The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella 1976

The Slipper and the Rose original film poster- leave a comment to win it!

The Slipper and the Rose, if you aren't already a fan, was basically the last of the big original musicals which was filmed at Pinewood Studios UK (and on location in Austria) in 1975 and released in 1976. It has been recently restored and remastered, mere steps away from where it was shot, at Pinewood's Media Preservation, Restoration and Archiving Facility. Having been gorgeously restored to it's original glory, the original UK edition is now available on Blu-ray, with extras including A Cinderella Story: The Making of Slipper and the Rose (narrated by executive producer David Frost) and I Can't Forget the Melody: The Sherman Brothers on the Making of Slipper and the Rose.
I first saw it in the theatre in 1976 and loved it, although I hadn't seen it since. What a thrill to see that it is just as wonderful as I remember. Possibly more so! So what is the story behind this under-appreciated film which is only starting to be rediscovered?

Richard Chamberlain as Prince Edward and Christopher Gable as John

Apparently the Sherman brothers (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) were approached by David Frost and asked to write the songs for a live action Cinderella musical. Although they initially declined, they rethought the matter when they realized that they could put a new twist on the story by telling it from the prince's point of view. It certainly crossed my mind that Prince Charles was in the same fix as our Prince Edward of Euphrania at the time this was made, having to choose an aristocratic virgin bride. Well we all know how that turned out! No Camilla in this story however.

Richard Chamberlain and Gemma Craven

Richard Chamberlain was a wonderful choice for our Prince Edward as he is definitely a triple threat! We all knew he was a great actor but his singing and dancing are superb! Gemma Craven was an unknown plucked from the British stage in a Cinderella story of her own. She is quite adorable, especially when her eyes well up with tears. I have to admit, I was blinking back a few tears of my own. She is a true natural, considering this was her first film.

Michael Hordern, Annette Crosbie and Kenneth More

Michael Hordern as the King and Kenneth More as the Lord Chamberlain show the amazing talent available in Britain at the time. And Annette Crosbie rather steals the show as a hilarious new kind of fairy godmother. You may recognize Crosbie from her recent work in British TV, but I know her as the dog lady from the Calendar Girls film!

Dame Edith Evans with Julian Orchard and Polly Williams

Speaking of stealing the show, an 87 year old Dame Edith Evans sings, dances and throws out the odd hilarious line as the Dowager Queen. She looked like she was having a ball...at the ball...sorry about that one!
This film is a true English/American hybrid, although the wonderful funny bits thrown amongst the more serious scenes are so British and apparently were insisted on by Bryan Forbes. Bravo! And there is a twist at the end (not your usual Cinderella ending!)

If you love Mary Poppins you will very likely enjoy The Slipper and the Rose. Just don't judge it by today's standards. It was already dated in 1976, which is likely why it had only modest success in the UK and very little success in America. However if judged against the musicals of the 50s and the 60s, it holds up quite well. I still love it as much as I did when I was 12!

So by all means, grab a copy while you can. Share it with your sisters, your daughters and your grand-daughters. You will laugh and cry again and again. This Blu-ray won't languish in your DVD collection!

I will be adding an account of my trip to Pinewood Studios to visit their Archive, Preservation and Restoration facility soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, please leave a comment below as well as your email address to win a copy of the cinema poster for The Slipper and the Rose pictured at the top of this post. I will draw a random name at the end of October.

Cheers and good luck!

Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks is a lovely film. A jolly holiday, you might say. If you haven't heard the buzz on this film, it concerns the back story of how Walt Disney took years (well, decades actually) to convince P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books to let Disney have the rights to make the Mary Poppins film.

Tom Hanks looks like he is having a wonderful time portraying the larger than life Walt Disney. Emma Thompson seems to be channeling every old crusty aunt she ever encountered as a child to bring the difficult and very odd authoress to the screen. Again, she appears to be having a ball.

Colin Farrell plays the lovable but unreliable father of Mrs. Travers in the flashback scenes of her childhood in Australia. Apparently after her father died, young Helen Lyndon Goff reinvented herself as Pamela Lyndon Travers and traveled to England to write after a failed stage career in Australia. The Disney version of the story is quite whitewashed, although you might not think so while watching the film. Travers was apparently a bisexual single mother who adopted only one of a set of twins after consulting with an astrologer about which boy to choose.

And if you think Emma Thompson is portraying Travers in a harsh light, stay behind in the theatre for the end of the credits, where they play some of the audio tapes of the meetings between the author and the film makers. She was a real piece of work!

Thankfully, the Mary Poppins film that we know and love so well was made by Walt Disney as it is perfection in my estimation. Well, perhaps it is a tad too long, which is also the case with Saving Mr. Banks but they are equally wonderful. You will enjoy this film, especially if like me, you have a soft spot for Mary Poppins and the Banks family.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

P.S. I adore the way the title of the film is gradually revealed as the story unfolds. She certainly isn't there to save the children!

Suffragettes in film- "Deeds, not Words!"

When I decided to write a post on suffragettes in film, I thought there would be more material on which to draw. There are surprisingly few films (or television programs) which have dealt even peripherally with Women's Suffrage.

