Word: cinderella
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...glitter and good will. These gaudy little baubles are easy enough to tolerate in the floodtide of fellowship that ebbs and flows around Christmas. Holidays are over, however, a cold wet January is upon the land, and The Slipper and the Rose lingers on, looking as foolish as Cinderella hotfooting it out of the palace as her ball gown turns to rags...
Indeed-and alas-this is Cinderella's story, retooled for music by the Sherman brothers (Mary Poppins), who specialize in producing viscous show tunes...
...between the acts of this royal variety show are several excursions off to the home of the wicked Stepmother (Margaret Lockwood-the heroine, during rather better times, of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes). There, Cinderella (Gemma Craven) gets snooted by her Stepsisters and gazes sorrowfully into the flames of the scullery fire, waiting for her Fairy Godmother to come along...
...course, and after several more musical interludes, the Fairy Godmother (Annette Crosbie) breezes in and waves her wand. Cinderella is off in style to the ball, where her charms make the Prince break out in a fine sweat, as if suffering the aftereffects of a curry dinner...
Director Bryan Forbes (The Wrong Box) holds such worthies as the late Edith Evans, Kenneth More and Hordern in reserve for a comic turn or two, but their ministrations are futile. Forbes recklessly appends another act to the Cinderella saga in which the commoner is forbidden to marry the Prince. She is carried by coach from the kingdom, set up in a palace where she can do what she does best - mope. The Prince knuckles under to the pressures of his station, slouches toward the altar to take another bride. Fairy Godmothers are not large on unhappy endings, however...