How long is rodgers and hammerstein cinderella

The casting of this "Cinderella" was historic and not without its detractors — not since "The Wiz" had a production dared to imagine that a story so firmly fixed in the cultural zeitgeist could be seen as anything other than lily white.

And for a generation of young children of color, "Cinderella" became an iconic memory of their childhoods, of seeing themselves in a black princess who could lock eyes and fall in love with a Filipino prince.

Freedman, choreographer Rob Marshall, and costume designer Ellen Mirojnick. In , they were producers looking for their next projects — when they heard Whitney Houston wanted to do a musical, they each instinctively felt "Cinderella" would be the perfect fit.

It was a gigantic success and it was really the first movie musical that was done on TV I think in forever. This was in What ideas do you have? She was also attached to be a producer with us from the get-go.

That was enough for me. Neil Meron: Robert was one of the best known TV writers of the time. But he did a remarkable job. Craig Zadan: I just remember the three of us throwing around a lot of different ideas, because we were breaking new ground with the piece.

We knew that we were going to do something that was completely multicultural. So I was enthralled with the idea of doing a new "Cinderella," and having her be of color. I knew how much it would have meant to me as a little girl. Whitney signed on relatively early to be in the movie, and I got to know her and her team on that project. We developed a really good relationship — by the time I started working with her, "Cinderella" was already in her orbit.

It had just been sitting there for awhile, dormant. We were a little worried that they would balk at the idea of doing "Cinderella" with a diverse cast, because that was the idea right from the start: It was going to be a diverse world that we would present. There was no pushback from the organization at all! I think it was because Whitney was so huge at that time; to a lot of executives she was popular entertainment as opposed to being defined by her race.

We were also worried about making sure that Cinderella that was defined by more than falling in love with a handsome prince. She needed to have a story of her own that superseded just being attracted to his good looks. Robert was able to give her a little bit more of a backbone and have her be an independent woman. My wife told me about how women were depicted affected her growing up — you know, like in those Doris Day movies, and even in the past "Cinderella"s.

There was a lot of rewriting between and The producers were worried about having a script ready for Whitney to read. They were worried about moving the whole project forward. Debra Martin Chase: Whitney, bless her heart, took a long time to focus and make decisions.

Craig Zadan: Whitney was so gigantic, and so in demand at the time. She had so many other concrete things that she was doing that "Cinderella" took a back seat and, as the time went on and executives started changing at CBS, we got a call from Michael Eisner, the head of Disney. Do you have any ideas of what you might be able to do? We told him, "Actually, we do.

Neil Meron: This must have been or Robert Freedman: So once Disney committed, we had to get Whitney to read a draft of the script. Remember, she still wanted to be Cinderella. Craig Zadan: We gave her the script, and then we called every week.

A comfortable and familiar spot. To a lot of executives Whitney was popular entertainment as opposed to being defined by her race. Robert Freedman: We got the best Broadway actors to come. We catered lunch and everything. Whitney was supposed to come after lunch, and sit down and be entertained by this group. Well, lunch was over, an hour went by, we find out Whitney's going to be late. Another hour goes by — I mean, she was really late.

Neil Meron: She must not have shown up until around 5pm. Dana was pissed. Robert Freedman: She eventually came in with Bobby Brown and a couple other people. Maybe her record producer was there. Neil Meron: We immediately got into the reading of the script.

Whitney just kind of followed along. Craig Zadan: She never looked up at the cast once during the reading. She just followed along in her script. She went line by line reading it while they were reading it.

Robert Freedman: I know I was nervous, as well. Neil Meron: At the end of the reading, she loved it. She thought it worked beautifully. I know that Whitney sent flowers to all of the actors because she felt so bad about how late she was. That reading was the turning point in terms of getting her to finally and absolutely commit. We were bugging Whitney, like, "We need you to commit. We need you to commit! Nicole and I were having lunch in Beverly Hills.

Neil Meron: By the time it was settled, Whitney felt that she was kind of too old to play Cinderella. Whitney, bless her heart, took a long time to focus and make decisions. Debra Martin Chase: Because this took so long,however, I started to realize that Whitney was past the time to play Cinderella.

