Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, the film follows Princess Aurora, who was cursed by the evil fairy Maleficent to die from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday; she is rescued by three good fairies, who change the curse so that Aurora falls into a deep sleep and will be awakened by true love's kiss. The production was supervised by Clyde Geronimi, and was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and Les Clark. It features the voices of Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson.
Sleeping Beauty began development in 1950. The film took nearly a decade and $6 million () to produce, and was Disney's most expensive animated feature at the time. The film's tapestry-like art style was devised by Eyvind Earle, who was inspired by pre-Renaissance European art; its score and songs, composed by George Bruns, were based on Pyotr Tchaikovsky's 1889 ballet. Sleeping Beauty was the first animated film to use the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process and was the second full-length animated feature filmed in anamorphic widescreen, following Lady and the Tramp (1955).
Sleeping Beauty was released in theaters on January 29, 1959, to mixed reviews from critics. The film was a box-office bomb in its initial release, grossing $5.3 million (), and losing $900,000 () for the distributor. Consequently, many employees from the animation studio were laid off. Sleeping Beauty re-releases have been successful, and it has become one of Disney's most artistically acclaimed features. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture at the 32nd Academy Awards.
Maleficent, a live-action reimagining of the film from the eponymous character's perspective, was released in 2014, followed by a sequel in 2019. The latter year, Sleeping Beauty was selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress's National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
In 14th-century Europe, King Stefan and Queen Leah welcome their newborn daughter, Aurora, and proclaim a holiday for their subjects to pay homage to the princess. At her christening, Aurora is betrothed to Prince Phillip, the son of Stefan's friend King Hubert, in order to unite their kingdoms. The three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, each bless Aurora with one gift. After Flora and Fauna give her beauty and song, the evil fairy Maleficent appears, angry at not being invited. She places a curse on the princess, predicting that before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Merryweather uses her gift to soften the curse so that Aurora will instead fall into a deep sleep until a true love's kiss breaks the spell.
Still fearful, Stefan orders all the kingdom's spinning wheels to be burned. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather devise a plan to hide Aurora in a secluded location and raise her themselves until her sixteenth birthday, to which Stefan and Leah reluctantly agree. The fairies move into a forest cottage, giving up magic and living like human peasants; they also rename Aurora to Briar Rose.
On Aurora's sixteenth birthday, the fairies send her to gather berries so they can prepare a surprise party. In the forest, Aurora sings to her animal friends, drawing the attention of Phillip, now a handsome young man. They fall in love without revealing their names, and Aurora invites Phillip to the cottage that evening. Meanwhile, Flora and Merryweather have a duel with magic wands over the color of Aurora's birthday dress, drawing the attention of Maleficent's pet raven, Diablo. When Aurora returns and tells the fairies that she has fallen in love, they reveal her true identity (which Diablo overhears) and inform her that she must never see her beloved again. Meanwhile, Phillip tells his father about the girl he met and wants to marry, unaware that she is the princess to whom he is betrothed. Hubert fails to dissuade him, and Phillip rides off to the cottage.
Shortly before sunset, the fairies bring Aurora to the castle for her birthday celebration. Maleficent appears as a glowing ball of light and hypnotically beckons Aurora to a tower room, where Aurora pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel (that Maleficent conjures) and falls into a deep sleep. The fairies place the sleeping Aurora in the highest tower, and put the entire kingdom to sleep until she is awakened. While doing so, Flora overhears a conversation between Hubert and Stefan, and realizes that Phillip is the man Aurora met. The fairies rush to the cottage, only to discover that Phillip has been abducted by Maleficent.
At her domain, the Forbidden Mountain, Maleficent reveals Aurora's identity to Phillip; she also tells her plans to lock Phillip away until he is an old man on the verge of death before releasing him to meet Aurora, who will not age a day. The fairies rescue Phillip and arm him with the magical Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue to fend off Maleficent's goons. Maleficent surrounds Stefan's castle with a forest of thorns, but Phillip breaks through it. Then, she transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, confronting Phillip personally. The fairies enchant Phillip's sword, which he throws into Maleficent's heart, killing her.
Phillip finds Aurora and awakens her with a kiss, bringing the rest of the kingdom out of their slumber. The two descend to the ballroom, where Aurora reunites with her parents and happily dances with Phillip, as the good fairies look on with joy.
