Information about Sleeping Beauty (1959 Film)

Sleeping Beauty
Directed by	Clyde Geronimi (supervising) Les Clark Eric Larson Wolfgang Reitherman
Produced by	Walt Disney
Written by	Erdman Penner (adaptation) Joe Rinaldi Winston Hibler Bill Peet Ted Sears Ralph Wright Milt Banta Charles Perrault (original fairy tale)
Starring	Mary Costa Eleanor Audley Verna Felton Barbara Luddy Barbara Jo Allen Bill Shirley Taylor Holmes Bill Thompson
Distributed by	Buena Vista Distribution
Release date(s)	January 29, 1959
Running time	75 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$6,000,000 USD (estimated)
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Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and originally released to theatres on January 29, 1959, by Buena Vista Distribution. The sixteenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, it was the last animated feature produced by Walt Disney to be based upon a fairy tale (after his death, the studio returned to the genre with 1989's The Little Mermaid). In addition, Sleeping Beauty was the first animated feature to be shot in Super Technirama 70, one of many large-format widescreen processes. Only one more animated film, The Black Cauldron, was ever shot in Super Technirama 70.

The film was directed by Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman, under the supervision of Clyde Geronimi. The script was adapted from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault by Erdman Penner, with additional story work by Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright, and Milt Banta. The film's musical score and songs, featuring the work of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, are adapted from the 1890 Sleeping Beauty ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Plot synopsis

Princess Aurora is named after the Roman goddess of the dawn "because she fills her father and mother's lives with sunshine." While still an infant, she is betrothed to the also-young Prince Phillip (sometimes misspelled Philip). At her christening, the good fairies Flora (dressed in red), Fauna (in green), and Merryweather (in blue) arrive to bless her. Flora gives her the gift of beauty, which is described in a song as "gold of sunshine in her hair" and "lips that shame the red, red rose." Fauna gives her the gift of song. At this point, Maleficent, the film's villain and mistress of all evil, appears on the scene. Claiming to be upset at not being invited to Aurora's christening ceremony, she curses the princess to die when she touches a spinning wheel's spindle before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday. Fortunately, Merryweather has not yet blessed Aurora, so she uses her blessing to weaken Maleficent's curse, so Aurora will not die when she touches the spinning wheel; instead, she will fall asleep until she is awakened by her true love's kiss. Knowing Maleficent is extremely powerful and will stop at nothing to see her curse fulfilled, the three good fairies take Aurora to live with them in the woods, where they can keep her safe from any harm until she turns sixteen and the curse is made void. To fully protect her, they even change her name to Briar Rose.

Rose grows into a very beautiful woman, with shining blond hair, rose-red lips, lavender-colored eyes and a beautiful singing voice. She is raised in a cottage in the forest by the three fairies, whom she believes are her aunts. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, the three fairies choose to use magic to make Rose a gown and a cake. As Flora and Merryweather fight it out to have the dress their signature color, Malificient's pet crow flies over the forest and spots the magical glitter fluttering in the air. It then reports back to Malificient who has been waiting anxiously sixteen years for news of the princess who vanished into thin air to have her revenge. While out picking berries, Rose sings to entertain her animal friends; her angelic voice gains the attention of Prince Phillip, who has grown into a handsome young man and is out riding in the woods. When they meet, they instantly fall in love. Realizing that she has to return home, Aurora flees from Phillip without ever learning his name. Despite promising to meet him again, she is unable to return, as her "aunts" choose that time to reveal the truth of her birth to her and to tell her that she is betrothed to a prince named Phillip.

They leave the woods, and Aurora makes it into the castle. Unfortunately, Maleficent uses her magic to lure Aurora away from her chambers up into the tallest tower of the castle, where a spinning wheel awaits her. Fascinated by the wheel, she touches the spindle, pricking her finger. As had been foretold by the curse, Aurora is put under a sleeping spell. The good fairies place Aurora on her bed with a red rose in her hand, and cause a deep sleep to fall over the entire kingdom until they can find a way to break the curse. They realize the answer is Phillip, but he has been captured and imprisoned by Maleficent to prevent him from kissing Aurora and waking her up. The three good fairies sneak into Maleficent's lair, aid the prince in escaping and explain to him the story of Maleficent's curse. Armed with the magical Sword of Truth and The Shield of Virtue, Phillip battles Maleficent when the sorceress turns herself into a gigantic fire-breathing dragon. The sword, blessed by the fairies' white magic, is plunged into the dragon's heart, killing her. Phillip climbs to Aurora's chamber, and removes the curse with a kiss. As the film ends, the couple dances together, happy to each learn that their betrothed and their beloved are one and the same, while Flora and Merryweather fight it out for the color of Aurora's dress once again.

