Background on Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
Throughout the 1950s, vintage Broadway titles, including ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, ANYTHING GOES, and two early Rodgers and Hart shows (DEAREST ENEMY and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE) showed up on the small screen. In 1955, NBC broadcast the Broadway musical version of PETER PAN starring Mary Martin; it was a sensation—and quickly rebroadcast—and the network wanted more. Richard Rodgers had given NBC a success a few years earlier with his Emmy Award winning score for the World War II documentary series, VICTORY AT SEA. Now NBC wanted to know if Rodgers and Hammerstein would do something that had never been done before: write an original musical, a family musical, expressly for television.
The team was intrigued; the fact that this would be their first foray into television only whetted their appetite for challenge. "Some people said we stayed out of TV so long because we didn't like the medium," Hammerstein told TV Guide. "That isn’t true. It was simply a question of finding something exciting to do and then finding a way to do it."
In considering NBC’s criteria, R&H settled on the fairy tale of Cinderella. Not sure how to navigate some of the network’s requirements, however, they sought the advice of an old friend, Richard Lewine, who was at the time serving as Vice President in charge of color television for rival CBS. (In 1980, following the death of Richard Rodgers, Lewine would run the R&H office for a transitional period.) Lewine told R&H that CBS was looking to land a "television spectacular" of its own; the network even had a talented newcomer signed to them for this purpose—Julie Andrews, who was then appearing on Broadway in an Edwardian Cinderella tale, MY FAIR LADY. She would be ideal. "What sold us immediately was the chance to work with Julie," recalled Rodgers in his autobiography. "It was right from the start."
NBC was out, CBS was in. This would be a "package deal": R&H would write the show and own it, CBS would air it and have the option of a second broadcast. Line items that would have been standard in a Broadway budget—casting, costumes, scenery, direction, choreography—were the responsibility of R&H. Those elements unique to television—cameras, lights, sound and technical equipment, national promotion, studio facilities—would be taken care of by CBS.
R&H had already begun writing CINDERELLA when CBS announced the project on September 5, 1956. In the Saturday Review, Hammerstein talked about how the team approached the material: "We want the kids who see it to recognize the story they know. Children can be very critical on that score. But, of course, their parents will be watching too, so we have tried to humanize the characters without altering the familiar plot structure." The score was mapped out efficiently, and early.
"Deciding who would say what and who would sing what took us a few days," Hammerstein told TV Guide. "We blueprinted the action, then we began writing." One early memorandum from Hammerstein indicates several sequences and song ideas that did not make it to the final version, including "Tirade," for the Stepmother; "I’m On My Way," for Cinderella and her Godmother en route to the Ball; "The Prince is in a Dither," for the men’s chorus; and "I Have a Feeling," a love song for the two romantic leads.
continued
