Sleeping Beauty is a
American animated feature produced by
Walt Disney and based on the
fairy tale "
La Belle
au bois dormant" by
Charles
Perrault. It was released to theatres on January 29, 1959 by
Buena Vista Distribution.
The sixteenth
animated feature in the
Walt Disney Animated
Classics series, it was the last
fairy
tale produced by
Walt Disney (after
his death, the studio returned to the genre with 1989's
The Little
Mermaid).
The film was directed by
Les Clark,
Eric Larson, and
Wolfgang Reitherman, under the
supervision of
Clyde Geronimi. The
film was based on the fairy tale
Sleeping Beauty by
Charles Perrault, 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 arrangements or adaptations of numbers from the
1890
Sleeping
Beauty ballet by
Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Sleeping Beauty was the first animated feature to be
photographed in the
Technirama widescreen process. The film was presented in
Super Technirama 70 and
6-channel
stereophonic sound in
first-run engagements. Only one other animated film, Disney's
The Black
Cauldron, was shot in Technirama.
Princess Aurora, the film's titular
character, appears for fewer than eighteen minutes in the film
(excluding the time she appears as an infant at the
beginning).
Plot
Set in the 14th century, the newborn Princess Aurora is named after
the
Roman goddess of the dawn
because she fills the lives of her mother and father, King Stefan
and Queen Leah, with
sunshine. While still
an infant, she is
betrothed to the
also-young
Prince
Phillip, son of King Hubert. At her christening, the Three Good
Fairies Flora (dressed in red/pink), Fauna (in
green), and Merryweather (in blue) arrive to bless her. Flora gives
her the gift of
beauty while Fauna gives her
the gift of song. Before Merryweather can give her blessing, the
Dark Fairy
Maleficent appears, expressing
disappointment in not being invited to Aurora's christening
ceremony and curses the princess to die when she touches a
spinning wheel's spindle before the sun sets
on her sixteenth birthday. Maleficent leaves, and Merryweather is
able to use her blessing to weaken the curse so that instead of
death, Aurora, will fall into a deep sleep until she is awakened by
true love's kiss. Though King Stefan decrees all spinning wheels in
the kingdom burned, the Three Good Fairies know Maleficent's curse
cannot be stopped that easily and devise a plan to protect her.
With the king and queen's consent, they disguise themselves as
peasant women and sneak Aurora away with them to a woodland cottage
until her sixteen birthday lapses, passing themselves off as her
aunts and swearing off magic to conceal themselves.
Years later, Aurora, renamed Briar-Rose, had grown into a gorgeous
young woman with the blessings that Flora and Fauna bestowed to
her. Sweet and gentle, she dreams of falling in love one day. By
that time, Maleficent is vexed at her minions' incompetence in
locating the princess and sends her
raven
familiar, Diablo, to look for Aurora. On
the day of her sixteenth birthday, the fairies attempt to make
Aurora a
gown and a
cake.
When their attempts end in disaster they decide to use their wands,
resulting in a magical fight between Flora and Merryweather over
the color of the gown—Flora insisting that it be pink and
Merryweather insisting that it be blue—that catches Diablo's
attention. Meanwhile, Aurora gathers berries while singing to her
animal friends, attracting the attention of Prince Phillip, now a
handsome young man, as he is out riding his horse in the woods.
When they meet, they instantly fall in love, Phillip believing her
to be a peasant girl. Realizing that she has to return home, Aurora
flees from Phillip without ever learning his name. Despite
promising to meet him again, the fairies, not knowing that the man
Aurora met is the prince, reveal the truth of her birth to her and
take her to her parents and her betrothed's family insisting that
she never see him again, much to her dismay. Meanwhile, Phillip
returns home telling his father of a peasant girl he met and wishes
to marry in spite of his prearranged marriage to Princess
Aurora.
