Sleeping Beauty (Continued)

The painted likeness of the portrait of the fairest lady represented the most exhaustive research ever made in connection with the great classic fairytales, and there was no doubt, said the Disney Researchers, that the heroine of the tale, the Princess Aurora, was once a reigning flesh-and-blood beauty of medieval European courts. They also felt that she must have been a blonde. Her fabled nativity presupposes the golden coloring-the sunny tresses and the blue eyes of her description in the Charles Perrault version from which Disney and his artists shaped their own expanded animation. The legend of Aurora, named for the Dawn, had innumerable variations-by word of mouth, by song of early troubadours, by book in German, French, English and Flemish. All vied to perpetuate her blonde beauty and the virtues which won the valiant prince. Illustrators of the bookish versions also vied to capture her rapturous charms, which was done in full justice by Disney's paintings-in-motion set to sound, Technirama and Technicolor.

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Much work went into production of Sleeping Beauty. Names of characters were fussed upon for months. Notice that names like Merryweather had to do with the climate, Flaura had domain over the plants, etc. Stories were expanded, for instance, when Walt had the fairies venture into the Forbidden Mountains, which was not in the original story. Almost a year was spent on story boards, which were completed in 1952. The music adapted to the movie is the Sleeping Beauty Ballet and Mary Costa, who voiced Princess Aurora, sang two of the five musical numbers, reciting keynotes of the young Princess Aurora's radiant romance with the Prince. They are I Wonder and Once Upon a Dream. In the role, she herself is addressed with choral Hail to the Princess Aurora. Princess Aurora's visual design was structured around the thin and elegant features of Audrey Hepburn as requested by Walt Disney himself. In fact he was noted as saying at the start of the entire project that he had considered her voice for the role as well.

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One of the earliest known pre-production concept drawings.

Voice casting for the cartoon characters in many Walt Disney pictures including Sleeping Beauty was done after the characters had been fully developed by the artists. Extensive testings were made before the voices were chosen. For the statistic minded, it took one million drawings to make the 75 minutes of film, where 300 artists and artisans teamed on the production which took six years to make. Disney's statement to the artists upon the start of this enormous production was, "Make the characters seem as real and believable as life - with all the powers of illusionments at your command. I want this picture to feel like a fantasy while at the same time having the audience feel that they are watching a story unfold with real human characters. I want the film to be just as attractive to younger audiences as it will be to mature audiences. No one in the audience at any time should feel that this story is not a possibility in the realm of fantasy."

Disney searched long and hard for the voice of Aurora before he hired Mary Costa, born in April of 1930. Herself a noted beauty familiar to television audiences and the concert stage, the 22 year old songstress with the golden tones was selected by Disney as the perfect voice for Aurora the first time she tested. Mary went to Disney studios with the intention of voicing Aurora but mainly to meet Walt Disney. She did not meet him until after the film was finished a few years later. Much work had to be done on her English accent for the role. Mary Costa went to Hollywood with planned deliberation to further the musical career she had begun in Knoxville, TN., her birthplace, by singing Sunday school solos at the age of six. Never faltering in confidence, she gained teen-age fame as soloist at weddings and other social events. At 17 she would go to California with her mother, soon won a music sorority award as the outstanding voice among the Southern California High School seniors. She wed Frank Tashlin, motion picture writer of such films as One Touch of Venus, The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. He would also move into directing films such as The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, Caprice and The Glass Bottom Boat. Glamorous blue-eyed blond of tremendous ambition and energy, she was TV hostess on Climax and Shower of Stars and had dramatic roles in television and theatrical films The Merry Widow and The Voice of Firestone. She appeared in 1972 as Jetty Treffz in The Great Waltz and would appear in a documentary titled Once Upon a Dream: The Making of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty in 1997.

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Top Left: Mary Costa, voice of Princess Aurora. Top Right: Costa in a tribute to
Sleeping Beauty years later. Bottom: Working with the Disney staff.

