The World of Cinderella Take 1

There are over 1500 versions of Cinderella worldwide and in 2000, the Guinness Book of world records reported that Cinderella was Hollywood’s favorite fairy tale. The one most of us Americans are familiar with is the French version of the tale, but almost every culture on earth has a similar tale. All of these share a few common elements. 1. Cinderella/Cinderlad character. 2. Oppressors of the Cinderella/Cinderlad. 3. Magical person that helps  Cinderella achieve her goals in life. 4. Prince/Someone Cinderella wants to impress. 5. Lost item of Clothing. This blog post will of course not be all inclusive, but I think I may be able to give you some idea of some different versions of this tale. If it is of another culture I’ll put the country of origin next to the tale.

1.       Cinderella (France)

So let’s start with the one everyone knows. This is the one with the fairy godmother and the glass slipper and the midnight clock. Need I say more? Everyone knows the story!

 

1.       Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

You know how Cinderella always seems to do everything she’s told and doesn’t seem to have any backbone in that original story? Well that’s not the way this Ella sees it. The problem is that she was cursed with the “gift” of obedience. Any direct order given to her she has to obey. No matter how horrible that command is. Chop off your own head, Ella. Okay. This story shows us a strong female character that struggles to overcome her destiny and forge her own path. And there is a prince that loves her no matter what.

1.       Cinderella (Disney 1950)

This is Disney’s first version of this classic tale. Cinderella is one of Disney’s original princesses and this was always one of my favorite Disney movies. It also has great music like A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes and Bippidi-Boppidi-Boo.

 

1.       The Rough-Face Girl (Algonquin Indian)

The Algonquin people live around the Great Lakes of North America. In this version of the tale, Rough-Face Girl is burnt and scarred from the fires that her evil sisters make her tend night and day. When she goes to marry the Invisible Being, she is told to go home because she is so ugly and her clothes are so strange. But she of all the villagers truly sees the Invisible Being and therefore becomes his bride. I always got the impression that the Invisible Being was kind of a god because his bow was made of the rainbow and the runner of his sled was the Milky Way J. Anyway, the reason I like this version so much is that Cinderella is not exactly beautiful, but the Invisible Being loves her anyway and is able to see past the scars to the person inside.

1.       Cinderellis and the Glass Hill by Gail Carson Levine

Can you tell that I like Gail? Anyway, this is a version of the Norwegian Cinderlad tale called The Glass Hill. Whoever wrote up the description for the back of Gail’s book obviously has never read any other versions of the story because he ties it directly back to the French Cinderella instead. In this version, Cinderellis is an inventor that invents magic powders to do things and Princess Marigold is well the princess. When the king places his daughter at the top of a glass hill and says that only the knight capable of climbing the hill and gaining the golden the apples from her lap will wed her, Cinderellis and his magic powders and magic horses climb the mountain and win fair maiden’s hand.

1.       The Slipper and the Rose (1976)

Probably one of my favorite versions of this classic tale, this musical is a British production starring Richard Chamberlain as the Prince. He is great in this role, but the two best characters are by far the fairy godmother and the queen mother. The fairy godmother is overworked and kind of cranky. It’s great. It also has some great music in it.

 

1.       Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (Zimbabwe)

Another entry in my “Cinderella is not about beauty” campaign. In Mufaro’s Beautiful daughters, both daughters are beautiful, but it is the one who is kind and gentle who is chosen to marry the king who is a shape shifter. A beautiful book.

1.       Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson and Kevin O'Malley

This is about Cinderella’s next door neighbor. The one who took the bus to the ball and wore loafers because it was easier to dance in them. She married the Prince’s younger brother and really is implied to have had a better happily ever after than poor Cinderella.

 

1.       The Glass Slipper (1955).

This one is funny and there is really no magic in it. The Fairy Godmother is slightly dotty and is busily stealing ball gowns off the clothesline for Cindy to wear J. One thing I did find slightly annoying about this movie is that Leslie Caron was a dancer, not a singer, so our musical numbers are long, involved ballet sequences that really have very little to do with the actual plot of the movie.

1.       Sumorella by Sandi Takayama

Sumorella comes from Hawaii and he is actually a Cinderlad. All he wants in life is to become a top Sumo wrestler and he succeeds with the help of the Manapua Man. A funny aspect is that at first MM gives him the ball gown and glass slippers before he gets it right.

 

1.       Cinderella Skeleton by Robert D. SanSouci

Cinderella Skeleton is a skeleton that wants to marry the skeleton prince. Her entire foot actually breaks off and that is one Prince is trying to reattach on people.

1.       Ella Enchanted (2004)

The movie version of the book what I find funny is the medieval modern vibe going off. For instance the wicked stepmother and stepsisters show up in a carriage painted yellow with taxi written across it. And then the Wicked Stepmother has an injection of “batox”.

 

1.       Cinderella (Germany)

This is the German version of the tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. In this version the ghost of Cinderella’s dead mother gives her the things she needs to go to the ball and the stepsisters are cutting off pieces of their feet in order to fit into the slipper. Kind of gruesome I admit, but also fun in that weird sort of way.

1.       Dinorella by Pamela Duncan Edwards

So Cinderella is a Dinosaur. That’s all you really need to know.

1.       Ever After (1998)

Drew Barrymore plays Cinderella in this version, and again there’s not that much magic in it. The prince also whines a lot which makes it a little lower on the Cinderella movie scale as far as I am concerned.

