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Faerie Tale Theatre | |
---|---|
Also known as | Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre |
Genre | Anthology Fairytale fantasy Adventure Drama |
Created by | Shelley Duvall |
Presented by | Shelley Duvall |
Starring | see below |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 6 |
No. of episodes | 27 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producers | Shelley Duvall for Gaylord Production Company, Lion's Gate Films and Platypus Productions Fred Fuchs |
Running time | 39–58 minutes |
Production companies |
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Original release | |
Network | Showtime |
Release | September 11, 1982 – November 14, 1987 |
Related | |
Tall Tales & Legends Nightmare Classics Bedtime Stories |
Faerie Tale Theatre (also known as Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre) is an American award-winning live-action fairytale fantasy drama anthology television series created and presented by actress Shelley Duvall. The series originally ran on Showtime from September 11, 1982, until November 14, 1987 before being sold internationally. Twenty-five of the series' 27 episodes are each a retelling of a classic fairy tale, particularly one written by The Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, or Hans Christian Andersen. Episode 18 is based on the poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin". The 27th and final episode is a reunion special of cast and crew, titled "Grimm Party", in which, in fairy tale style, they attend a gala in fancy dress.
The series, as a live-action adaptation, was notable for featuring a number of Hollywood actors and famous celebrities portraying the costumed characters, and also utilized filming by well-known directors.
Faerie Tale Theatre was followed by three other short anthology series also produced by Duvall, including Tall Tales and Legends , which follows a theme similar to the latter, with a focus on American folklore, Nightmare Classics (4 produced of the intended 6 episodes), aimed at an older audience, and Bedtime Stories (12 episodes).
Actress Shelley Duvall, who conceived the series, served as executive producer and host alongside associate producers Bridget Terry and Fred Fuchs. Duvall also starred in three episodes, portraying various characters, and was a featured narrator of three episodes, as well as providing the voice of the animatronic Nightingale, in the episode of the same title.
Every episode begins with Duvall introducing herself and giving a brief synopsis of the night's fairy-tale episode that would follow.
The series followed a style similar to an earlier fairy-tale anthology series, called Shirley Temple's Storybook , broadcast between 1958 and 1961, in which Shirley Temple serves as narrator, with this series also featuring numerous celebrities portraying the costumed characters.
The series was one of the first examples of original cable programming, alongside HBO's Fraggle Rock . [1]
Duvall began the conception of Faerie Tale Theatre while she was filming the live-action 1980 film, Popeye , in Malta. She reportedly asked her co-star, Robin Williams, for his opinion on "The Frog Prince", a fairy tale that she was reading during production. [2] Williams thought that it was funny, and would later star in the namesake pilot episode of the series that was written, narrated and directed by Monty Python's Eric Idle (who would appear in the episode "The Pied Piper of Hamelin").
Many of the episodes were produced by Fred Fuchs, in association with Duvall, with the screenplays written by Rod Ash, Mark Curtiss, Maryedith Burrell and Robert C. Jones. All of the episodes were produced and shot from 1982 to 1985, and videotaped mostly at the ABC Television Studios in Burbank, California.
Episodes were directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Ivan Passer, Emile Ardolino, and Tim Burton, as well as other famous Hollywood directors.
Many episodes feature backdrops and settings inspired by specific artists and children's book illustrators. [3]
Artist | Production |
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Maxfield Parrish | The Frog Prince |
Norman Rockwell | Goldilocks and the Three Bears |
Arthur Rackham | Hansel and Gretel |
Edmund Dulac | The Nightingale |
Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke | The Princess and the Pea |
Gustav Klimt | Rapunzel |
N. C. Wyeth | Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs |
Kay Nielsen | Sleeping Beauty |
Brueghel and Dürer | The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers |
Jennie Harbour | Little Red Riding Hood |
George Cruikshank | Thumbelina |
Aubrey Beardsley | The Princess and the Pea |
filmmakers, such as Jean Cocteau | Beauty and the Beast |
Faerie Tale Theatre was released on VHS, Betamax, CED and Laserdisc in the 1980s through the mid-1990s, initially by CBS/FOX Video (which was also in Australia), followed by Playhouse Video (an extended label under CBS/FOX) and Razzmatazz Entertainment/Cabin Fever Entertainment. In the UK, it was released by MGM-UA Home Video.
Starmaker II held the rights to the series from 2004 to 2006, and at first, released 26 episodes as individual DVDs. [4] This was followed by a double-sided 4-disc box set and a 6-disc box set, each version containing the same 26 episodes. The "Greatest Moments" episode was not included in this release.
After 2006, Koch Vision held the series' distribution rights, and in November 2006, licensed the rights worldwide (excluding DVDs in North America) to the British company, 3DD Entertainment. [5] [6] A remastered 7-disc box set, including the lost "Greatest Moments" episode, was released by Koch Vision in September 2008. [7] In 2009, Koch Vision released the episodes by theme on six DVD compilations: Tales from the Brothers Grimm ("Hansel and Gretel", "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" and "Little Red Riding Hood"), Funny Tales ("The Tale of The Frog Prince", "Pinocchio", "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Princess Who Had Never Laughed"), Tales from Hans Christian Andersen ("The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen" and "Thumbelina"), Princess Tales ("Cinderella", "The Little Mermaid", "The Dancing Princesses" and "The Princess and the Pea"), Magical Tales ("Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp", "Beauty and the Beast", "Puss in Boots" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs") and Bedtime Tales ("Jack and the Beanstalk", "Sleeping Beauty", "Rip Van Winkle" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"). [8]
When released on DVD by Starmaker II and Koch Vision, the following scenes were cut from the series:
Award | Result |
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Peabody Award | Won |
TCA Award | Won |
Golden CableACE Award | Won |
In the United States, the series was originally broadcast on Showtime from 1982 and 1987, and re-aired on the Disney Channel from 1994 to 1996. [9] It was also broadcast in syndication on various television channels, [10] including PBS [11] [12] and BookTelevision. [13]
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the title character of a legend from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany.
