Sleeping Beauty

1959

Directed by Clyde Geromini

Welcome back to Movie Monday, dear readers! Since this is the first Monday of the month, we’re taking our customary break from my ongoing exploration of cinema’s most spectacular failures. Think of it as a monthly detox—a chance to remember that movies can actually be visually stunning, emotionally resonant, and not leave you wondering why anyone thought green-screening Nicolas Cage into medieval times was a good idea. Today, we’re examining what many consider Disney’s most artistically ambitious animated feature: Sleeping Beauty.

Released on January 29, 1959, this film was my absolute favorite Disney movie as a kid—at least until the Disney Renaissance came along and Beauty and the Beast stole my heart. There was something about the gothic fairy tale aesthetic, the terrifying dragon finale, and yes, that iconic pink dress that just worked for me. Looking back now, I understand why: Sleeping Beauty is perhaps the most visually sophisticated animated film Disney had produced up to that point, even if it nearly bankrupted the studio and sent Walt Disney into an existential crisis about the future of animation.

The Nearly Decade-Long Journey to Nowhere Fast

The road to Sleeping Beauty began in 1950, when Disney registered the title with the Motion Picture Association of America after audiences responded positively to Cinderella. What followed was eight years of development hell that would make even modern Hollywood executives weep. Walt Disney had one non-negotiable mandate for his creative team: this film absolutely, positively could not be another Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His constant mantra to animators became “it has to be different,” which, while admirable in theory, proved to be a creative straitjacket in practice.

The story went through countless iterations. Early versions featured eight fairies instead of three, a princess who was essentially a “poor little rich girl” trapped in castle walls, and Maleficent conjuring an indestructible spinning wheel that the royal family would desperately try to destroy. One discarded storyline had Aurora switching clothes with her maidservant to secretly escape to a country fair—basically Roman Holiday with a spinning wheel curse. By June 1952, Disney had rejected the entire completed storyboard and ordered his team to start from scratch. Imagine spending over a year developing a project only to have your boss say, “Nope, try again,” and you’ll understand why several story artists probably developed drinking problems.

The production delays were legendary. Initially scheduled for 1955, the film was pushed to February 1957, then Christmas 1957, and finally limped into theaters in January 1959. Part of the problem was that Walt Disney was simultaneously building Disneyland and developing television series like The Mickey Mouse Club. Most of the Sleeping Beauty team was reassigned to these projects, leaving the film in suspended animation—pun absolutely intended. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone that a movie about a character who falls into a deep sleep was itself trapped in dormancy for years.

Voice Casting: A Tale of Tuberculosis and Serendipity

The voice casting process produced some of the most entertaining behind-the-scenes stories in Disney history. Walt Disney spent three years—three entire years—searching for the voice of Princess Aurora before Mary Costa was discovered at a dinner party. Composer Walter Schumann heard her singing and invited her to audition. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Costa had such a strong Southern accent that she nearly lost the role until she proved she could sustain a British accent. Disney called her within hours of her audition to confirm she’d gotten the part, which is either the fastest casting decision in Disney history or proof that after three years of searching, they were getting desperate.

Even more dramatic was Eleanor Audley’s casting as Maleficent. Disney personally suggested her for the role, but Audley initially refused because she was battling tuberculosis and wasn’t sure she’d be strong enough for recording sessions. One of Walt Disney’s favorite voice artists—she’d memorably played Lady Tremaine in Cinderella—Audley only reconsidered when her health improved. Her approach to the character was brilliantly simple: “I tried to do a lot of contrasting to be both sweet and nasty at the same time.” The result was arguably the most iconic Disney villain voice ever recorded.

The supporting cast included Disney voice regulars like Verna Felton as Flora (and possibly Queen Leah, though studio records are mysteriously incomplete), Barbara Luddy as Merryweather, and Bill Thompson as King Hubert. Taylor Holmes was cast as King Stefan in what would be his final film role—he died eight months after the film’s release. Most amusing was the casting process for the twenty singers who auditioned for Prince Phillip before Bill Shirley was selected. Disney insisted that Shirley and Costa record audition songs together to ensure their voices complemented each other, which is either wonderfully thorough or evidence that Disney had trust issues after the three-year Aurora search.

Eyvind Earle’s Beautiful Rebellion

If Sleeping Beauty has one defining characteristic, it’s the revolutionary art direction of Eyvind Earle. Disney gave Earle unprecedented control as both color stylist and artistic director—the first time in studio history that background paintings would define a film’s entire visual approach. Earle’s inspiration came from pre-Renaissance European art, particularly the illuminated book of hours Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Gothic cathedrals, Persian miniatures, and medieval tapestries. He wanted “stylized, simplified Gothic” with “straight, tall, perpendicular lines like Gothic cathedrals.”

The results were stunning and absolutely infuriating to work with. Earle created about 300 visual development paintings and dozens of key background paintings, some fifteen feet long. His detailed, geometric style required animators to work on much larger sheets of paper to accommodate the Super Technirama 70 format, and they struggled to make characters stand out against his intricate backgrounds. Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl actually staged a rebellion, marching into Disney’s office to complain that Earle’s designs were hindering character animation. Disney’s response was essentially, “Deal with it—you’ve adapted to other art styles before.”

