Rodgers & Hammerstein Site Rekindles Cinderella's Magic

BROADWAY COMPOSERS RICHARD RODGERS AND OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN actually wrote a musical for television - Cinderella, which was originally broadcast in 1957and starred Julie Andrews.

According to the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, which holds the rights to all the famous duo's shows, the Julie Andrews version of the show was seen by 107 million people when it was shown on March 31, 1957, and was never broadcast again. "The only record of the performance is a black & white kinescope of the rehearsal," said Mike Dvorchak, executive coordinator of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization.

But, the show lives again on the Web, because the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization has just put up excerpts from the rehearsal on their Cinderella site.

Disneyis creating a new version of Cinderella for TV, to be shown Nov. 2 on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney. The show stars Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, and a cast including Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters, Jason Alexander, Victor Garber, Veanne Cox, Natalie Desselle, and someone named Paolo Montalban (whose son could he be?) as The Prince.