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SIGHT AND SOUND By Leo Mishkin NEW YORK N Y May 3 Unless shes very careful from now on spacing her ap arances on television more judiciously maybe a guest shot once a month or so or perhaps an Ed Mur row Person to Per ¬ son interview a young lady named Cinderella may find herself going the way of Red Buttons Jmo gene Coca Wally Cox and so many other top names ori the air who once were very popu ¬ lar indeed and then suddenly discovered that they had to use thetrade term worn out their welcome Cinderella happens to be a big name on TV right now Rodgers and Hammerstein did a musical about her a couple of weeks ago the Sadlers Wells Ballet now known as the Royal Ballet danced her story to the music of Serge Prokofieff last Monday night and at hand at this Firestone hav ¬ ing it that a girl named Frances Wyatt will also sing a Cinderella theme on May 13 in the role of a young lady who meets and falls in love with a handsome prince The way things are going as a matter of fact the name Cinderella may very well come up for nomination in next years Emmy awards by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as the most popular charac ter in a continuing series on television dur ¬ ing the spring of 1957 But of course there will probably be some dissension about it shed have to compete with Phil Silvers and Bishop Sheen and Ed Wjmv explaining that hes no longer a comic but a dramatic actor now nowAt At any rate Cinderella is very hot prop ¬ erty right now And in all truth the Sad ¬ lers Wells Bal excuse me the Royal Bal ¬ let gave her full attention and care in their own special version of her story last Monday night on NBCTVs Producers Showcase With Margot Fonteyn dancing the title rloe with Michael Somea as Prince Charming and with the full resources of the NBC studios at the companys disposal the familiar tale came off with considerable beauty and splendor For those who saw it in color moreover the legend must have had even more magnificence it almost goes without saying that any ballet worthy of the name is immeasurably enhanced by the presence of color rather than mere mereblack black and white reception However there are still a few points to be made in connection with the formal staging of a formal ballet on television that may be otherwise overlooked I dont pre ¬ tend here to be another Agnes deMille with a lecture on what the ballet actually is but it did strike me watching this Cinderella of the Royal Ballet that ballet and televi ¬ sion are somehow incomptible and that only in special instances when a particular work is created for TV itself is their any sizeable area in which the two are mutu ¬ ally beneficial beneficialA A formal ballet designed for presenta ¬ tion on the living stage needs vast room and space to fulfill its functions The cho ¬ reography is worked out in a series of de ¬ signs and overall effects one flowing into another yet all based of course on the classic morms and patterns that have dis ¬ tinguished the ballet for the past 50 years No matter how ingeniously such ballet is adapted to TV no matter how mobile the cameras or how clever the production the net result of having this overall effect reduced to the confines of a 21inch screen is to destroy the primary purpose of the ballet itself itselfEvery Every trick every ingenuity was used in the case of Cinderella The cameras moved from long shots to closeups with effortless ease The pumpkin was trans ¬ formed into the golden coach before your very eyes The ballroom looked like a true ballroom which is more than you can say for the Rodgers and Hammerstein ballroom on THEIR Cinderella They even had a narrator at the beginning and at the end to tell you what the story of Cinderella was all about All of which mae to naught as far as television itself was concerned The simple fact remained that you watched it on a 21inch screen and what was designed for a large stage simply didnt didntfit fit into a 21 inch screen in the first place I came away from this Royal Ballet Cinderella with just one feleing wishing I could have seen it in a theatre On the other hand that would make still another Cinderella to contend with this season and maybe its time we got on to other matters instead The legend may be im ¬ mortal but honest now do we really have to have it every other week on TV There must be something else theresimply must that canbe used for an hour and a half color spectacular these days Hell shes not the only dame who married a handsome prince