The animators weren’t wrong to be frustrated. Character animation became so painstakingly detailed that quality control animator Iwao Takamoto could only complete six or seven drawings per day—a fraction of the twenty-four required for each second of film. Some animators complained that Earle’s backgrounds had become “more like Christmas cards” and that “the backgrounds became more important than the animation.” Eventually, even Disney felt too much focus was being placed on design at the expense of story.

By March 1958, Earle left Disney for John Sutherland Productions. Supervising director Clyde Geronimi then had the background paintings softened with an airbrush so they wouldn’t compete with the animation. It was a compromise that probably saved the film but diluted Earle’s original vision—a perfect metaphor for the tension between artistic ambition and commercial necessity.

Technical Innovation Meets Hand-Crafted Tradition

Sleeping Beauty represented both the future and the end of an era for Disney animation. It was the first animated film shot in Super Technirama 70, a widescreen process that Disney chose specifically to showcase Earle’s detailed artwork. The film featured true stereo sound, recorded with the Graunke Symphony Orchestra in Berlin using state-of-the-art six-track equipment. Due to a musicians’ strike in the United States, composer George Bruns was sent to Germany, where he could experiment with new stereo sound systems that enhanced the film’s musical impact.

Paradoxically, Sleeping Beauty was also the last Disney feature to have cells hand-inked before the studio switched to the Xerox process with One Hundred and One Dalmatians. (Though some scenes, like the forest of thorns in the final battle, were actually animated using xerography as a test.) The combination of cutting-edge technology and traditional craftsmanship created a unique visual texture that has never been replicated.

The live-action reference filming was extensive, with Helene Stanley modeling for Princess Aurora and several fairy scenes, Ed Kemmer as Prince Phillip (riding a wooden wagon that imitated a horse for battle scenes), and Eleanor Audley herself providing reference for Maleficent alongside dancer Jane Fowler. The attention to detail extended to sound effects—a flamethrower was used to create Maleficent’s dragon breath, and castanets provided the snapping jaw sounds.

From Broadway to Ballet: Tchaikovsky’s Triumphant Adaptation

The musical journey of Sleeping Beauty is almost as complicated as its visual development. Initially, Jack Lawrence and Sammy Fain were hired to write original Broadway-style songs. They created an entire song score including “Holiday,” “It Happens I Have a Picture,” “Where in the World,” and “Mirage (Follow Your Heart).” Walter Schumann was set to compose the orchestral score.

Then Eyvind Earle became artistic director, and Disney decided that Broadway-style songs would clash with the medieval aesthetic. He returned to an earlier idea of adapting Tchaikovsky’s 1889 Sleeping Beauty ballet. Schumann tried to create new arrangements that would give the original songs a “Tchaikovsky sound,” but the only song that survived was “Once Upon a Dream,” which was based on the ballet’s “Garland Waltz” theme.

George Bruns replaced Schumann and spent three years studying and experimenting with Tchaikovsky’s music to adapt it for film. The opening “Hail to the Princess Aurora” came from a march in the ballet’s prologue, “I Wonder” used the third strain of the “Garland Waltz,” and the suspenseful scene where Maleficent lures Aurora to the spinning wheel employed the “Puss in Boots” theme from the ballet’s third act. For “Skumps,” the drinking song performed by the two kings, Bruns composed his own tune in Tchaikovsky’s style because nothing suitable existed in the original ballet.

Several songs were composed and then cut, including “Riddle, Diddle, One, Two, Three” (sung by the fairies), “Evil—Evil” (Maleficent and her goons), and “Go to Sleep” (the fairies putting the castle under a sleeping spell). The deleted “Evil—Evil” particularly intrigues me—it was apparently sung by two of Maleficent’s henchmen who were brothers, describing their hatred of mankind. I can’t decide if that would have been brilliantly villainous or completely ridiculous.

Box Office Bomb to Artistic Masterpiece

With a production budget of $6 million, Sleeping Beauty was the most expensive Disney film ever made—over twice as expensive as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp combined. During its original release, it grossed approximately $5.3 million domestically, making it an unequivocal box office bomb. Disney’s distribution division lost $900,000, and the failure contributed to the company’s first annual loss in a decade. Massive layoffs followed in the animation department, and Walt Disney essentially lost interest in animation, focusing instead on television and theme parks.

Contemporary critics were mixed at best. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised the “rich colors” and “luscious sounds” but felt the plot and characters were too similar to Snow White. Time magazine was particularly harsh, calling the drawing “crude” and dismissing it as “sentimental, crayon-book childishness.” Several reviewers noted that while the animation was technically superior to Snow White, it lacked the earlier film’s memorable characters and entertainment value.