Production

Overview and art direction

Sleeping Beauty spent nearly the entire decade of the 1950s in production: the story work began in 1951, voices were recorded in 1952, animation production took from 1953 until 1958, and the stereophonic musical score, partially based on Tchaikovsky's ballet of the same name, was recorded in 1957. The film holds a notable position in Disney animation as the last Disney feature to use hand-inked cels. Beginning with the next feature, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Disney would move to the use of xerography to transfer animators' drawings from paper to celluloid. Its art, which Walt Disney wanted to look like a living illustration and which was inspired by medieval art, was not in the typical Disney style. Because the Disney studio had already made two features based on fairy tales, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella, Walt Disney wanted this film to stand out from its predecessors by choosing a different visual style. The movie eschewed the soft, rounded look of earlier Disney features for a more stylized one. Since Super Technirama 70 was used, it also meant the backgrounds could contain more detailed and complex artwork than ever used in an animated movie before.

Disney artist Eyvind Earle was the film's production designer, and Disney gave him a significant amount of freedom in designing the settings and selecting colors for the film. Earle also painted the majority of the backgrounds himself. The elaborate paintings usually took seven to ten days to paint; by contrast, a typical animation background took only one workday to complete. Disney's decision to give Earle so much artistic freedom was not popular among the Disney animators, who had until Sleeping Beauty exercised some influence over the style of their characters and settings.

Characters and story development

The name of the beautiful Sleeping Beauty is "Princess Aurora" (Latin for "dawn") , in this film, as it was in the original Tchaikovsky ballet; this name occurred in Perrault's version, not as the princess's name, but as her daughter's.^[1] In hiding, she is called Briar Rose, the name of the princess in the Brothers Grimm variant.^[2] The prince was given the only princely name familiar to Americans in the 1950s: "Prince Phillip," named after Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The dark fairy was aptly named Maleficent (which means "Evil-doer").

Princess Aurora's long, thin, willowy body shape was inspired by that of Audrey Hepburn. In addition, Walt Disney had suggested that all three fairies should look alike, but veteran animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston objected, saying that three identical fairies would not be exciting. Additionally, the idea originally included seven fairies instead of three. In determining Maleficent's design, standard depictions of witches and hags were dismissed as animator Marc Davis opted for a more elegant look centered around the appearance of flames, ultimately crowning the villain with "the horns of the devil."

Several story points for this film came from discarded ideas for Disney's previous fairy tale involving a sleeping heroine: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They include Maleficent's capture of the Prince and the Prince's daring escape from her castle. Disney discarded these ideas from Snow White because his artists were not able to draw a human male believably enough at the time.

Live-action reference footage

Before animation production began, every shot in the film was done in a live-action reference version, with live actors in costume serving as models for the animators. The role of Prince Phillip was modeled by Ed Kemmer, who had played Commander Buzz Corry on television's Space Patrol five years before Sleeping Beauty was released. For the final battle sequence, Kemmer was photographed on a wooden buck. Among the actresses who performed in reference footage for this film were Spring Byington, Frances Bavier, and Helene Stanley.

Helene Stanley was the live action reference for Princess Aurora. The only known surviving footage of Stanley as Aurora's live-action reference is a clip from the television program Disneyland, which consists of the artists sketching her dancing with the woodland animals. It was not the first or last time Stanley worked for Disney; she also provided live-action references for Cinderella and Anita from 101 Dalmatians, and she also portrayed Polly Crockett for the TV series Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. On the 2 disc Special Edition of Cinderella there is a clip from the Mickey Mouse Club television series, where Stanley re-enacts scenes from the movie for the Mousketeers to watch.

All the live actors' performances were either screened for the animators' reference or rotoscoped (traced from live-action to animation), as Walt Disney insisted that much of Sleeping Beauty's character animation be as close to live-action as possible.