 

1.       The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo

Cinderella is the slave girl Rhodopis. When her golden sandal is stolen by Horus himself and deposited into the lap of the Pharaoh, Pharaoh sets out on a quest to find the owner of the sandal and make her his bride.

1.       Joe Cinders (Southwest American)

A Western version of the tale where Joe has to win the heart of the lovely ranch owner up the lane with the help of a mysterious man in a serape.

 

1.       Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella

This has actually been made into a move three times. The music is great even if the story follows the same familiar pattern. I think my favorite is the Brandy version because it actually looks like a movie and not like someone taped the stage production.

1.       The Irish Cinderlad by Shirley Climo

In this version, Becan has big feet instead of small. When he rescues the princess from the sea monster she searches for him and marries him.

1.       Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella by Tony Johnston

Cinderella is a sasquatch who marries the sasquatch prince.

 

1.       Cinderella (2015)

Same premise as Disney’s cartoon but with real people and some character development. For instance there is a brief moment in this movie in which I actually felt sorry for Lady Tremaine played by the excellent Cate Blanchett. When you can make me feel for the villains without taking away their general nastiness? A plus in my book.

That’s 21 items. I think I will call this a day, and give you another installment in the Cinderella world at a later date. Stay tuned.

Forever (2014-2015)

Forever was only on for one wonderful season. I am still angry that they cancelled it. We actually had a sympathetic character that was fun and engaging and cared for the people around him. Plus Ioan Gruffudd is one of my Hollywood crushes.

Gruffud plays Henry Morgan, an immortal medical examiner that works for the NYPD. He has been alive since the late 1700s. His first death was in 1814 when he was shot on the slave ship The Empress of Africa. One of his main motivations on the show is to find out why he is immortal. That is what makes it fun. He doesn't know why he is immortal, he just is. He lives in the antique shop owned by his grown son, Abraham, played by the wonderful Judd Hirsch.  The only thing I didn't like about this show was the other immortal, Adam, an evil man who keeps trying to get our Henry to turn to the dark side. I realize that the crime of the week is no longer a valid plot point and that we needed Henry to have an arch enemy in his personal life, but still. It is available burn to order off of Amazon and is now streaming on CW Seed.

The Pirates of Dark Water

Pirates of Dark Water is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. The only thing I ever objected to is that they never finished it. You never know whether Ren ever found the Thirteen Treasures of Rule and saved Mer from the evil Dark Water!

                The story revolves around Ren, the young prince of Octopon, who with his "unlikely crew of misfits", the pirate Ioz, the ecomacer Tula voiced by Jodi Benson who was also the voice of Ariel of the Little Mermaid, and Nibbler, the Monkey-Bird, are in search of the Thirteen Treasures of Rule to save Mer. They are thwarted in their quest by the evil Bloth, a pirate who wants the treasures for himself. Despite its many flaws, this show always remains one of my favorites of all time. Some of the episodes are available on DVD.

Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede

Patricia C. Wrede reports in her afterward to her book that Snow White and Rose Red was one of her favorite fairy tales as a child, but when rereading it for this book as an adult, she realized how many plot holes the original book actually had. In her book she does a marvelous job of filling those plot holes with a story set in Elizabethan England and the mystical, magical Faerie of myth and legend.  In her version, John Dee and Edward Kelly, real men who lived during this time, cast a spell that traps Hugh, price of Faerie, and turns him into a monstrous bear. Snow White and Rose Red, or in this version Blanche and Rosamund, and Hugh's brother John must then find out what ails the prince and cure him of the wicked spell that has been cast upon him. One objection I have to this book is Wrede's feeling that she had to write the dialogue in Elizabethan English. I know that was the setting of her novel, but sometimes all those "thees" and "thous" makes for slow reading!

Stars of Fortune by Nora Roberts

Stars of Fortune is a classic adventure story that brings a host of interesting characters together to find a mystical object. Long ago, three goddesses created three magnificent stars to celebrate the birth of a new queen. But an evil goddess curses the stars saying that one day they will fall and she will gain control of them. Flash forward to modern day. Sasha Riggs is a reclusive artist and seeress that is compelled to go to Greece to find out the meaning of her visions. There she meets Bran Killian, Annika, Sawyer King, Riley, and Doyle. Each of these individuals have secrets of their own, but it is only together that they can save the stars and defeat the darkness once and for all.

I am told by someone who reads more Nora Roberts than me that this was not the best example of her work, but I enjoyed the classic adventure story with the hint of romance flung in as well. It is entertaining and I feel that it was a good introduction for Roberts for me. :)

House of Many Shadows by Barbara Michaels

House of Many Shadows is one of Barbara Michaels' best. In it Meg has just survived a horrible accident, an accident that has left her with weird visual and auditory hallucinations. In an effort to cure herself, she manages to convince her rich cousin, Sylvia, to let her stay at her country house in Pennsylvania Dutch territory. But when she gets there, things seem to get worse. Now she cannot seem to differentiate from her hallucinations and the reality of what's going on. But the scary thing is that the caretaker on the property, Andy Brenner, also sees the visions. Is the old house haunted, is Meg really going crazy and pulling Andy into her delusions, or is something else entirely else going on? A fun and engaging read that keeps you guessing right to the end!