A Lovely Night: The Making of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Television Classic

Image Entertainment made this documentary short to go with the 2005 DVD issue of the TV musical, "Cinderella." It's a better than usual background look at the making of a movie. The TV special was the largest live stage musical ever made for and broadcast on TV.

The host for this special is Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization at the time. Among those interviewed are Julie Andrews who starred as Cinderella, Kay Ballard who played stepsister Portia, Ilke Chase who was the wicked stepmother,and Edie Adams who played the fairy godmother. It was John Cypher's very first role in film or TV. He talked about going to Richard Rodgers' studio to try out, and says, "Richard Rodgers gave me the part."

To a person, this live TV production was something very special. They talked about many aspects of the project. Much was unique about the production. It was the largest live musical ever done on TV. Chapin explained the chore of making a TV studio out of a legitimate theater. They covered the usual orchestra space with a concrete floor to make a large enough stage.

The production had a cast of 56, an orchestra of 33 and a crew of 80. Crew members and cast who weren't on at any moment hid behind stage screens and props. The working conditions were so close that cast and crew became friends more naturally than under usual movie or TV filming.

There are different estimates on the number of viewers of the TV program that night of March 31, 1957. Julie says 107 million people saw it live; Chapin says more than 120 million watched it. Another source reports more than 130 million and another over 100 million. Whatever the number, all agreed that it set the record as the largest TV viewing audience ever to that time.

One common thing among the stars interviewed in this documentary short was their admiration for the two cast members who played the King and the Queen. Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney weren't as well known among TV viewers as they were Broadway audiences of the day. They were married in real life and were highly regarded in the theatrical world. Stickney had been in a number of TV roles before and was known as a superb character actress. Lindsay also acted but was most famous as a writer. He would partner with Russel Crouse for 27 years on many Broadway plays and musicals. Several were later made into movies.

Kaye Ballard says, "That's what I don't understand about today in show business. I so admired the people that were so much older, that had achieved such excellence in show business. I'm in awe of people that really achieved that kind of excellence."

Julie Andrews talks about the friendships she made with others of the cast. And, her admiration for the Lindsay's. She says they "were very kind to me." When she was dong "My Fair Lady" on Broadway, she was "getting really exhausted. I could go out there (to the Lindsay country home) for the weekend and kind of recuperate."

Host Ted Chapin says that while working on "Cinderella," Richard Rodgers was in New York while Oscar Hammerstein had gone to Australia to watch the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne. It hampered their collaboration for a time, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein museum has a letter that Rodgers finally wrote to Hammerstein: "Oscar, why don't you just come home. We will sit down together and work out any differences we have or will ever have?"

Chapin says that the night of the airing of the live show of "Cinderella" on CBS - March 31, 1957, "was the 14th anniversary of their first collaboration - 'Oklahoma.'"

CBS and the show sponsors had gone all out in promoting the show. It was the second live musical production on TV, after the first one in 1954, "Peter Pan," that ran on NBC. Chapin says that the Pepsi Cola company printed five million comic books to put in its soda six-packs.

John Cypher says that after the live broadcast ended, "we walked outside... it was raining and the streets were absolutley deserted." He said everybody was home watching the show on TV.