Hey, Cinderella!

Plot

The story follows Cinderella (Belinda Montgomery), a beautiful girl forced to do all the chores by her wicked stepmother and two stepsisters, with only her dog Rufus to help her. At the palace, King Goshposh (performed by Jim Henson) is bored and wishes to throw a party so he may be given presents. As an excuse, he decides his son Prince Arthur Charming (Robin Ward) ought to wed and use the ball to find a suitable princess bride. Arthur dislikes this arrangement and explains to his friend Kermit the Frog (also performed by Jim Henson) that every girl who knows him is a snob; his only hope is to find a girl who does not recognize him as the prince.

Shortly after, Cinderella meets Arthur in the gardens while fulfilling a task from her stepmother (to muddy her shoes, dirty the kitchen floor, and then scrub the floor). Seeing that Cinderella does not recognize him as the prince, he introduces himself as Arthur the gardener and secures an invitation for her by convincing his father to invite every person in the land rather than just the princesses (the king agrees, as it will get him more presents).

Because the ball is a masquerade, Arthur and Cinderella decide to each wear a geranium as a means of recognizing each other. The night of the ball, Cinderella is only allowed to attend if she finishes her chores and finds a suitable dress, carriage, and coachman before the last minute. When she dreams of attending, her fairy godmother appears and provides a beautiful dress and glass slippers. She convinces Kermit to drive the carriage, pulled by his monster friend Splurge after he accidentally scares away all the horses.

The fairy godmother warns Cinderella to be home by twelve. Unfortunately, the King decided to give all guests a geranium to wear, so Arthur and Cinderella are unable to recognize each other. At the stroke of midnight, they flee, leaving behind one glass slipper which Arthur accidentally steps on and smashes. Determined to force Arthur to marry the mysterious maiden, the king hires all his horses and men to put the slipper back together and look for the other one.

Cinderella learns of this plan and wishes to marry Arthur the gardener, not the prince. She convinces Rufus to bury the slipper, only for the prince to arrive and for Cinderella to realize he and the gardener are the same person. She tries to explain she's the mysterious princess, yet no one believes her. Finally, the fairy godmother appears, and after a number of attempts, Cinderella appears in ball regalia, and she and the prince are married.

Kermit comments he could have solved the mystery much sooner, had he only been asked. Afterwards, Kermit reads a personal invitation to the wedding and finds he must bring a present for King Goshposh, remarking, "How's that for a Happily ever after?" before jumping backwards into the well.

Development

Hey, Cinderella! was originally conceived as a Snow White series by new CBS children's programming executive Fred Silverman, as a fallback option during contract negotiations with Captain Kangaroo's Bob Keeshan. Silverman brought in Jon Stone and Tom Whedon, whom he had worked with on the CBS Children's Film Festival, to write the pilot, and Jim Henson, who recommended using his Muppets over the realistic-looking animal puppets Stone and Whedon had envisioned in their original draft, as producer/director.

When CBS re-signed Keeshan, development on Snow White halted, and Silverman gave Stone and Whedon permission to sell their pilot around. After the writers got ABC's approval, the network insisted they change the story's heroine to Cinderella. The series idea got axed when ABC's Roone Arledge landed a Saturday NCAA college football game-of-the-week broadcast deal, requiring a revamp of their late morning/early afternoon Saturday schedule. The pilot was revised to a one-hour special, and Henson filmed it in Canada (at Robert Lawrence Studios in Toronto, Ontario) in the fall of 1968.

This project was the first collaboration of future Sesame Street-ers Henson, Joe Raposo, and Stone. Hey, Cinderella! was the first hour-long Muppet TV special.