I have to give Walt Disney some credit for making the story of the suffragettes so key to Mary Poppins, however the underlying message was really that Mrs. Banks should have been at home, paying more attention to her kids rather than getting "Votes for Women". We'll let that pass as they also skewered Mr. Banks being emotionally absent to the children. That was about as equal as you got in 1964 I suppose.

And truly, I think this is the only exposure to the story of the suffragettes that many citizens of the world have ever had!

We'll have to see whether the issue comes up in the new film Saving Mr. Banks starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers (the author of Mary Poppins). Apparently Disney only put the suffragette story in to explain why Mrs. Banks would have needed a nanny. The majority of the American audience didn't know what a nanny was at the time the film was released.

Apparently the best film about Women's Suffrage is Iron Jawed Angels which was made as an HBO film in 2004. Starring Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor, Angelica Huston, Vera Farmiga and Julia Ormond it even has Patrick Dempsey as a love interest. How did I never hear about this before???

I have requested this for Mother's Day (OK, who am I kidding? I ordered it myself from Amazon and tossed it to my husband today to be wrapped for Sunday). So I will review it when I have seen it. Stay tuned but it sounds amazing.

Just a brief history lesson here. The women's suffrage movement was active mainly in England, America and the colonies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The purple white and green stood for dignity, purity and hope respectively. It is a popular myth that the colours were green white and violet for "Give Women Votes".

Posters like this one were a common sight in England and the USA. Emmeline Pankhurst coined the phrase "Deeds, not Words" as the male politicians kept telling women to be patient and that the topic would be debated...sometime soon! Women demonstrated in the streets and were often arrested and force fed if they went on hunger strikes. If thrown in gaol, they considered themselves political prisoners.

Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens) from Parade's End gave a little demonstration on a golf course (with her friend Gertie) whose escape was aided by Christopher Tietjens played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I was thrilled to see that Mr. Selfridge included the suffragettes right from the first episode, making it clear that Harry Selfridge's fictitious female financial backer Lady Mae Loxley was also a quiet funder of the women's suffrage movement and held her meetings at the restaurant in Selfridge's.

Edwardian suffragette pendant 

Of course you just know that the real Harry Selfridge would have been marketing all kinds of merchandise to the suffragettes at the time. Indeed he would likely have wanted women to wield more power in England so they could have more influence over how the money was spent. Shrewd man that little Jeremy Piven!

On a more serious note, New Zealand was the first country to grant women full voting rights in 1893 and Switzerland was the last western country to do so in 1971! And just so you know, there are still places in the world where women still cannot vote such as Saudi Arabia and The Vatican. So please vote in every election you are able to. Our ancestors (who were denied the right) won it for us, ladies!

Let me end with a link to a YouTube music video that you may want to show your daughters, granddaughters, sisters and girlfriends. It won an Emmy and you will have Lady Gaga stuck in your head for days!

YouTube Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage

Mary Poppins and the Suffragettes

Mrs. Banks suffragette!

I have loved Mary Poppins since I was little. Since I am approximately as old as this film, I did not watch it often as a child as there were no VCRs and it was only rarely on TV (I had a Mary Poppins book with lots of pictures however). It was when my eldest son was about 2 or 3 years old that we watched this a lot! He used to dance around pretending to be a chimney sweep. Sooooooo cute.  He is now in university, but would still likely watch this with me when he comes home.  I will have to try that.  Right now I have him addicted to Jeeves and Wooster. That's my boy!

Lets go fly a kite...

He used to sing all the songs too, although with slightly different lyrics.  For example:

"Let's go fly a kite and send it snoring!!!"

"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down....in the microwave!!!!"

His father (as a child of course) thought it was "Feed the birds...toughens the bag!!!"

Feed the birds...tuppence a bag!

Anyone else with funny mistaken lyrics from Mary Poppins, please comment below.  I love these and will likely snort my tea through my nose if you have any good ones.  Anyway, I will not review this film.  It's wonderful, and if you haven't watched it for a while, you will really enjoy it.

The reason I got thinking about Mary Poppins and Mrs. Banks was because I came across an old film clip on You Tube which shows a riot at Trafalgar Square in London in 1913 where they actually show Miss Sylvia Pankhurst (the more radical daughter of Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst) being hauled away by police. So the lyrics of the Sister Suffragettes song rather hit home when you actually see Miss Pankhurst being "clapped in irons again".

Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst (she doesn't look militant, does she?)

I am what I would consider a feminist, and I really enjoyed Lady Sybil on Downton Abbey.  I can see her joining in with Mrs. Pankhurst and the suffragettes next season, although they got much less militant during the war (less throwing stones at 10 Downing Street) and put their effort behind the war on the home-front instead.  Mrs. Pankhurst also concerned herself with children's welfare, starting an adoption home yet was criticized for helping mothers of children born out of wedlock. She even adopted 4 orphaned children at the age of 57.  What a woman!




Now that you have watched that, you may enjoy the Disney version. Part of me has mixed feelings about the message Disney is trying to give...that Mrs. Banks should spend more time with her children and not be out campaigning with the suffragettes. However, the message was also leveled at Mr. Banks, so one would assume that the message for both was just to spend more time with the children, not to stop going to work or stop demonstrating in the streets altogether.



My favourite line, bar none, has to be:

"Though we adore men individually, We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!"


VOTES FOR WOMEN!