Release and later history

Theatrical Release Disney's distribution arm, Buena Vista Distribution, originally released Sleeping Beauty to theaters in both standard 35mm prints and large-format 70mm prints. The Super Technirama 70mm prints were equipped with six-track stereophonic sound; some CinemaScope-compatible 35mm Technirama prints were released in 4 channel stereo, and others had monaural soundtracks.

During its original release, Sleeping Beauty returned only half the invested sum of $6,000,000, nearly bankrupting the Disney studio. It was mainly criticized as being slowly paced and having little character development. Since then, the film has gained a following and is today hailed as one of the best animated features ever made, thanks to its stylized designs by painter Eyvind Earle who also was the art director for the movie, its lush music score and its large-format widescreen and stereophonic sound presentation.

The film was re-released theatrically in 1970, 1979 (in 70mm 6 channel stereo, as well as in 35 mm stereo and mono), and in 1986.

When adjusted for ticket price inflation, the domestic total gross comes out to an astounding $478.22 million, placing it in the top 30 of adjusted films.^[3]

Home Video Release

Sleeping Beauty was released on both VHS and Laserdisc that same year in the Classics collection, becoming the first Disney Classics video to be digitally processed in Hi-Fi stereo. Then the film underwent an extensive digital restoration in 1997, and that version was released to both VHS and Laserdisc again as part of the Masterpiece collection. In 2003, the restored Sleeping Beauty was released to DVD in a 2-disc "Special Edition" that included both the original widescreen version and a pan and scan version as well. Sleeping Beauty is currently planned to be released exclusively to Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD version as Disney's first ever Platinum title for Blu-ray, scheduled for late 2008. The Blu-ray version will feature BD-Live (online feature), and the extras will include a virtual castle and multi-player games.^[4][5]

Other Appearance

Aurora is one of the seven Princesses of Hearts in the popular Square Enix game Kingdom Hearts, and Maleficent is a villain in all three Kingdom Hearts games. The good fairies appear in Kingdom Hearts II, giving Sora new clothes.

Princess Aurora, Prince Phillip, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather were featured as guests in House of Mouse, and Maleficent was one of the villains in Mickey's House of Villains.

The first all-new story featuring the characters from the movie appeared in , the first volume of collection of the Disney Princesses. It was released on September 4, 2007.

Sleeping Beauty release history January 29, 1959 (original release) June 10, 1970 September 28, 1979 March 7, 1986 Spring 1993

Worldwide release dates Brazil: February 6, 1959 Argentina: July 9, 1959 U.K.: July 29, 1959 Australia: September 10, 1959 West Germany: October 30, 1959 Italy: December 1, 1959 France: December 16, 1959 Finland: December 18, 1959 Sweden: December 19, 1959 Mexico: December 24, 1959 Denmark: December 26, 1959 Norway: December 26, 1959 Austria: January 15, 1960 Hong Kong: May 26, 1960 Japan: July 23, 1960 Spain: October 3, 1960 Portugal: April 2, 1961 East Germany: October 10, 1969 Poland: August 18, 1995 Kuwait: May 24, 1999

Characters

• Flora, Fauna and Merryweather (The Three Good Fairies), voiced by Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen and Barbara Luddy respectively.
• Maleficent, voiced by Eleanor Audley.
• Princess Aurora/Briar Rose, voiced by Mary Costa.
• Prince Phillip, voiced by Bill Shirley.
• King Stefan, voiced by Taylor Holmes.
• King Hubert, voiced by Bill Thompson.
• The Narrator, voiced by Marvin Miller.
• Maleficent's Goons, voiced by Candy Candido, Pinto Colvig and Bill Amsbery.

Characters who are unvoiced include Maleficent's raven and the lackey. The actress who voiced King Stefan's queen is unknown.

Directing Animators

• Milt Kahl (Prince Phillip)
• Frank Thomas (Flora, Fauna, Merryweather)
• Ollie Johnston (Flora, Fauna, Merryweather)
• Marc Davis (Aurora, Maleficent)
• John Lounsbery (King Stefan, King Hubert)

Awards and nominations

Nominated (2)

• Academy Awards
• Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (George Bruns)
• Grammy Awards
• Best Soundtrack Album, Original Cast - Motion Picture or Television

Sleeping Beauty in the Disney theme parks

Sleeping Beauty was made while Walt Disney was building Disneyland (hence the four year production time). To help promote the film, Imagineers declared the castle there was Sleeping Beauty's (it was originally to be Snow White's).

