Updated 'Cinderella' a perfect fit for '90s TV

Date: November 02, 1997
By Dusty Saunders

From Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Submitted by: Larry A.


Cinderella Grade B+

Even if it were an expensive disaster, Cinderella would be credited with providing different television.

We're at the start of another network sweeps period that will feature monsters, murders and mayhem. So what do ABC and The Wonderful World of Disney serve up? A lavish, watchable $12 million musical originally created by the late, great team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. And fortunately, Cinderella (6 to 8 p.m. today, KMGH-Channel 7) is far from being a failure.

The Cinderella story has a fascinating television history. It first aired (one time only, in black and white) on CBS on March 14, 1957 - 14 years to the day after Rodgers and Hammerstein premiered Oklahoma!, which changed the storytelling direction of Broadway musicals.

CBS executives had prodded the pair to try something new for television. There had never been an original musical on a network.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's choice for the lead role was a 22-year-old British performer named Julie Andrews, who was getting rave reviews opposite Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.

Andrews took the role, rehearsing during the day and performing the TV show on her night off from the Broadway hit.

The 90-minute special, which preempted CBS' top-rated Ed Sullivan Show, was a critical and audience hit, drawing 107 million viewers - the largest audience that network TV had ever had. That was a major accomplishment, considering the total population of the country was slightly more than 172 million.

A remake, starring Lesley Ann Warren, was broadcast in 1965 and repeated several times in the early '70s. But it never had the impact of the once-seen '57 production.

In updating tonight's two-hour show, producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who brought Bette Midler to television in Gypsy on CBS in 1993, took full advantage of Disney's $ 12 million budget. The sets and wardrobes have an appropriately extravagant look.

But more important, the tone of the production and the updated script by Robert L. Freedman fit nicely within today's social sensibilities without being overly politically correct.

Brandy, the appealing young rock singer and star of UPN's Moesha, plays the title role in winning whimsical fashion, with pop diva Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother.

When the project went to the drawing boards four years ago, Houston, who shares an executive-producer title, was slated to portray Cinderella. Since her other obligations delayed the TV production, Houston believed her time to play the role had passed. So Houston has a ball getting Cinderella to the ball.

Whoopi Goldberg uses her familiar rubbery comic face to great advantage in playing the queen opposite Victor Gerber's white king.

Their son is Paolo Montalban, a young Philippine actor who's currently an understudy in Broadway's The King and I.

Bernadette Peters shines as Cinderella's nasty and ditzy stepmother, who has one black daughter, Natalie Desselle, and one white one, Veanne Cox.

And Jason Alexander, a performer with seemingly unlimited talent, is marvelous as the prince's wacky steward. Alexander nearly steals the show with a comedy number, The Prince Is Giving a Ball.

While the original Cinderella score features several hummable tunes, including In My Own Little Corner, sung by Cinderella, producers thought additional, familiar music would aid the production. So they persuaded the Rodgers and Hammerstein heirs to allow them to tinker with the orignal score and add other songs.

Among other things, they integrated two numbers from other Rodgers productions - The Sweetest Sounds, from his Broadway musical of the same name, and Falling in Love With Love, a song written by Rodgers and his earlier partner, Lorenz Hart.

There are times when Cinderella's lavish production numbers seem to overwhelm the story of unrequited young love. Occasionally, everyone seems to be trying too hard to impress.

But overall, Cinderella never turns into a pumpkin. It offers a refreshing change of pace from the violent and cynical fare that too often dominates network sweeps productions.