How spectacularly wrong they were. Critical reassessment began with the film’s 1979 re-release, when Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert offered more positive reviews. Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called it “the masterpiece of the Disney Studios’ postwar style,” particularly praising the Super Technirama 70 cinematography. Charles Solomon wrote that the film “represents the culmination of Walt Disney’s effort to elevate animation to an art form.”

Today, Sleeping Beauty holds a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising its “lush colors, magical air, and one of the most menacing villains in the Disney canon.” It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2019 as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film’s re-releases have been highly successful, with a lifetime domestic gross of $51.6 million making it one of the top grossing films of 1959, second only to Ben-Hur.

From Castle to Cultural Icon

Perhaps the most visible legacy of Sleeping Beauty is Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, which opened in 1955 while the film was still in production. Originally conceived as Snow White’s castle, it was renamed to help promote the upcoming film. The walk-through exhibit, designed by Eyvind Earle and Ken Anderson, opened in 1957 with hand-painted dioramas depicting the story. After being closed following 9/11, it reopened in 2008 with recreated original displays.

The film’s influence on later Disney animation cannot be overstated. Animators like Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, and Mike Gabriel have cited Sleeping Beauty as inspiring them to enter the business. Its background and color styling heavily influenced Pocahontas, Frozen, Frozen II, and Wish. The film’s character animation informed work on Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and numerous other features.

Maleficent herself has become a cultural phenomenon, appearing in the Kingdom Hearts video game series, the live-action Maleficent films starring Angelina Jolie, the television series Once Upon a Time, and the Descendants franchise. She was featured on a 2017 U.S. commemorative postage stamp celebrating Disney villains, cementing her status as one of the most recognizable antagonists in popular culture.

The Character Conundrum

Here’s something that blew my mind when I learned it: despite being the titular character, Princess Aurora only appears on screen for 18 minutes and has just 18 lines of dialogue. Her first line isn’t spoken until 19 minutes into the film, and her last comes at the 39-minute mark when she learns of her betrothal. Some film scholars argue that the three good fairies are actually the protagonists, since they have the most screen time, character development, and are the most active in driving the story forward.

This creates an interesting paradox. Sleeping Beauty is simultaneously a film about a princess and not about a princess at all. Aurora functions more as a MacGuffin—a beautiful, innocent catalyst for other characters’ actions—than as a traditional protagonist. It’s Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather who make the crucial decisions, take the risks, and ultimately defeat the villain. Even Prince Phillip, despite having limited emotional range (much to animator Milt Kahl’s frustration), is more active in the climax than Aurora herself.

Yet this approach works because the film isn’t really about individual agency—it’s about the power of protection, sacrifice, and love. The fairies give up their magic and live as peasants for sixteen years to keep Aurora safe. They arm Phillip with magical weapons and enchant his sword for the final battle. Their love, rather than romantic love, drives the story’s resolution.

Why Sleeping Beauty Endures

Despite its initial commercial failure, Sleeping Beauty has achieved something few films manage: it’s become more appreciated and influential over time. Part of this is due to its visual sophistication—Eyvind Earle’s art direction was genuinely ahead of its time, creating a medieval fantasy aesthetic that still looks stunning today. The film’s technical innovations, from Super Technirama 70 to stereo sound, established standards that influenced filmmaking for decades.

But the real reason Sleeping Beauty endures is its commitment to artistic vision over commercial safety. This was Disney trying to elevate animation to high art, consequences be damned. The film trusts its audience to appreciate beauty for its own sake, to invest in characters who don’t constantly explain their motivations, and to follow a story that unfolds at a deliberate, almost meditative pace.

Yes, the characterization is thin compared to later Disney films. Yes, Aurora herself is more symbol than character. Yes, the original box office failure nearly killed Disney’s animation department. But Sleeping Beauty proves that sometimes commercial failure and artistic success are not just compatible—they’re almost inevitable companions.

In our current era of franchise-driven entertainment and algorithm-approved content, there’s something radical about a film that prioritizes visual poetry over focus-group tested appeal. Sleeping Beauty doesn’t apologize for being beautiful, challenging, or uncommercial. It exists on its own terms, take it or leave it.

I choose to take it, flaws and all. As a kid, I was mesmerized by Maleficent’s transformation into a dragon, terrified by the forest of thorns, and utterly convinced that Aurora’s dress should be blue (sorry, Flora fans). As an adult, I’m amazed by the film’s artistic ambition, technical innovation, and sheer bloody-minded refusal to be anything other than exactly what Walt Disney envisioned.

Sleeping Beauty reminds us that animation can be art, that commercial failure doesn’t negate artistic achievement, and that sometimes the most important films are the ones that dare to be different. In a medium often dismissed as children’s entertainment, it stands as proof that cartoons can be as sophisticated, beautiful, and emotionally resonant as any live-action drama.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go watch Maleficent turn into a dragon again. Some childhood obsessions never fade—they just develop more sophisticated appreciation over time.

Next Monday, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming of cinematic catastrophes. Until then, may your artistic visions survive executive interference, and may your spinning wheels always lead to true love’s kiss rather than eternal sleep.