Several years later an indoor walkthrough section was added to the castle, where guests could walk through dioramas of scenes from the film. It closed shortly after September 11, 2001, supposedly because the dark, unmonitored corridors were a risk. Currently, the former attraction is being used as extra space to house parts for the new fireworks show for Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration. As a result, none of the original walkthrough remains intact.

Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005, also with a Sleeping Beauty Castle, with a fairly-similar design to Disneyland's.

Princess Aurora (and, to a lesser extent, Prince Phillip and Maleficent) makes regular appearances in the parks and parades.

Soundtrack listing

1. Main Title/Once Upon a Dream/Prologue
2. Hail to the Princess Aurora
3. The Gifts of Beauty and Song/Maleficent Appears/True Love Conquers All
4. The Burning of the Spinning Wheels/The Fairies' Plan
5. Maleficent's Frustration
6. A Cottage in the Woods
7. Do You Hear That?/I Wonder
8. An Unusual Prince/Once Upon a Dream
9. Magical House Cleaning/Blue or Pink
10. A Secret Revealed
11. Skumps (Drinking Song)/The Royal Argument
12. Prince Phillip Arrives/How to Tell Stefan
13. Aurora's Return/Maleficent's Evil Spell
14. Poor Aurora/Sleeping Beauty
15. Forbidden Mountain
16. A Fairy Tale Come True
17. Battle with the Forces of Evil
18. Awakening
19. Finale

Trivia

• In the final sequence, Aurora and Phillip are shown dancing a waltz, which didn't exist in the Middle Ages. (The Tchaikovsky ballet, like other works of the period, also has this discrepancy.)
• Prince Phillip's horse is named Samson, after the Biblical hero.
• Prince Phillip is the first Disney prince to have a name. Both Cinderella and Snow White's princes went nameless.

References

External links

• Sleeping Beauty in the Big Cartoon DataBase

•  • [ e] Disney theatrical animated features
Official canon	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) • Pinocchio (1940) • Fantasia (1940) • Dumbo (1941) • Bambi (1942) • Saludos Amigos (1942) • The Three Caballeros (1944) • Make Mine Music (1946) • Fun and Fancy Free (1947) • Melody Time (1948) • The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) • Cinderella (1950) • Alice in Wonderland (1951) • Peter Pan (1953) • Lady and the Tramp (1955) • Sleeping Beauty (1959) • One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) • The Sword in the Stone (1963) • The Jungle Book (1967) • The Aristocats (1970) • Robin Hood (1973) • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) • The Rescuers (1977) • The Fox and the Hound (1981) • The Black Cauldron (1985) • The Great Mouse Detective (1986) • Oliver & Company (1988) • The Little Mermaid (1989) • The Rescuers Down Under (1990) • Beauty and the Beast (1991) • Aladdin (1992) • The Lion King (1994) • Pocahontas (1995) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) • Hercules (1997) • Mulan (1998) • Tarzan (1999) • Fantasia 2000 (1999) • The Emperor's New Groove (2000) •  (2001) • Lilo & Stitch (2002) • Treasure Planet (2002) • Brother Bear (2003) • Home on the Range (2004) • Chicken Little (2005) • Meet the Robinsons (2007) • Bolt (2008) • Rapunzel (2009) • The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Live-action films with animation	The Reluctant Dragon (1941) • Victory Through Air Power (1943) • Song of the South (1946) • So Dear to My Heart (1949) • Mary Poppins (1964) • Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) • Pete's Dragon (1977) • Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) • Enchanted (2007)
DisneyToon features	(1990) • A Goofy Movie (1995) • Doug's 1st Movie (1999) • The Tigger Movie (2000) •  (2001) • Return to Never Land (2002) • The Jungle Book 2 (2003) • Piglet's Big Movie (2003) • Teacher's Pet (2004) • Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005)
Other	The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) • James and the Giant Peach (1996) • Dinosaur (2000) • A Christmas Carol (2009)
See also	Pixar • Walt Disney Animation Studios