'Puss' is a character in the fairy tale "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots" by Charles Perrault. The tale was published in 1697 in his Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. The tale of a cat helping an impoverished master attain wealth through its trickery is known in hundreds of variants.
"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale most notably recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Brothers Grimm's story was developed from the French literary fairy tale of Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (1698), which itself is an alternative version of the Italian fairy tale Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile (1634).
Shelley Alexis Duvall was an American actress and producer. Known for her collaborations with Robert Altman and for playing eccentric characters, she won a Cannes Film Festival Award and was nominated for a British Academy Film Award and two Emmy Awards. Four of her films are preserved in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, also known as Grimm Masterpiece Theater in the original version and The Grimm's Fairy Tales, is a Japanese anime anthology series by Nippon Animation based on the Grimms' Fairy Tales.
"The Frog Prince; or, Iron Henry" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Traditionally, it is the first story in their folktale collection. The tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 440.
Iniminimagimo was a French language children's television show made in Quebec. It played in the late 1980s. Each episode featured a classic fairy tale played by the same cast.
Thumbelina is a literary fairy tale written by the famous Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published by C. A. Reitzel on 16 December 1835 in Copenhagen, Denmark, with "The Naughty Boy" and "The Travelling Companion" in the second installment of Fairy Tales Told for Children. Thumbelina is about a tiny girl and her adventures with marriage-minded toads, moles, and cockchafers. She successfully avoids their intentions before falling in love with a flower-fairy prince just her size.
Long Ago and Far Away is an American children's live-action/animated television series that aired on PBS Television from January 28, 1989 to December 5, 1992. It was created by WGBH, a public television broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member of PBS, which allowed for the series to be viewed on various other PBS stations.
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is the 9th episode of the television anthology Faerie Tale Theatre. The story is based on the Robert Southey's story of the same title and stars Tatum O'Neal as Goldilocks.
American McGee's Grimm is a 23-part episodic video game series based upon Grimm's Fairy Tales, designed by American McGee, developed by Spicy Horse and distributed online initially by GameTap starting July 31, 2008. Grimm was originally thought to resemble the warped fairy tale style of American McGee's Alice, but the art style appears to be much more child-friendly and simplistic. Grimm is written and executive-produced by the same person as American McGee's Alice, R. J. Berg. The original announcement was made in the June 2007 issue of PC Gamer.
Tall Tales & Legends is an American folklore anthology television series of 9 episodes created by television and film actress Shelley Duvall, who also served as executive producer and presenter, alongside Fred Fuchs, following her success with her first anthology series, Faerie Tale Theatre.
Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale.
Cannon Movie Tales is the collective name for a series of live-action films created in the late 1980s by Cannon Group producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, associate producer Patricia Ruben, and executive producer Itzik Kol. Filmed principally on location in Israel, these stories are generally fairy tales based on material by either the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, among others. Major stars, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, play the leading roles, in which they are joined by a mostly all-Israeli cast. The major Israeli-born member of the crew was the series' production designer, Marek Dobrowolski. Announced as early as May 1986, Cannon initiated the project as its answer to Disney's fairy-tale offerings, and invested US$50 million in the series. Sixteen stories, each costing US$1.5 million, were originally planned; only nine were released.
The German Fairy Tale Route is a tourist attraction in Germany originally established in 1975. With a length of 600 kilometres (370 mi), the route runs from Hanau in central Germany to Bremen in the north. Tourist attractions along the route are focused around the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, including locations where they lived and worked at various stages in their life, as well as regions which are linked to the fairy tales found in the Grimm collection, such as The Town Musicians of Bremen. The Verein Deutsche Märchenstraße society, headquartered in the city of Kassel, is responsible for the route, which travellers can recognize with the help of road signs depicting the heart-shaped body and head of a pretty, princess-like creature.
Fairy Tale Police Department is a German Australian animated series, produced by the company Yoram Gross-EM.TV in co-production with EM.TV & Merchandising AG, Victory Media Group, and Talit Communications. It aired on Seven Network at various times. It offers a new perspective on classic fairy tales through the central characters Johnny Legend and Christine Anderson. They are magic police officers who restore balance to society.
Nightmare Classics is an American horror anthology television series created, produced and executive produced by Shelley Duvall featuring adaptations of well-known horror stories by authors including Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson and Ambrose Bierce. Following the success of her two previous anthology series – Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales & Legends – both of which were aimed at the elementary-school set, Duvall attempted to branch out to the teen and young adult audience with Nightmare Classics.
Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories is a 1992 American live-action/animated anthology television series that originally aired on Showtime. The series, hosted by Duvall, was a showcase of short animated adaptations of children's books with narration provided by celebrity guests. The VHSs are released by Universal Studios Home Video but are closed-captioned by the National Captioning Institute instead of Captions, Inc.