20 Fun Facts About Disney's 'Cinderella' You Probably Don't Know
Cinderella may be a centuries-old tale, but it's certainly never looked better than in the new restoration of Disney's classic princess film. The 1950 fantasy yarn of a girl, her wicked stepsisters and evil stepmother, a dashing prince, glass slippers and a gaggle of cute, talking animals is returning once again after 73 years of popularity. The Disney magic looks spiffier than ever in the new 4K rerelease of Cinderella (out now). The animated classic has been meticulously restored and fine-tuned, frame by frame, into digital high resolution, some four times cleaner and more fine-tuned than a standard DVD—and more than 2,000 times sharper than an old VHS tape.
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So in honor of Cinderella's re-release here are some fun trivia tidbits about the film you probably didn't know.
Fun Facts About Disney's Cinderella
1. Prince Charming was never called by that name (or any formal name!) in the 1950 film.
2. Joan Crawford, of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Mildred Pierce fame, was the animators’ inspiration for the sour-looking stepmother, Lady Tremaine.
3. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” was nominated for a Best Original Song Academy Award in 1951.
4. The 1950 classic wasn’t Disney’s first Cinderella. A rare, seven-minute, long-ago short by Walt Disney—before his name was also a corporate brand—told the story of a little mistreated girl whose life changes dramatically when she meets a dashing prince.
5. Ilene Woods, who provided the speaking and singing voice of Cinderella in the 1950 film, was originally brought in by the movie’s songwriters to record some demos to help them pitch their tunes for the film. But Walt Disney liked her voice so much, he chose her over more than 300 other aspiring young actresses for the part.
6. One of the film’s most popular songs, “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” was already a novelty hit in the late 1940s, recorded by artists including Perry Como, Dinah Shore and the Fontaine Sisters.
7. Helene Stanley, the live model for animators to base the movements and mannerisms of Cinderella, also modeled for other Disney characters, including Aurora in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Anita Radcliffe in 101 Dalmatians (1961).
8. Cinderella is an old story, dating back centuries, and Disney’s version differs a bit from a lot of the others, like the one in which Cinderella doesn’t have glass slippers but instead wears a magic ring.
9. In a Chinese movie version of Cinderella, the heroine has a pet fish that grows to enormous size.
10. Cinderella became Disney’s first “princess” without any royal lineage or noble blood, paving the way for other animated female characters—including Mulan, Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) and Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame)—to be proclaimed “Disney princesses” as an almost generic term for spunky young female protagonists.
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11. The character hasn’t always been called Cinderella. In other lands at other times, she’s been Genoveffa, Griselda, Ashenputtel, Cendrillon, Cenerentola or Javotte.
12. Disney drew heavily on the story’s European roots in France and a collection of fairytales published in 1634. That’s why at Epcot, the Cinderella topiary is in the France pavilion.
13. Of all his company’s films, Walt Disney said he identified the most with Cinderella because he knew what it was like to work hard for much of his life and not feel appreciated.
14. Watch closely during the scene where Cinderella sings “Oh Sing, Sweet Nightingale” as she scrubs the floor, and you’ll see three bubbles briefly arrange themselves in a design that looks like the head and ears of Mickey Mouse.
15. Cinderella became the first Disney film to have its music copyrighted and published. The film’s companion album of songs, released at the same time as the movie, was a No. 1 Billboard hit.
16. To mark the film’s 50th anniversary in 2000, “Uncle Walt” himself appeared in front of Cinderella’s Castle in Disneyland and signed autographs.
17. The 1950 movie cost $3 million to make, but it generated more than $85 million at the box office.
18. Decades later, Disney made two direct-to-video animated “sequels” of its classic tale, Cinderella II: A Dream Come True (2002) and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007).
19. In Cinderella III, we learn that Cinderella’s shoe size is a teeny-tiny 4 and a half. No wonder her stepsisters couldn’t squeeze into her slippers!
20. To introduce multiple generations to the movie, Disney re-released it five times in America (in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981 and 1987) and additional times in other countries as well.
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