Trivia for
Sleeping Beauty (1959) More at IMDbPro »

• Art direction for this movie was inspired by European medieval painting and architecture.
  
  
• In both Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Cinderella (1950), the main character's friends surprise her with a new dress, calling out, "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Happy birthday!"
  
  
• Live actors in costume served as models for the animators. The role of Prince Phillip was modeled by Ed Kemmer, who had played Commander Buzz Corry on television's "Space Patrol" (1950) five years before Sleeping Beauty (1959) was released. For the final battle sequence Kemmer was photographed on a wooden buck. All the live actors' performances were later screened for the animators' reference.
  
  
• The part of King Stefan was Taylor Holmes' s final role.
  
  
• When the fairies discuss how to help the king and queen, notice that Merryweather magically creates cookies in the shape of Mickey Mouse.
  
  
• Disney Studios has no record as to who provided the voice for the queen, Briar Rose's mother.
  
  
• The first Disney animated feature to be created for the 70mm format.
  
  
• For the first time on a Disney animated feature, one man was in charge of the color styling, background design, and the overall look of the film. Eyvind Earle's modernistic approach to design and painting resulted provided this film a bold, unique art style, even though Earle's colleagues did not care for his production methods and art style while the film was in production.
  
  
• The first feature film released in Super Technirama 70.
  
  
• Shot on a 35mm Tecnirama double-frame negative (which is as big as two regular Academy frames joined together) running horizontally through the animation camera, with each frame photographed three times (once with a red filter, once with a blue filter, and once with a green filter). This negative was then printed on both CinemaScope-compatible anamorphic film and Super Technirama 70mm film.
  
  
• Eyvind Earle actually painted the great majority of the production backgrounds for this film.
  
  
• Much of the musical score is based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet "Sleeping Beauty".
  
  
• A flame thrower was used to create the dragon breath sound effect for the climax of the movie. Castanets were used for the sound of its snapping jaws.
  
  
• This was the last Disney feature to have cels inked by hand. From One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) onward, the cleaned-up pencil drawings were xeroxed onto the cels. However, some of the scenes in this movie did use the xerography process.
  
  
• In its original release, preceded by the featurette Grand Canyon (1958).
  
  
• In active production from 1951 until the end of 1958, setting a record (for which it is tied with another 70mm Disney film, The Black Cauldron (1985)) for being the Disney animated film with the longest production schedule.
  
  
• The third Disney film to undergo a painstaking computer restoration. After Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) in 1987 and 1993, and Pinocchio (1940) in 1992.
  
  
• The elaborate background paintings usually took seven to ten days to paint. By contrast, a typical animation background takes one workday to complete.
  
  
• Second only to Dumbo (1941) (who didn't speak at all), this Disney title character has very few lines of actual dialogue throughout the entire film, which is actually about the three fairies who protect her, not about the Sleeping Beauty herself. Rose/Aurora is only featured in the film in very few scenes and hardly ever says anything. She doesn't utter a single word in the second half of the film, neither before nor after she falls under the spell. Her first line comes 19 minutes into the film, and her last line comes 39 minutes into the film. However, she does sing two songs during that time.
  
  
• The Disneyland castle was named for this film, even though the park opened four years prior to the film's release.
  
  
• The little-known second half of the original Sleeping Beauty fable involves the Prince's attempts to protect Sleeping Beauty and their children from his mother who is an ogress. In the end, of course, she is thwarted and jumps into a pot of live serpents to avoid being killed by her own son.
  
  
• The musical score throughout the film was recorded by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
  
  
• Several story points for this film came from discarded ideas from Walt Disney's previous fairy tale involving a sleeping heroine: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). They include Maleficent's capture of the Prince and the Prince's daring escape from her castle. Disney discarded these ideas from Snow White because he believed that his artists were not able to draw a human male believably enough.
  
  
• Among the actresses who performed in reference footage for this film included Spring Byington and Frances Bavier.
  
  
• Princess Aurora's long, thin, willowy body shape was inspired by that of Audrey Hepburn.
  
  
• Walt Disney suggested that all three fairies should look alike, but veteran animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston disagreed with this idea, saying that having them be alike wouldn't be exciting. Also, the idea originally included seven fairies instead of three.
  
  
• Briar Rose is the Sleeping Beauty's name from the German version of the original fairy tale. Princess Aurora is Sleeping Beauty's name in the Italian version of the original fairy tale.
  
  
• The ominous piece of music to which Maleficent hypnotizes Aurora into pricking her finger is called "Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat." In Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet, it is used for a comic number in which two cats snarl at and try to scratch each other.
  
  
• Various movements from The Sleeping Beauty ballet underwent some reworking for the Disney film. The opening song (Hail to the Princess Aurora) is actually the ballet's final, grandiose movement. Also, the three fairies' theme is based on "The Silver Fairy movement," which, in its original form, is barely a minute long. Any fan of Walt Disney's masterpiece should find a FULL recording of Tchaikovsky's ballet, which, in its complete form, usually takes up three CDs.
  
  
• After she is told that she is betrothed, Princess Aurora has no lines whatsoever.
  
  
• In the original fable, the princess sleeps for 100 years, and the Prince finds her and wakes her up after the aforementioned century has passed. This idea was dropped for the Disney film so that the Prince could be introduced much earlier in the story.
  
  
• Famed Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones worked on the film briefly when Termite Terrace closed temporarily during the late 1950s. He found the atmosphere at Walt Disney Productions oppressive because everything anyone did there had to be approved by Walt Disney before, during, and after the process of production. He was more than happy when Warner's animation department reopened, where he stayed until it closed again in 1964.
  
  
• In the original fable, Princess Aurora is the result of a spell cast on the Queen by a magical fish that she had thrown back into a pond after it wound up lying on the bank.
  
  
• The first large format animated film in 70 mm.
  
  

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