Luckily, when I talked to her about it, she agreed. We both knew that everyone still had images of Diana Ross, who is absolutely incredible, but who was a little old to be playing Dorothy in "The Wiz. Robert Freedman: Whitney deciding to be the Fairy Godmother kicked off the next round of rewriting. Craig Zadan: So we started putting it together in that way: Whitney had moved to the Fairy Godmother and she decided that a singer and actress named Brandy Norwood would become Cinderella.

Then we started the real development process. Though she left all other casting to the producers and directors, Houston was set on Norwood for the leading role — and wanted to handle outreach herself. Imagine — anyone could have picked up! Luckily I grabbed it, and I hear Whitney on the other end, "Brandy, what do you think about being Cinderella? And she said, "Yes, I think you would be great in this role.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran all around my house. I left Whitney Houston on hold! Finally got back to the phone and I told her, "I would be honored.

Of course! This is Whitney! I have to be on point. I have to be good. I was young, and all of my dreams were coming true. Neil Meron: This seemed like a bit of cinematic magic and synergy. Brandy was at that point one of the biggest TV stars, with "Moesha," and of course, Whitney was Whitney. It was perfect.

Robert Iscove Director : Brandy was very young, very into it, and just full of this… enthusiasm and joy and happiness that just radiated from her. Brandy Norwood: My mom told me after I got the role, she said, "I told you that you would meet Whitney at the top.

I talked my way down from this nosebleed section at a concert. I managed to get backstage by telling all the security guards that I was going to be famous and would be able to pay their bills one day. She knew that I existed! She knew my music! It still feels surreal. The whole point of this whole thing was to have a black Cinderella. We never approached anyone other than Brandy for the role, and Jewel was never approached.

Debra Chase Martin: Jewel as Cinderella would have been a nonstarter. Neil Meron: It was always Whitney and Brandy. This exec was doing this independent of the network. Michael Eisner had nothing to do with it— he backed us completely. People were clearly still thinking, "Multicultural is one thing, but do we have to have two black leads? Robert Freedman: We met with Brandy and her parents on the set of "Moesha.

Brandy Norwood: Debra, Neil, Craig, and a few others sat me down for lunch. They broke it down for me. Trust us. I was just happy to be Cinderella. I never felt like we were "breaking the rules," but I knew that we were doing something different. With both Norwood and Houston on board and the idea of Jewel firmly nixed , it was time to cast the rest of the musical.

Debra Martin Chase: I remember casting this thing was like being in a damn war room. One of his mantras, the philosophy that begat "Hamilton" in fact, was to do color blind casting and always cast with diversity.

It informed how we looked at the world and how we looked at our projects. Since were going for this multiracial cast, choosing actors was kind of a checkerboard that we had to examine just in terms of keeping the proper balance. Endlessly pounding agents and any contacts we had to get great people, the right people, in these roles. Live musicals were not in the culture at the time. So people were reticent about song and dance and putting themselves out there.

Craig Zadan: We really needed stars in order for this to move forward for all the roles. The person we went to early on was Whoopi Goldberg. He was still doing "Seinfeld. It was very fast. When I was on "Seinfeld" the windows of opportunity for me to do other projects were relatively small, because we worked from August to April. This was a project happening very quickly and in July. It was a pretty perfect offer. Debra Martin Chase: The hardest role to fill was the Stepmother.

That was the role we approached Whoopi with first, actually. But she was busy, and very kindly said we could circle back to her later on. I cannot emphasize enough what a bitch it was to cast this role. No white actress wanted to be seen as being mean to the black Cinderella.

She and different people kept giving us the same "no" response. I would write these long letters putting the role in context, explaining the importance of what we were doing with the multicultural cast, and the cultural impact we hoped to have.

Bernadette Peters: Craig and Neil invited me to come and play this wonderful role, and I immediately said yes. Neil Meron: Then we decided that it would be terrific for one stepdaughter to be white and one daughter be black just to further hit home that color is irrelevant in this fantasy world.

Robert Iscove: We had a ton of girls reading for the stepsisters out here in LA. Probably every young actress around. We read them individually and then we read them in pairs. There was just something magic between Veanne Cox and Natalie Desselle when they read together. One night we were having another late night session at WME and I walked outside and burst into tears.

