meet a beautiful girl it's a story that everybody knows but Walt took that story and made so much more of it one he took the basic story and created these wonderful scenes that make that story so much more effective and cinematic I mean take for example the scene where the two ugly sisters tear the ballgown of Cinderella I mean that is quite a dramatic scene that's a very very effective way of getting that story over but he then set up this parallel story with the animals Walt and his crew came up with his wonderful subplot the mice and the cat and the only thing holding these two stories together is Cinderella herself but well set them up in this marvelous counterpoint [Music] it's one of those classic films that you can hang entertainment on because the story is so bare-bones in a way you know it's good and evil and it's you know triumphing you know at the end but on that framework they're able to hang so many wonderful entertaining bits and bring out such interesting personalities all those wonderful things that happened that shoe breaking his this is the Disney version it's a very very good story very very well told and for three generations of Americans a Cinderella story means Walt Disney's telling of the story because it's told so well that's a novella flopped there wouldn't be any Walt Disney Animation afterwards and luckily was a huge hit it was it almost its own story from rags to riches [Music] they met Walt Disney just a year after he made Cinderella and he invited me to come to his studio and one by one I met all of these what they call the nine old men the nine old men waltz toward a forest group of artists all work together on Cinderella these were men at the top of a game they were the people who really saved Disney animation after World War Two there had been some wonderful animators before them who had contributed a tremendous amount to the creation of the Disney animation style but they were the key figures in keeping the Disney animation style going firm 1945 really up into the 60s they were so excited with the glory of what they had wrought and they told all these stories about making of Cinderella well Disney really knew what the strong sites were in the animators and he cast them accordingly the casting on Cinderella was really perfect Erik Larsen and Mark Davis were equally skilled as draftsman and they were assigned the difficult task of animating Cinderella there are certain scenes in the film that when I think of the scene I think of the person who animated them when Cinderella wakes up in the morning it's so much like Erik Erik was our mentor when we started at Disney and he was a grandfatherly guy with a nice portly belly and who talked like this and um just always sincere and very genuine and heartfelt and when you see that scene you you just feel everything is right in the world and I feel like I felt back at Disney in the room next to Erik Larson when I'd go in and work with him I remember Erik Larson talking about fact that he and Mark Davis they didn't quite see eye to eye in terms of Cinderella Marc Davis apparently gave her a more sophisticated quality whereas Erik Larson went for a simpler character and they had to somehow reconcile the two sides of the character but I think that's what makes her interesting too that she does have this down-home to her but there's also a certain intelligence and sharpness about her maybe I should interrupt you okay I think it has something to do with Mark Davis's approach to the character this is sort of a doodle sheet that Mark Davis did during the making of Cinderella and you can see this is probably early on where he's analyzing her face no-call who was the top draftsman at the studio was always stuck with the princess very difficult to do these straight masculine characters without making them look silly milk car also had scenes with the Duke and the King no call did these drawings of the King milk was always a master at hands always so correct and very very expressive milk did the fairy godmother that scene with a fairy godmother is unforgettable good child you can't go in there the fairy godmother has surprising warmth there's this grandmotherly type you know there's a lot of softness there's a lot of nice feeling to that character [Music] everyone's talking about Frank Thomas did the villain in Cinderella the most hated villain of all the Disney Villains Frank Thomas have done Bambi he'd done the Seven Dwarfs he did Pinocchio all these wonderful charming characters and he said I was amazed when Walt put me on to Lady Tremaine but he said he must have seen something in my way of thinking that would work for this character Frank Thomas was anything but a wicked stepmother but there was something were always going on in his head you'd go into his office and he would be searching for ways to communicate to you what what he was trying to put into the scene there was always some depth to the character he was trying to get well don't just stand there I think the Frank way he did the stepmother was absolutely the right way to do it he worried some about it being too straight but I think she had to be the way she was