I’m not a big slipper wearer.
Strike that. I wear comfy slippers when I put my jammy pants on at night. They are called Rockdove’s, and they just slip on, easy-peasy. I’m not sure why they named them the way they did. Rockdoves. That’s just a common pigeon, with thousands of different varieties around the world. Maybe that’s the point. But I’m off the point already.
I don’t wear the other kind of slippers. Like, ladies’ slippers. And of course, whenever I hear the word “slipper,” I think of Cinderella and her glass version.
All this, because it was on this date, February 16, 1950, that Disney’s Cinderella opened in theaters all across the United States.
Good old Walt Disney. Although he was born in Chicago, he started his cartooning career in Kansas City. He and his brother, Roy, moved to Hollywood in 1923, and that is when things started to click. They began making a series of animated short films called Alice in Cartoonland, featuring various animated characters.
When you look at those early years, Disney put his time in. It wouldn’t be until 1928 that he introduced that crazy little guy in his red skivvies, the one and only Mickey Mouse. Disney came out with two silent movies. Then, later in the year, in November, Mickey debuted on the big screen in Steamboat Willie. It was the first fully synchronized sound cartoon ever made. Walt did the voice for that one, by the way.
I am thankful for the Disney world in my childhood world. There are so many good ones, but the ones I loved the most might be One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Or The Jungle Book.
But Disney didn’t start with those. The first big winner was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. I guess he whistled while he worked because Walt took a big risk on this — he put $1.5 million of his own money into this first-ever full-length animated feature film. The old saying goes: “You have to spend money to make money.” Well, this really rang true for Disney — the film grossed $8 million at the box office. This was a crazy, incredible amount of money during the Great Depression. Heck, it is a dang lot of money now.
The Cinderella story was based on another Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Disney picked it because it had similarities to the Snow White story. The Prince, kissing the girl, and all that.
We all know the story, and it definitely has its moments. The fairy tale starts out telling us the story of a beautiful young girl, albeit dirty from sweeping chimneys. We find out her father died at some point. My guess is he had a heart attack, given the horrible wife he chose. But there it went. Dear old dad left Cinderella at the mercy of her oppressive stepmother and two conniving stepsisters.
Just as in Snow White, Cinderella gets help from her friends. One of them found dwarves. The other found little singing mice and birds. And then came the Big Kahuna. The Fairy Godmother. She sure could wave a wand.
Any way. The movie took six years to make, and Cinderella became one of Disney’s best-loved films of all time. It was also one of the highest-grossing movies of 1950.
Disney was smart with his re-releases. He did this with a lot of his animated features. Cinderella came out again in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981, and 1987, keeping her popularity through new generations. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo that.
But that glass slipper. It seemed, at first, to be her mistake. But in the end, it turned out to be her golden ticket, her saving grace, her ace in the hole.
And maybe we, too, should remember that. Sometimes, things seem to go a bit wrong. We step right out of our slipper. But perhaps, in the end, that part of our lives put us on the way to greater things. And like the slipper, it fits us, and only us, perfectly.
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“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”
― C.S. Lewis
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Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
― Charles Dickens
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“Providence trains us by disappointment, surprises us with unexpected success, and turns our seeming trials into blessings.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Jo’s Boys
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Slipping. When the slipper slips.