In the castle, Maleficent uses her magic to lure Aurora away from
her
boudoir and up to a
tower, where a spinning wheel awaits her. Fascinated
by the wheel with Maleficent's will enforcing it, Aurora touches
the spindle, pricking her finger and completing the curse. The good
fairies place Aurora on a bed and place all in the kingdom in a
deep ageless sleep until the spell is broken. While falling asleep,
King Hubert tries to tell Stefan of his son being in love with a
peasant girl, which makes Flora realize that Prince Phillip is the
man Aurora has fallen in love with, and they fly back to the
cottage for him. At that time, Prince Phillip arrives at the
cottage, but is captured, bound and gagged by Maleficent's minions
and taken to the dungeons of her lair, "The Forbidden Mountain", to
prevent him from kissing Aurora until he is an old man and she
remains as young as the day she pricked her finger—as previewed in
a magical vision which the gloating Maleficent torments him with.
However, the fairies sneak into Maleficent's stronghold and free
the prince. Armed with the magical
Sword of
Truth and The
Shield of
Virtue, Phillip and the fairies escape from
the Forbidden Mountain whilst being attacked by Maleficent's
minions, which the fairies succeed in blocking. When Diablo tries
to warn Maleficent, Merryweather chases him and eventually kills
him by turning him into a stone statue, alerting Maleficent. The
prince braves all obstacles Maleficent throws at him to reach the
palace, including a large bush of thorns, before battling
Maleficent herself when she turns herself into a gigantic
fire-breathing dragon.
After a long fight in which his shield is destroyed, Phillip throws
the sword, blessed by the fairies' magic, into the dragon's heart,
causing Maleficent to fall to her death from a cliff, leaving
nothing but a dark stain and turning the sword black. Phillip
climbs to Aurora's chamber, and removes the curse with a kiss. As
the film ends, the prince and princess both happily learn that
their betrothed and their beloved are one and the same. They arrive
at the ballroom, where Aurora is happily reunited with her parents,
and she and Prince Phillip dance a waltz. They do not notice that
as they dance, Merryweather and Flora have resumed their
disagreement over the color of her dress and continue to change it
from blue to pink with their magic. As the book closes, Aurora's
gown continues to change colors.
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.
While Disney's regular production designer,
Ken Anderson was in charge of the
film's overall look, Disney artist
Eyvind
Earle was made the film's color stylist and chief background
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.
It was also the first time the studio experimented with the
Xerox process.
Woolie Reitherman used it on the dragon as a way to enlarge and
reduce its size, but due to the primitive equipment available in
this early test, the Xerox lines were then replaced with
traditional ink and paint.
Of interesting note is the fact that
Chuck
Jones, who gained fame as an animation director with
Warner Bros. Animation, did some work on the film.
He worked with the studio during a brief period when Warner Bros.
closed its Animation department, anticipating that
3-D film would replace animation as a box office
draw. When the studio was re-opened following the failure of 3-D,
Jones ended his work at Disney and returned to Warner Bros. His
work on
Sleeping Beauty, which he spent four months on,
remained uncredited. Ironically, during his early years at WB,
Jones was a heavy user of Disney-style animation.
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. In hiding, she is called
Briar
Rose, the name of the princess in the
Brothers Grimm variant. The prince was given
the princely name most familiar to Americans in the 1950s: "Prince
Phillip", named after
Prince Philip, Duke of
Edinburgh. The evil fairy was aptly named
Maleficent (which means "Evil-doer"). Sleeping
Beauty's mother is never named in the film itself or the character
reference sheets, always referred to as "the queen," whereas both
her father and that of the prince are given names that are used
several times, both in dialogue and narration.
Walt Disney had suggested that all three good 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, as there are
seven fairies in the story's main reference, Perrault's version. 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." In the event the
individual character of the three good fairies and the elegant
villain proved to be among the film's strongest points.
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, as well as her mocking him 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 , although they were
incorporated into the comic book version of the film. Also
discarded from
Snow White but used in this film were the
ideas of the dance with the makeshift prince (also used as "Prince
Buckethead" in the
Snow White comic book), and the fantasy
sequence of the prince and princess dancing in the clouds, which
was also considered but dropped from
Cinderella.