because I think she's very frightening when she looks at you Ollie Johnston Frank's best friend forever and ever and his partner and collaborator in so many films Holly did the wicked stepsisters who were so slovenly so lazy so ugly so unappealing that by contrast Cinderella would look lovelier and lovelier Holly Johnson didn't feel he was the best draftsman like say milk colwiz or mark and he couldn't analyze the scenes as much as as say Frank did but Ollie was very emotional he just really worked from his heart you realize what you just said of course I said in stepsisters were the broadest characters that I had done up to that point certainly a lot of scenes where I even went too broad I remember one where Anastasia she was smiling you know like a silly smile so I went real broad without thinking I'm gonna get something really funny out of this but fine he won't call me in he says you know she's a little bit ugly suppose you could fix it Wolfgang Rider man born in Germany came over here is a little kid what Walt liked about him was his attitude wooly was a great suspense guy and he thought a great idea for a scene is get that key up to Cinderella food that dizzying stairs set up that they had laid out I think that's one of the best sequence of suspense we've ever had in a picture and it keeps building and building because we should cut him back and forth now the cat comes in the way he's trying to stop them it is it's like a Hitchcock film it's unbelievable reward gimble probably had the most fun of anybody on Cinderella he got the cat Lucifer that was perfect casting because he could have never cast what came along Cinderella he would have fallen apart he would not not have enjoyed himself I didn't have to work making those very careful drawings of Cinderella and some of the other animators had to work on and it was pure comedy the old cat Mouse relationship my problem was to develop a cat that looked mean he had some funny stories about looking for a cat to be a personality like Lucifer because I had mean cats and they had slinky cats and they had all different kind of catch the draw and the story sketches Walt came out to the house here one day and our six toed cat we called feets he was rubbing up against walls leg and he said for gosh sakes Kimble there's your cat what are you worried about and that's what led to my conception of the cat at the time he and I were playing in our Dixieland band the firehouse 5+2 and they'd always introduced Ward is the one who had done the mice in the Cinderella everyone go then saying Frank there did the stepmother we gotta get another picture here were hurt I can't take any more what Kimbo got to do what he's best at I'm not staying within the forms of realism but breaking out of that this great quality of going from real to unreal that's always in Kimber's work he was a fantastic unique animator you can look at his stuff on the screen and know it's Ward Kimball Ward's masterpiece of all his work he's done a Disney probably is the sequence where the cat is confused by which cup is hiding one of the mice that is such a crazy but spontaneous sequence it's as good as anything Chaplin has ever done there are these two animation styles almost going on in the movie when you have something like the cat and the mice and then you have Cinderella and the stepmother who are very real and have all these subtleties it's very difficult to animate human figures and to mix them with animals it's just difficult and Cinderella really succeeds well in that area you know you only got that by men who had grown from doing Snow White through Pinocchio through Bambi Fantasia and finally were able to do a Cinderella the financial condition of the studio was such that they couldn't pour the lavishness into the production that they had on Fantasia or Pinocchio so what they did was they shot the entire film in live-action and they used this as a guide to do layouts of the film for the cutting for the way the action would flow into one another it shoot live-action and they blow it up to animation size paper and then they put a sheet of animation paper on and do all right over it some of the animators kind of you know barked at that a little bit these like you know I can do this I don't need it it's a live action what's good well I use it if it wasn't I didn't use it and then I used the best parts of it and I thought I'd use it to help me enhance something you know but I still didn't like to use it it is arguable that this is a less creative way of doing things but the Disney artists were not the sort of artists who would just mindlessly trace over the live-action they knew it had to be filtered through an artists mind and they had opinions on things how something should move and when it wasn't moving right in the live-action they would change it you know and that's why it turned out so good because they had a very critical eye if you look at some of the photographs that were taken and then the photo stats that were made of it and then you look at the final animation you can see that there's an enhancement but the animate is brought to it the animators knew that you have to