R ARE IS the musical created specifically for television. Even "Peter Pan" - a show long synonymous with TV and coming back anew on NBC on Dec. 4 (with Allison Williams in the title role and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook) landed on the little screen in March 1955 after a short spell on Broadway.
So, "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" really was a special species, the team's one and only show written for TV at the behest of CBS, which also backed some of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Broadway musicals.
The goal was to equal the critical and commercial success of "Peter Pan." And to a large degree they did, with three different productions that have, between them, aired almost a dozen times.
March 31, 1957: Julie Andrews, then starring in "My Fair Lady," was cast as Cindy in the first production, Jon Cypher was the charming Prince, Edith (Edie) Adams the Fairy Godmother, comedic talents Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley the stepsisters and Ilka Chase the haughty stepmother.
East Coast viewers saw it live in black and white or "compatible color." West Coast viewers got a time-delayed version in black and white, because that's all videotape recorders could capture back then. More than 100 million viewers tuned in. It's still available in a grainy, black and white kinescope version on DVD.
Feb. 22, 1965: A winsome, willowy, 18-year-old Leslie Ann Warren (hardly the hot mama she'd become) was cast as Cinderella for the second go-round, this time prerecorded on color videotape at CBS's L.A. studios and enhanced with a new script.
The supporting cast was heavy with Hollywood notables - including Ginger Rogers and Walter Pidgeon as the King and Queen, Celeste Holm as the Fairy Godmother and Jo Van Fleet as the stepmother, with Pat Carroll and Barbara Ruick as her gruesome twosome daughters, and handsome Stuart Damon as the Prince.
CBS milked this treatment royally, with eight annual repeats. A 50th anniversary DVD edition was just released by Shout!Factory.
Nov. 2, 1997: The times were a changin', calling for a major rethink in this 40th-anniversary production with a racially diverse cast and heavy rewrite.
Pop star Brandi (Norwood) was Cinderella, Whitney Houston the Fairy Godmother (and show coproducer) and Filipino-American Paolo Montalban the Prince.
Other notables included Bernadette Peters as the Stepmother and Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen.
While 60 million viewers tuned in, Rodgers and Hammerstein purists winced at the odd intrusion of well-known songs from other R&H shows, including "Falling in Love with Love" and "The Sweetest Sounds."
It aired once again (Valentine's Night, 1998) with 15 million tune-ins. Also available on DVD.
- Jonathan Takiff