Helene Stanley, The Original Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty
We’ve already talked about how Marge Champion helped bring Snow White to life, now let’s talk about the woman behind Cinderella and Aurora: Helene Stanley.
Helene Stanley was born Dolores Freymouth in July 1929, and worked her way into a contract with MGM in the early ‘40s. She made several small appearances in films—most notably, to me, anyways, Thrill of a Romance with Esther Williams and Van Johnson—and was briefly married to Johnny Stompanato from 1953 to 1955.
But her greatest contribution to film history came in 1948,
when she began working with Walt Disney as the live action model for
Cinderella. Helene had a background as a ballerina that lent natural grace to
the movements for Cinderella, which inspired the character’s animators to give
regal air to a character who only becomes a princess in the final seconds of
the film.
Helene would act out scenes on an empty soundstage for
animators. There doesn’t appear to be any video footage—that Disney has released,
anyways—but plenty of photographs of Helene acting out the opening ‘A Dream Is
a Wish Your Heart Makes’ scene exist.
She’s pictured in a bathing suit behind a screen,
referencing the scene where Cinderella receives a make-shift shower with the
help of her birdie friends. There are also pictures of her cleaning and
sweeping in her ‘rags’ dress, and gussied up in the ball gown with Jeffrey
Stone, the model for Prince Charming.
To help the animators with the dance sequence for ‘So This Is
Love’, Helene and Jeffrey stood on a rotating platform high above the animators,
and the platform was hand-cranked to turn so they could see from every angle.
Although she didn’t provide Cinderella’s voice, a lot of
Helene’s movements and expressions worked their way into Cinderella’s ultimate design.
She was also the costume and hairstyle model for Cinderella, and photos exist
of her with the princess updo to help the animators with the styling.
Helene also provided the live action reference for Anastasia,
and photos exist of her and Rhoda Williams, who voiced and modeled for Drizella,
doing a deep curtsey for Prince Charming and performing ‘Oh Sing Sweet
Nightengale.’
gif by me
On January 24, 1956, Helene appeared on The Mickey Mouse
Club to talk about Cinderella and tease the upcoming Sleeping
Beauty. The Mouseketeers gather round to help Helene show the audience what
being a live model entails, and she casts them as various trees and woodland
animals before Bobby Burgess offers to be her Prince. She then sneaks away to
change into the Aurora peasant costume and then the two dance around to a demo recording
of Mary Costa (Aurora’s vocal performer) singing ‘Once Upon a Dream.’
In another segment, the Mouseketeers are talking about how
their favourite actress was Cinderella and Polly Crockett before Judy Harriet tells
them that Helene Stanley played them both.
“In a cartoon picture like Cinderella, you don’t
really see me,” she explains to the Mouseketeers. “I’m the live
Cinderella. I act out the part and then the artists take it from there and draw
me.”
Helene then turns up in a raggy dress based on Cinderella’s
from the film and acts out the scene with the Mouseketeers, who are playing her
mice friends. Instead of singing Cinderella’s signature song, ‘A Dream Is a
Wish Your Heart Makes’, Helene instead starts singing ‘The Work Song.’
The only video footage that seems to exist of Helene performing
as Princess Aurora comes from the ‘Once Upon a Dream’ sequence. It was featured
in a short documentary called Waking Sleeping Beauty and shows Helene on
a near-empty soundstage with random objects labeled as ‘Owl’ and ‘Wishing Well’
surrounding her to frame where Aurora will be dancing in the forest.
Photos exist of Helene in various scenes throughout the
film, including the kiss scene at the end with Ed Kemmer, who served as the
model of Prince Philip. For her role as Aurora, Helene wore a long blonde wig
and costumes fashioned by Alice Este Davis.
Brief aside on Alice Este Davis: Davis, a Disney Legend in
her own right, began her illustrious career by designing Aurora’s peasant dress
and would go on to design the costumes for It’s a Small World and Pirates of
the Caribbean, among other Disney ventures. She met her husband, Marc Davis,
through Sleeping Beauty. He was Aurora’s animator and personally called
up Alice, after teaching her at the Chouinard Art Institute.
As she did in Cinderella, Helene provided extra live
action referencing as needed. This time, her ballet talents were required to
help choreograph Merriweather’s cleaning dance through the cottage.
Helene would return once more to Walt Disney Studios, to
provide the live action reference for Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One
Dalmatians. This would be her last official film role, as she chose to
retire to focus on her family.
Helene remarried in 1959, to a physician named David Niemetz, and had a son named after him in 1961. She officially retired from films in 1962. She died in 1990 from an undisclosed reason. To date, she has not been named a Disney Legend and does not appear to have done any interviews about her role in Disney history aside from the appearance on The Mickey Mouse Club.
I loved reading about Helene Stanley -- I only know her from her small but pivotal part at the end of The Asphalt Jungle. Thank you for sharing her Disney past. And oh my gosh, married to Johnny Stompanato! Yikes. Great post, Jess!
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