Voice cast
Mary Costa as Princess Aurora, also known as Briar Rose and Sleeping Beauty, an innocent and romantic daughter of King Stefan and Queen Leah who is cursed by Maleficent. Bill Shirley as Prince Phillip, King Hubert's bold and spirited son and Aurora's "true love", to whom she was betrothed. He is occasionally accompanied by his horse, Samson. Eleanor Audley as Maleficent, a powerful evil fairy and the self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil" who is responsible for all misfortune in King Stefan's kingdom. Verna Felton as Flora, the domineering and responsible self-appointed leader of the Three Good Fairies. Her signature color is red. Barbara Luddy as Merryweather, a feisty and impulsive good fairy who challenges Flora's leadership. Her signature color is blue. Barbara Jo Allen as Fauna, a sweet and affectionate good fairy who is a peacemaker between Flora and Merryweather. Her signature color is green. Taylor Holmes as King Stefan, Aurora's placid and dignified father. Bill Thompson as King Hubert, Phillip's jovial and bombastic father.
Candy Candido, Pinto Colvig, and Bob Amsberry voiced the Goons, Maleficent's bumbling but loyal henchmen. Candido also voiced Diablo, Maleficent's pet raven. Dallas McKennon voiced the Owl, one of Aurora's animal friends, with Purv Pullen providing the sounds of other forest animals. Marvin Miller was the film's narrator.
Production
Story development Walt Disney first considered making an animated version of Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" in 1938; Joe Grant did preliminary story work in the late 1930s, but the project did not materialize at the time. After a preview audience's positive response to Cinderella, Disney registered Sleeping Beauty as a planned production title with the Motion Picture Association of America on January 19, 1950. By November of that year, the film's development had been confirmed by the Los Angeles Times. Disney envisioned Sleeping Beauty as the pinnacle of his studio's achievements in animation and was willing to pool all the resources needed to achieve that. He also wanted the film to stand out from his previous fairy tale features, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Cinderella (1950), and repeatedly told his staff during production that it had to be different.
Key story work was done by Ted Sears, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, and Ralph Wright, who were joined by other story artists as production continued. They discarded the second half of Perrault's original tale, which tells about the life of sleeping beauty married to an unknown prince, and focused on its first half to develop a more compelling romance between the characters. The earliest story outline was written by April 1951, featuring a climactic wake-up kiss and the encounter between prince and princess before she succumbs to the curse. The story artists also expanded the role of fairies (who had been reduced from eight to four), turning the good fairies into comical guardians of the princess, and the evil fairy into a more powerful villain. The outline indicated the names of the fairies and their corresponding magical abilities: Tranquility, the Fairy of Dreams; Fernadell, the Fairy of the Forest; Merryweather, the Fairy of the Elements; and Maleficent, the Fairy of Darkness. In this version of the story, Maleficent conjures an indestructible spinning wheel, which the king and queen unsuccessfully try to get rid of before they are forced to never let their daughter out of the castle. The princess was envisioned as a "poor little rich girl", burdened with her royal lineage and dreaming of leaving the castle and exploring the world. Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, the princess disguises herself as a maidservant and secretly escapes to a nearby forest (or country fair), where she meets the prince and falls in love with him. The prince travels to a faraway land and returns a few years later to fight Maleficent (with the help of the good fairies), find the sleeping princess, and wake her up with a kiss. The story ideas at the time also included the good fairies attempting to surround the castle with a protective circle, and Maleficent having a falcon sidekick (who was rewritten as a comically incompetent vulture in a later treatment).
By June 1952, the full storyboard of Sleeping Beauty was completed, but Disney rejected it, finding its approach too similar to his studio's earlier fairy tale features. The story artists discarded the original version and started from scratch, but kept several ideas from earlier suggestions, such as the prince's acquaintance with the princess before the curse is fulfilled, and a shorter deep sleep. Part of the difficulty in production was in differentiating the studio's third princess, who had been named Aurora, from Snow White and Cinderella. The story artists came up with an idea of the fairies raising her in a forest cottage, with Aurora unaware of her background or the danger she faced. She was also given a more contemporary personality to make her more appealing to audiences. The improvement of his animators' skill in drafting a realistic male figure prompted Disney to expand the role of the prince, who had been named Phillip. The story team initially developed a sequence in which Aurora and Phillip meet during a treasure hunt, but later abandoned it, feeling it deviated too much from the central storyline; instead, it was written that the characters would meet in the forest by chance, as in the early 1951 outline. To further establish Phillip as Aurora's "true love", the story artists developed a plot in which Maleficent kidnaps him and plans to keep him prisoner in her castle for a century (which would also be a reference to the 100-year slumber in Perrault's story).