The Glass Slipper (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

The Glass Slipper (1955) was a live-action version of the Cinderella tale which M-G-M produced following their successful Lili (1953). Both films were a kind of quasi-musical starring Leslie Caron as a forlorn innocent, and were made by much of the same creative team, including composer Bronislau Kaper and screenwriter/lyricist Helen Deutsch. Kaper and Deutsch had collaborated on the popular song "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" for Lili, and reteamed for a romantic ballad for The Glass Slipper, "Take My Love"—an infectious waltz anchoring the film and score. Like Lili, The Glass Slipper features music as a major component: in addition to the song, there are two lengthy ballets and a third dream sequence significantly carried by music. The Glass Slipper relied even more on Kaper's music than Lili, with Kaper providing not only the love theme and ballets, but large-scale symphonic music for the royal palace, and a heartfelt, melancholy theme for the main character. Kaper loved this type of scoring in which music played a foreground element, and he colorfully evoked the film's fairy-tale world of 18th century Europe. Much of The Glass Slipper's score was revised during post-production, resulting in several versions of many cues—including the ballets—being recorded. FSM's premiere release of the original soundtrack features the complete score as it is heard in the film, followed by additional and alternate versions on a bonus disc—much as we presented Kaper's magnificent score for the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty (FSMCD Vol. 7, No. 16). The entire soundtrack has been remixed from the original 35mm three-track stereo recordings, as conducted for the film by Miklós Rózsa (a little-known fact).