"Cinderella's Squirrel Fur Slipper"
There are hundreds of versions of the famous Cinderella fairy tale. Most of them feature a glass slipper, and many of them include a glass slipper in the title. Oddly enough, the original Cinderella story, written by a seventeenth century Frenchman named Charles Perrault, was entitled, “Cendrillon, ou La Petite Pantoufle de Vair.” In English this means, “Cinderella or The Little Slipper of Squirrel Fur.” How and why did it become a glass slipper?
There are different theories, but many scholars speculate that it was a simple case of mistaken identity. In French, the word for squirrel fur is “vair,” and the word for glass is “verre.” Since they are both pronounced the same—to rhyme with “air”—it is easy to understand how listeners might have gotten confused.
An alternative explanation is one of theatrical expedience. In France at the time of the original story, squirrel fur was as rare and expensive as ermine is today. Theatrical prop men would have found it much easier to locate glass slippers than fur ones. It is ironic that today—as anybody who has tried to find a glass slipper will tell you—it would be much simpler to find the “vair” than the “verre.”
Background on Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
By today’s standards, it is almost impossible to conceive. The broadcast of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s CINDERELLA starring Julie Andrews on CBS-TV, March 31, 1957, was seen by the largest audience in the history of the planet at the time: 107,000,000 people in the USA, representing 60% of the country’s population at that time, and another 10,000,000 or so stretching from Canada to Cuba. It was an Event, a golden moment in the Golden Age of television. In an era when Broadway still commanded attention, this was a Broadway-caliber musical by Broadway’s most successful duo, starring Broadway’s brightest new talent. Broadcast night was opening night, and everyone in America was invited to attend.
In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the precocious art of television would look to Broadway plays and musicals to help feed its voracious appetite for wholesome yet sophisticated entertainment.
