Cinderella For The 90s
With A Multiracial Cast And Contemporary Values, Disney's $12-Million Extravaganza Updates A Family Classic

Date: November 02, 1997
By By Diane Werts, Staff Writer

From New York Newsday
Submitted by: Larry A.


THE RED SEA had to part before they could get on with filming the $12-million musical extravaganza that is "Cinderella" for ABC's "Wonderful World of Disney" (airing Sunday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. on WABC / 7).

Stars like UPN's "Moesha" teen Brandy and Broadway favorite Bernadette Peters could do nothing but wait, steaming under heavy layered fantasy costumes in 90-degree July heat on the Universal Studios back lot's picturesque Court of Miracles. Action stayed at a standstill on the European-style brick-street village that once played home to '30s monster classics like "Frankenstein" and "The Wolf Man" until Universal's popular studio-tour trams could be radioed to a halt nearby.

"When we are ready to roll, they're in the middle of the Red Sea," explained a crew person, pointing over to where the tram traverses a studio lake that magically dams itself up to allow passage. "That's the first place they can stop it" to stand silent long enough to allow the filming of a quick take.

It's no small nuisance: Seven takes go by before director Robert Iscove ("Peter Pan," starring Sandy Duncan) manages to coordinate all of the lighting, sound (the buzz of overhead airplanes can't be controlled) and complicated action of one 10-second scene. Brandy strolls by village cart vendors, horses, a Punch and Judy puppet show and dozens of colorfully costumed extras before freezing at her first glimpse of the young man who will play the charming Prince to her Cinderella.

He's Paolo Montalban, a native of the Philippines making his film debut. And it's his glowing Asian face - along with dark-skinned Brandy's long corn-row braids, the porcelain-pale red-haired Peters playing her stepmother, and Peters' two daughters being portrayed by a white actress (Broadway veteran Veanne Cox) and an African-American one (Natalie Desselle of "B.A.P.s") - that makes it clear this production's many hues go beyond its kaleidoscopic sets and costumes.

"This is how the world should be," Debra Martin Chase, one of three executive producers, says later over lunch out of a catering truck under a tent down this Universal street. "It should be black and Asian, Latino, white. We're all people. And as we get to the year 2000, you look around you, and that's what our society is today. And we've never seen that in one of our fundamental tales, as it were."

So this third production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's original 1950s television musical is distinctively different from the two before it. Not only is it produced lavishly on film - CBS' live 1957 staging with Julie Andrews can be seen only on kinescope at the Museum of Television & Radio, while CBS' 1965 videotaped Lesley Ann Warren remake sometimes appears on TV (next, very late the night of Nov. 17 / 18 on the Disney Channel) - but Disney's tale also presents a harmonic multiracial world of "all colors and ages and boundaries," stresses co-executive producer Neil Meron.

He notes 18-year-old Brandy's pop music and TV following; the theater appeal of both Peters and Victor Garber ("Damn Yankees"), who plays the King; fandom from both worlds for "Seinfeld's" Jason Alexander, the Prince's valet; the singular celebrity of Whoopi Goldberg, the Queen, and the crossover stardom of Whitney Houston, the Fairy Godmother, who also serves as an executive producer.

If this isn't a "Cinderella" version "for every child and for the child in all of us," as Chase puts it, then there simply isn't such a thing. She considers this ABC movie - being televised during the November ratings sweeps period - "a mission."

"I think for all of us, it's about reaching out to all kids and letting them know that all dreams can be made to come true, whether you're a black kid or a white kid or an Asian kid."

It all started with a black child whose aunt took her to see "That's Entertainment!" three times when the compilation of classic MGM musical numbers hit theaters in the early '70s. The aunt was songstress Dionne Warwick, and the child was Whitney Houston - who immediately knew she wanted to perform someday. But of course, by the time she'd grown up and become a '90s music and film star ("The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale"), nobody was doing musicals anymore.

Except Meron and partner Craig Zadan, who'd revived the form on TV with Bette Midler's hit CBS remake of "Gypsy" in 1993. The day after it aired, they got a call from Houston's agent, who said her client would love to do a similar musical. Did they have any ideas? Sure - "Cinderella."

"She committed to it," Zadan says over that back-lot lunch with Chase and Meron, "and we started developing it. And then she got a movie and another movie and another movie, and had a baby, and then all that time went by, and she called us and said, I don't mean to ruin this after all this time, but I can't do this. I'm too old to play Cinderella.'"

Though Houston is only 34 - Diana Ross was playing Dorothy in "The Wiz" at about the same age - "she's had a lot of life experience," says Meron, "and that matures a person in terms of their outlook on the world. And her outlook on the world is no longer Cinderella's, and she was wise enough to know that."

So Zadan and Meron took a deep breath and called Houston back. What if she played the Fairy Godmother instead, "and we got somebody else to play Cinderella? And literally the only person we could think of," says Zadan, "was Brandy," who'd found singing success and TV stardom before finishing high school.

Luckily, as a kid she'd also found Disney's 1950 animated feature "Cinderella." "I never read the story," Brandy says, "but I did watch the animated version, like, in my room, every night." When Houston called personally to offer her the title role in Disney's live-action version, "I dropped the phone and I was screaming to my mom. It's a fairy tale, really. I'm still waiting for someone to pinch me."

BRANDY NOT ONLY was the right age for Cinderella, she embodied the right innocence. "There are scenes in this movie where she's like a young Judy Garland. Like in The Wizard of Oz,'" says Zadan. "Cinderella's" visual design also recalls "Oz" in its fanciful extravagance. That's a good indication that despite the film's contemporary feel, it's still a fantasy, not some topical update. "We didn't, like, make it hip," says Chase. "We just made it '90s, but still kept it in the fairy tale world so that everybody can relate to it."

"I think in terms of '90s, the message is that Cinderella's not a victim," Meron emphasizes. "Cinderella is somebody that stands up for herself." She's actually planning to run away from her stepmother's house. "And the prince doesn't look for the most beautiful girl, he looks for somebody that he can talk to."

Actor Montalban, a 1993 Rutgers graduate, calls his character "more of a rebel prince that just wants to be a regular person. And he's looking for the thing that will complete him."

"They're both searching," says teleplay writer Robert L. Freedman, an unabashed musicals devotee. "That's why we added a song that was originally written by Richard Rodgers for a show called No Strings,' and that's The Sweetest Sounds,'" a lyrical expression of the couple's mutual yearning for something more than their stilted, lonely lives.

Two other musicals' songs were added to the seven from the 1957 composed-for-TV "Cinderella" score. "Falling in Love With Love," sung by Peters and borrowed from the 1938 Rodgers / Lorenz Hart musical "The Boys From Syracuse," and the show-stopping finale, "There's Music in You," from MGM's 1953 film, "Main Street to Broadway." That number culminates the inspirational theme of this "Cinderella" that all of us have the strength and confidence to see us through - that all we need do is tap those inner resources.

"My point of view was to honor the intentions of Rodgers and Hammerstein as much as possible," says Freedman - a goal that was ensured by the late creators' estates' having total approval. "But at the same time," Freedman adds, "I wanted to send the right message to little girls and boys who are watching this ... I wanted to tell a story for little girls that doesn't say to them, you know, a dashing prince on a white horse is gonna come up and rescue you from your life."