go further in animation than you do in live-action otherwise it's going to look stilted look at Frank Thomas's evil stepmother there's a look about her that reminds you of actress Eleanor Audley but he certainly goes further and her poses and in the way that she gestures in the way that she puts her points across on screen and one more thing see that Lucifer gets his bad word Campbell had the luckiest rule because the rest of us were sweating under all these restrictions of the live action of each shot they didn't shoot live-action for him and he wouldn't have followed it in the first place I was always looking forward to the next scene because it was fun it took us around two years to do it with all the experimental work in story and shooting the live action of that but once we started animating it it went quite fast and I probably did the whole thing in six months we all knew that it was good picture because you could see it from the time we were shooting a live-action on it if Walt had been rioting his vision of what the audience wanted well we had been business and he was right they just loved the picture [Applause] [Music] do you think it will do as usual the voice actors bring so much feeling animated character and the voices are so important well serves you right spoiling people's best dreams I didn't know Disney was casting for the voice of Cinderella I found out indirectly by doing a favor for two friends who wrote the music Eileen woods supposedly got involved with the Cinderella Project because Mack David and Jerry Livingston had known her from working in New York and she was then in Hollywood they came to me to record their songs to present to mr. Disney but I didn't know that I would even be considered until of course mr. Disney heard the recordings and that's when the excitement started that's when all the butterflies started batting around inside of my stomach when I was called to see mr. Disney and when Walt heard her sing he said I want her to be the voice of Cinderella yeah that's a that's a rare situation where the the demo person actually gets the part because he was the demo just to show others you know what they're looking for and she got the part the thing I like about Eileen's voice is it's a fairy tale voice she almost whispers now Chuck now Jaq what's all the fuss about no other Disney characters talks like this it's just wonderful I know Walt he'd been listening to a lot of girls and he heard something in the voice that sounded to him like Cinderella [Music] I got a call from my then agent he said they were looking for a voice for Prince Charming's married and my twins were about 14 months old and I remember how badly I needed that money and had no idea how important that would be oh my god what's the matter yes they auditioned me for the speaking role and I was all excited about that and the man said were you from and I said Chicago and he said I'm sorry we can't use you in that speaking role and if you heard me today he'd say the same thing and Verna Felton voice of the fairy godmother had a voice that was so warm hurry because even miracles take a look at just the perfect grandmother the perfect fairy godmother you know so much affection toward Cinderella it's the way she comforts to never lay there in the garden you can't go to the ball looking like that she starts out at Disney as the voice of one of those unpleasant elephants in Dumbo pretend you don't see him and you don't like her but that was Verna Felton the character actress the heart of Brno Felton is in the fairy godmother on the stroke of twelve the spell will be broken she died on December 15 1966 the same day that Walt died and she was a favorite of mine who loved the quality of her voice my job well I always felt it was interesting that Betty Lou Gerson who did the voice of Cruella De Vil so harsh and raspbian and domineering everything she was a narrator who opened the story with this sweet smooth voice here in a stately Chateau they lived a widowed gentleman his little daughter Cinderella and I was amazed when I found out that she had done that and as far as I know that was the first picture she worked on for the studio yeah Frank Thomas's lady tremaine the evil stepmother there's a look about her that reminds you of the voice actress Eleanor Audley who did the voice track my Cinderella you're not ready child I'm not going not going the whole studio just loved Eleanor Audley I think they knew that they couldn't have found anybody better she had Authority there's a command in her voice don't think Oh sarcasm there are so many qualities that are in that voice and then of course Frank's animation with that it is it is powerful and I never go back on my word it's Eleanor Audley and me because we worked and talked about these and we worked on how to do it I liked her she's first lying in bed petting Lucifer and her cat and I'm telling Cinderella so do you have idle time on your hands time for vicious practical jokes there's the large carpet in the main clean it jump every time you hurl around and stuff nicer it's real strong but I just scrub the terrace sweep the halls and the stairs clean the