I said, "OK, this is what it feels like to be making history. Neil Meron: With all of these big Broadway and movie names, the budget was already inflating, so we had favors worked out with all the [actors] regarding their weekly pay.

Hammerstein would have provided a more intricate and longer book, while the songwriters would have written considerably more than the eight songs used in Cinderella. There was also a Rodgers-style Waltz — a good one — plus one song "If I Weren't King" that was cut in rehearsal and presumably not very good. How do you add 50 minutes to something that lasts little more than an hour?

This is somewhat more practical if the authors are still around to contribute. Something of the sort was done by Lerner and Loewe when they adapted their film " Gigi " to the stage in , writing a clutch of new songs for the occasion. Not successfully, as it happens; the new material was clearly inferior to the old, and the magic of the film dissipated.

But at least the new Gigi material had the same flavor as the old, written by the same writers for the same characters. Unlike Gigi , Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella has had a strong presence since that first live telecast on March 31, , which was the fourteenth anniversary of the opening of Oklahoma! London's Harold Fielding presented the first stage production on December 18, at the Coliseum, starring Tommy Steele. How to blow up the show to the proportions of a traditional Christmas pantomime?

By devising a new book with Steele playing Buttons, a newly-invented servant to Cinderella's newly-invented father, the Baron. Hammerstein was billed as lyricist, with no bookwriter credited. And what to do about the skimpy-for-full-length score? Steele also wrote himself an eleven o'clock number, "You and Me. But that was just the beginning of Cinderella's journey, although it took more than fifty years for the glass-slippered gal to reach Broadway. Louis Muny. This served, for many years, as the licensed version of the show.

In , Rodgers decided that Cinderella should return to television. As the original had not been videotaped, this meant an all-new telecast. Rather than using Hammerstein's suitable-for-live-television script, a new one was written by Joseph Schrank; Hammerstein had died in The original score was used, with one addition: "Loneliness of Evening," a deleted item from South Pacific , for the Prince.

The success of this version resulted in eight annual rebroadcasts. It is hard to imagine in these days of repeats, cable channels and instant access, but there was a time when you could only watch a TV program on the night it was actually broadcast.

Following the death of Rodgers in , oversight of the property gradually loosened. Here you had a viable title, but only 76 minutes of material. It was simply a question of finding something exciting to do and then finding a way to do it.

Those elements unique to television—cameras, lights, sound and technical equipment, national promotion, studio facilities—would be taken care of by CBS. 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. Cinderella was written for the unique parameters of event television in this case, a minute program with six commercial breaks , so the action, songs and dances were meticulously crafted to fit into half a dozen separate acts.

A working script was completed just in time for the start of rehearsals on February 21, The director for Cinderella was Ralph Nelson, already an old hand in this young field; the previous year he had won an Emmy directing Requiem for a Heavyweight. The dance sequences were staged by Jonathan Lucas, who had, in earlier seasons, choreographed for The Milton Berle Show. You have dissolves, quick cuts and no exit problems. Being ignorant of the medium," he added, "I wrote this show on the assumption we could do anything and nothing has been refused me yet.

From the mammoth studios of the CBS headquarters on West 57 Street, where rehearsals began, the Cinderella company moved to its actual broadcast studio in early March. For three weeks leading up to the March 31 broadcast, it was a scene of frantic activity—a combination of My Favorite Year and A Night at the Opera.

Packed into the cramped, 4,foot space were 56 performers, 33 musicians, and 80 stagehands and TV crew. Providing a hair-raising obstacle course at all times were four giant RCA color cameras, racks loaded with up to costumes, over half a dozen huge set pieces, and loads of props some of them rigged with special effects.

Title Length 1. Warren had been on Broadway as a year- old in " in the Shade" in when she auditioned for " Cinderella " during the run. She eventually left the show to film the TV movie in California. How long is the Cinderella Broadway show? Category: events and attractions musicals. If Rodgers and Hammerstein had been writing Cinderella for the stage, they would have written a standard- length musical. The current Broadway version runs about minutes, not including intermission.

What is Cinderella's real name? Was Cinderella a Broadway musical? What is the name of the black Cinderella movie? Cinderella film.