The voice of Maleficent is supplied by Eleanor Audley, who had previously been seen in Gambling House, Pretty Baby and a slew of television appearances including Our Miss Brooks, The 20th Century Fox Hour, The Ford Television Theater, I Love Lucy, The Millionaire and The Real McCoys. She also did prior work for Walt Disney portraying Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepmother in Cinderella. She would later be seen many times on The Wonderful World of Disney as well as The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Hazel, The Joey Bishop Show, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Jack Benny Program. Later she would do 15 episodes playing Mother Eunice Douglas (Eddie Albert's mother) in Green Acres, in spite of the fact that she was only one year older than he was, and 8 episodes playing Barbara's mother in My Three Sons. She would later provide the voice for Disney's Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland and it is still used to this day. Born in 1905 in New York City under the name of Eleanor Zellman, she grew up as a stage trained actress. She did work on the stage and when first arriving in Hollywood would be heard on radio in Escape, Suspense, and My Favorite Husband. She died of respiratory failure in North Hollywood in November of 1991. She had become one of the most well-known character and voice actresses of her time.

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Eleanor Audley, voice of Maleficent and her drawn character.

George Bruns would do the musical adaptation from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty Ballet. At first, Disney was worried about using this as a source of the music because of negative response over Fantasia using original classical music. Walt hired several composers to give it a shot and had them do several themes but in the end decided that since many pieces of classical music were changed for other pieces of entertainment, and he liked the sound of the music so much, it would be wise to stick with his original choices. George Brun's music for Sleeping Beauty earned him a nomination in 1960 for Best Score, losing to Porgy and Bess. The expressive Sleeping Beauty Ballet, while keynoting the enchantments of the picture, is not used as a whole. It is re-creatively adapted and is used to theme the romantic songs and orchestrations of the most persuasive love tale preserved from medieval mythology. Contrary to the usual animation procedure, the music in this case had to be adapted to the story action, the melody adjusted to the figures and scenes on the story boards. Generally, it was the other way around. In making his adaptation, Bruns was in constant story conferences with Walt and the animators, who were shaping the characters and story progression. Thus, the balled rhythms were transformed into animation tempo in a brilliant technical achievement. About one third of the original balled is preserved, and Bruns declared that "The original flavor of the balled is never lost. This was most important to me and to Walt, we had discussed this many times during pre-production." The musical score was performed by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.

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George Bruns working on Sleeping Beauty and, in later years,
at Disney Studios (on Dopey Drive).

There were several problems that came with worldwide release. For instance, the Swedish version of the film, censors removed Price Phillip hitting the Dragon's snout with his sword. The Swedish Film Board deemed this scene too violent for smaller children. Another scene cut was when Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on the spindle, and some blood was shown on her finger. While this was in the initial release, it was later edited out of re-release prints and some video versions. Several decisions to change scenes in the film were made right before the initial release. The fairies are discussing how to help the King and Queen, Disney told the animators to change the shape of the cookies being made to the shape of Mickey Mouse. The dragon-breath sound effect at the end of the film sounded too false to Walt, so instead he had the sound designers use a flame-thrower to create the sound effect. Disney also deemed near final production that after Princess Aurora awakens, she would have no dialogue at all. Chuck Jones, who was famous for his work at Warner Brother's animation, worked for a short time on the movie in the first months of pre-production, but he did not approve of the fact that every single thing that was done had to be approved by Walt Disney himself. He went back to Warner Brothers where he worked in animation until 1964.

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Chuck Jones, Warner's famous animator, who worked on Sleeping Beauty
for a short period during pre-production and decided to leave the position.

To promote the film, the full Disney promotional department went into full swing. Disney released everything from comic books to over ten different record albums, including 2 separate soundtracks. Children's books were re-packaged with the Disney art on the cover and large standees and six-sheet posters were made available to theaters to catch the public eye. Newspaper coloring contests were used in many national newspapers with winners receiving either soundtrack albums or tickets to see the film.

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