chimneys and of course there's the mending and the sewing and the laundry oh yes and one more thing and don't forget to give Lucifer his bath yeah her voice had such color in it and whenever you captured that in the drawings that gave you a very sounds fine feeling Cinderella Cinderella she was raucous she was a Brooklynese little brat it was fun she was a very alive I might say she was not a passive girl she was office in mother mother I really loved part I remember that the voice is on the stepsisters were broad enough to give you inspiration to try to do more than your inner Leawood it was amazing to be selected for a Disney show and this was my first movie it was the biggest thrill of my life I tend to truthfully I'm still thrilled about I tell you you can't believe the reaction that people you know even having done a television show for some twenty years that was seen all over the country and people say did you do the voice of Prince Charming yeah yes aren't you thrilled our church yes of course I have no Cinderella I think was one of my favorite stories and I think my having gotten the part was a Cinderella story in itself because it's being part of a legend it really is and there's nothing quite like that Walt Disney wanted to do something that had the feel of a Snow White but knew different or more magical the music in Cinderella is really key to the way the story is told in the film in keeping with Disney wanting to have an integrated piece of entertainment the plot doesn't stop just for a song it actually you know is integrated into the story itself Walt Disney was very serious about how he used music just as serious as he was with the animation that he and his team created so we look at Steamboat Willie the first popular cartoon with synchronized sound and we see that music is really the main part of the film Mickey whistles from the very beginning there's a musical performance that takes up more than half the cartoon the very next thing that Disney does after several successful Mickey Mouse cartoons as he creates the Silly Symphonies which is a series of cartoons based around musical performances and occasionally some of those songs would turn out and become hit but it was always kind of a an accident because the songwriter wrote songs for the picture period wait a minute get the idea first the theme is pigs they're all they were thinking about it's telling the story perfectly and a song usually word but nobody expected who's afraid of the big bad wolf to become a hit but it did [Music] and many of the songs in snow-white became commercial hits it was freaky whistle while you work and all that Pinocchio of course had a hit song with when you wish upon a star I mean they had all these wonderful songs that became hit songs but they were not written for the market they were written for the picture and Walt Disney realized that with Cinderella the whole studio depended on him he didn't want to take a chance that maybe the public will go for this he wanted pure songwriters who were wrote for the commercial market and so he realized Tin Pan Alley the guys that write the hit songs timpani refers to the popular music publishing business in the United States timpani really got started in the late 19th century many many composers were part of a publishing industry Tin Pan Alley was centered in downtown New York it literally refers to 28th Street where numerous publishers had their offices my dad was a songwriter and he was one of the Pan Alley eyes you know he was there along with it was like a big fraternity of writers and they all conglomerated around well at the time when my father was writing there was a thing called a Brill Building and so all the songwriters would gather there and play their songs for the various publishers you say yes or no no we got too many ballads I don't need a ballad I need a novelty something about June or moon or something it was a whole different world then and they would beat you on the street they knew who I was and and they'd say you got time I want you to hear a song and I would want to do almost every song I heard they were so good but you had to come up with a wrinkle the special thing to make it a successful song and it was it was quite a remarkable world the three Tin Pan Alley songwriters that ended up working on Cinderella were al Hoffmann Mack David and Jerry Livingston all had extensive experience working in the publishing industry Walt heard this novelty song though I remember very well from junior high it was very catchy it was called Shabab at Joe Bob a chihuahua a a silly little funny thing was a gigantic hit that caught his ear and he thought that's the way I want to go with the musical score so he wanted to know who wrote it and he was told these three guys wrote it and then he wanted to know where were they and he listened some of their other songs he said he wanted him to try something for Cinderella so the first thing they came up with was the dream is a wish your heart makes [Music] enjoy and Walt said that'll do Jerry Livingston is quoted as saying when Walt like the song he'd say that'll work to him and Bobby brother and I used