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
One Hundred and One
Dalmatians, and portrayed Polly Crockett for the TV series
Davy
Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. An episode of
The Mickey Mouse Club
television series features Stanley re-enacting scenes from the
Sleeping Beauty for the Mousketeers to watch (a clip from
this episode is included as a special feature on the
Cinderella Platinum Edition
DVD).
All the live actors' performances were screened for the animators'
reference 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 70 prints were equipped
with six-track
stereophonic
sound; some
CinemaScope-compatible
35mm Technirama prints were released in four-track stereo, and
others had monaural soundtracks. On the initial run,
Sleeping
Beauty was paired with the short musical/documentary film
Grand Canyon which
won an
Academy Award.
During its original release in 1959,
Sleeping Beauty
earned approximately $48 million, making it second only to Ben-Hur,
and costing an enormous budget of $6 million. Despite the financial
success, it was met with mixed reviews from critics, often citing
the film being slowly paced and having little character
development. Nevertheless, the film has sustained a strong
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),
1986,
1993,
1995, and had
a limited release in
2008. When
adjusted for ticket price inflation, the domestic total gross comes
out to $478.22 million, placing it in the top 30 of adjusted
films.
Home video release
Sleeping Beauty was released on both
VHS,
Betamax and
Laserdisc in 1986 in the
Classics collection, becoming the first
Disney Classics video to be digitally processed in Hi-Fi stereo.
The film underwent a digital restoration in 1997, and that version
was released to both
VHS and
Laserdisc again as part of the
Masterpiece Collection.
The 1997 VHS edition also came with a special commemorative booklet
included, with brief facts on the making of the movie. In 2003, the
restored
Sleeping Beauty was released to DVD in a 2-disc
"Special Edition" which included both a widescreen version
(formatted at 2.35:1) and a
pan and
scan version as well.
A 50th Anniversary
Platinum Edition
release of
Sleeping Beauty, as a 2-disc DVD &
Blu-ray Disc, was released on October 7, 2008
in the US, making
Sleeping Beauty the first entry in the
Platinum Edition line to be released in
high definition video. This release is
based upon a new 2007 restoration of
Sleeping Beauty from
the original Technicolor negatives (
intrapositives several generations removed
from the original negative were used for other home video
releases). The new restoration features the film in its full
negative aspect ratio of 2.55:1, wider than both the prints shown
at the film's original limited Technirama engagements in 2.20:1 and
the CinemaScope-compatible reduction prints for general release at
2.35:1. The Blu-ray set features
BD-Live, an
online feature, and the extras include a virtual castle and
multi-player games. The Blu-ray release also includes disc 1 of the
DVD version of the film in addition to the two Blu-ray discs. The
DVD was released on October 27, 2008 in the UK. The Blu-ray release
is the first ever release on the Blu-ray format of any Disney
feature produced by Walt Disney himself.
Other appearances
Aurora is one of the seven
Princesses of
Heart in the popular
Square Enix
game
Kingdom Hearts
(although her appearances are brief), and Maleficent is a villain
in all three
Kingdom
Hearts games, and as a brief ally at the third game's
climax. The good fairies appear in
Kingdom Hearts II, giving
Sora new clothes. The
upcoming game for the
PSP,
Kingdom Hearts Birth
by Sleep, will feature a world based on the movie,
Enchanted Dominion, and confirmed characters include Aurora/Briar
Rose, Maleficent, the three faires and Prince Phillip, the latter
serving as temporary party member for Aqua during her battle
against Maleficent.
She is also a playable character in the game
Disney Princess.
Princess Aurora, Prince Phillip, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather were
featured as guests in
Disney's House of Mouse and
Maleficent was one of the villains in
Mickey's House of
Villains.
Maleficent's goons appear in the Maroon Cartoon studio lot in the
film
Who Framed Roger
Rabbit.
The first all-new story featuring the characters from the movie
appeared in
Disney
Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams, the first
volume of collection of the
Disney
Princesses. It was released on September 4, 2007.
Various characters from the film also appear in the
board game of the
same name.
Characters
- Princess Aurora/Briar
Rose, voiced by Mary
Costa.
