Sleeping Beauty (1959) on Netflix
G19591h 15mAnimationFamilyFantasyMusicalRomance
At Princess Aurora's christening, the evil fairy Maleficent curses her to die on her sixteenth birthday. Three good fairies hide the child in a forest cottage, raising her in secret.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.2/10172,826 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
King Stefan and Queen Leah proclaim a holiday for the birth of their daughter Aurora, who at her christening is promised in marriage to King Hubert's son, Prince Phillip. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, the good fairies of the kingdom, come to bless the child: Flora gives her beauty, Fauna gives her song. Before Merryweather can offer her gift, Maleficent arrives, angry at being left off the guest list, and declares that Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle and die before sunset on her sixteenth birthday. Merryweather softens the spell so that Aurora will sleep instead, waking only at a true love's kiss. Stefan has every spinning wheel in the kingdom burned, and the fairies take the child to a forest cottage, where they give up magic and live as peasants, calling her Briar Rose.
Cast
- Bob Amsberryas Maleficent’s Goon (voice) (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Walt Disney looked for a voice for Princess Aurora for three years and thought about dropping the project before Mary Costa was cast by June 1952. Costa, from Knoxville, Tennessee, had a Southern accent that almost cost her the part until she showed she could speak British.
- Eleanor Audley first turned down playing Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. She had tuberculosis and doubted she could handle the recording sessions, but she changed her mind once she started feeling better.
- Sleeping Beauty was the last Disney animated feature made with hand inking. The studio then moved to the Xerox process with One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), though Xerox was partly used in Sleeping Beauty for the thorns in the final battle.
- Sleeping Beauty's score was the first true-stereo soundtrack. A musicians' strike sent composer George Bruns to a Berlin studio, and the music was recorded with the Graunke Symphony Orchestra from September 8 to November 25, 1958.
- In May 1989, Mary Costa sued the Walt Disney Company for $2 million in royalties she said were owed from the 1986 home-video release of Sleeping Beauty. Costa said her contract barred the studio from making "phonograph recordings or transcriptions for sale to the public" without her permission.
- The cost and poor box office of Sleeping Beauty, along with weak studio releases in 1959 and 1960, made Walt Disney lose interest in animation. His company lost $1,300,000 in fiscal year 1960, its first loss in a decade, and laid off many animation staff.
- In 2019, Sleeping Beauty was chosen for the National Film Registry, which preserves films deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