to go crazy because all he ever said yeah that'll work and if we we never got wonderful great marvelous it was just Walt's way but if it would work you knew it was in his picture a dream is a wish your heart makes I loved that was the very first song I sang in the film and my daughter she was old enough to see it by the time it came out and when Cinderella starts singing to the mice and the birds [Music] my little three-year-old jumped up in the theater and yelled that's my mummy that's my mummy and I know some lady sitting in front of his turn around I said isn't that sweet she thinks her mother's Cinderella it was wonder it was fun Papa DB was a huge pop hit I remember when it was a huge pop yet and it's a great song it's a just a neat song to sing along it has that repetitive type of thing the children that catches their ear lasts forever [Music] they had the work song was a big big hit they came up with three gigantic hits besides the three Tin Pan Alley songwriters in Cinderella you also have three other very accomplished musicians working on this film Oliver Wallace Paul Smith and Joseph Dubin all of whom had worked on many many Disney films before their music and Joe Duggan's orchestration really helped establish the rest of the sound for this film when the mice are trying to get up the steps or Lucifer is slinking around or any kind of antics are taking place the score is really giving us an idea of what this action is [Music] nominated for best song nominated for best score so those guys did very well by by Disney one interesting effect in Cinderella is the overdubbing technique that occurs during the sing sweet Nightingale sequence Walt Disney came in and listened to the song at the end of the day and he sat there very quiet for about oh I say 5 minutes everybody thought oh he doesn't like it and he said but I see a soap bubble coming up and I see Cinderella's face and I hear another voice a harmony voice and then I see another bubble coming up and I hear another voice singing harmony [Music] he said we can do it I know we can do it the guitarist and inventor Les Paul had experimented with overdubbing in the mid and late 40s and so it had just really hit the mainstream [Music] the technique was new and he wanted to utilize it as much as he could so he realized this is one way I can do it that's the way he was when he said something could be done nobody questioned him Cinderella marked the first time that Disney was actually going to publish the music through their own publishing company and they started their own publishing company in part because they felt that the songs in Cinderella were going to be such big sellers that they might as well get the benefits of publishing the music themselves and that was a very big first so a lot of wonderful things happen because of that decision the music was so infectious it is something that stays with you for so long there's not that much music around it's that way clearly their idea that music was going to be a key part of Cinderella paid off because not only was the soundtrack album a number-one hit it sold three quarters of a million copies but all the components of the sound for Cinderella were nominated for Academy Awards I know that the album the record album was number one for a year over a lot of big albums the Cinderella album sold number one all over the world this and three of the songs became hit parades and everything it was just a wonderful successful picture I felt so wonderful the night of the Cinderella premiere and of course mr. Disney was there and the animators were there everybody that had anything to do with the making of the film and it was a thrill it was a big success bigger than Snow White they had closed horses you know all the merchandise came out - when I saw Cinderella and heard it well I thought it was marvelous couldn't have been better it was a great experience I wouldn't take anything for that I I think it must have been amazing to be Walt Disney and to see that these things you dreamed were suddenly coming true I know everybody I've talked to that and back then that saw the movie was just so thrilled with it it was it's a wonderful beautiful happy movie and I think that it lived up to every bit of the public's expectation because magic I mean that whole Disney word magic it's there it really is [Music] it made a person believe in dreams and dreams coming true it says give us all the chance we can all succeed Cinderella has been told many many times and I think the quintessential telling of it was Walt Disney's telling me there's only one Cinderella [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music]

Channel: Sean Dudley

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Keywords: como se hizo, cinderella, disney cinderella, disney, walt disney, walt disney cinderella, 1950 cinderella, cinderella 2015, cinderella making of, making of disney, 1950 making of disney, 1950 making of, making of cinderella 1950, making of cinderella, disney making of, la cenicienta, full documentary making of

Id: HMngvFH3q8M

Length: 38min 27sec (2307 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 13 2018