- Maleficent, voiced
by Eleanor
Audley.
- Flora the red fairy, voiced by
Verna Felton
- Fauna the green fairy, voiced by
Barbara Jo
Allen
- Merryweather the blue fairy, voiced by
Barbara Luddy
- 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 Bob
Amsberry.
- The Owl, voiced by Dallas McKennon.
Awards and nominations
Nominated
- Grammy Awards
- Best Soundtrack Album, Original Cast - Motion Picture or
Television
Media and merchandise
Theme parks
Sleeping Beauty cast member at Walt
Disney World
Sleeping Beauty was made while
Walt Disney was building Disneyland
(hence the four year production time). To
help promote the film,
Imagineers named
the park's icon "
Sleeping Beauty
Castle" (it was originally to be Snow White's).
An indoor walk-through exhibit was added to the empty castle
interior in 1957, where guests could walk-through the castle, up
and over the castle entrance, viewing "Story Moment" dioramas of
scenes from the film, which were improved with animated figurines
in 1977. It closed shortly after the
September 11, 2001 attacks,
supposedly because the dark, unmonitored corridors were a risk.
After being closed for seven years, the exhibit space underwent
extensive refurbishment to restore the original 1957 displays, and
reopened to guests on November 27, 2008. Accommodations were also
made on the ground floor with a "virtual" version for disabled
guests unable to navigate stairs.
Le Château de la Belle au Bois
Dormant
at Disneyland Paris is a variant of Sleeping Beauty
Castle. The version found at Disneyland Paris is much more
reminiscent of the film's artistic direction.
Hong Kong
Disneyland
opened in 2005, also with a Sleeping Beauty Castle,
nearly replicating Disneyland's original design.
Princess Aurora (and, to a lesser extent, Prince Phillip, the three
good fairies, and Maleficent) makes regular appearances in the
parks and parades.
In Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland Paris, a sleeping dragon,
designed to look like Maleficent's dragon form, is found in the
lower level dungeon.
Maleficent
is featured as one of the villains in the nighttime show Fantasmic!
at Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios
.
Soundtrack listing
- "Main Title"/"Once Upon a
Dream"/"Prologue"
- "Hail to the Princess Aurora"
- "The Gifts of Beauty and Song"/"Maleficent Appears"/"True Love
Conquers All"
- "The Burning of the Spinning Wheels"/"The Fairies' Plan"
- "Maleficent's Frustration"
- "A Cottage in the Woods"
- "Do You Hear That?"/"I Wonder"
- "An Unusual Prince"/"Once Upon a Dream"
- "Magical House Cleaning"/"Blue or Pink"
- "A Secret Revealed"
- "Skumps (Drinking Song)"/"The Royal Argument"
- "Prince Phillip Arrives"/"How to Tell Stefan"
- "Aurora's Return"/"Maleficent's Evil Spell"
- "Poor Aurora"/"Sleeping Beauty"
- "Forbidden Mountain"
- "A Fairy Tale Come True"
- "Battle with the Forces of Evil"
- "Awakening"
- "Finale"
The
Classic Disney: 60
Years of Musical Magic album includes "Once Upon a Dream"
on the
green
disc, and "I Wonder" on the
purple
disc. Additionally,
Disney's Greatest Hits includes
"Once Upon a Dream" on the
blue disc.
No Secrets performed a cover version of
"Once Upon A Dream" on the album
Disneymania 2, which appears as a music
video on the 2003 DVD. More recently,
Emily
Osment sang a remake of "Once Upon A Dream", released on the
Disney Channel on September 12, 2008,
and included on the Platinum Edition DVD and Blu-ray.
References
- Disney animator Burny Mattinson talks Sleeping
Beauty"
- Heidi Anne Heiner, " The Annotated Sleeping Beauty"
- Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, "
Briar Rose"
- http://www.ldsfilm.com/misc/lds_Top5_boxoffice.html
- All Time Box Office Adjusted for Ticket Price
Inflation
- http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=407 Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray
release
- http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/junglebook/
Jungle Book, the first platinum title for DVD, not sleeping
beauty
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