1h 47min | Adventure, Comedy, Family | 26 May 1961 | Color, WS
Directors: Walter Lang, Frank Tashlin (uncredited)
Stars: Carol Heiss, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Joe DeRita, Edson Stroll, Patricia Medina.
Ron Fletcher ... choreographer
Ivan Lane ... choreographer
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055458/
Watched online; very blurry. Bought a dvd, which has both fs and WS versions; I'm sure the fs was chopped for tv/vhs.
4 songs in the Soundtracks, which include the skating performed by CH, but maybe not both.
Only film for '60 Olympic gold medalist CH.
IMDb only lists skating double for the queen, not the prince or the stooges. Even with the cropped fs version, it's impossible to tell whether the skating prince is actually ES. It's as though they've deliberately blurred the entire sequence to cover that and perhaps the stooges too.
The skating sequences are in ch3 (Magic Day) and ch18 (Love Fantasy). In the fantasy skating sequence, the black ice is covered in at least 1/4"-1/2" of liquid to aid its being reflective and help cover the skate marks. Late in the sequence you can see ES's boots partially soaked, and when CH gets thrown to the ground, there's a splash.
I must say I prefer this fairy tale to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps it's just the charm of the skating sequences, or the extra-appropriate casting of this prince. But something about the story seems less cloying than the others. The prince is heroic here, fighting the Queen's army, and searching for the princess.
Here's a still of ES from a Twilight Zone episode where he and Donna Douglas are the perfect bodies offered to an elderly couple to prolong their lives.
Chanford, distr. Fox, dir. Lang, Tashlin; 6+
