A Kiss for Cinderella

It was first produced in London at Wyndham's Theatre on March 16, 1916, starring Gerald du Maurier and Hilda Trevelyan, enjoying great success over 156 performances, and with several annual Christmastime revivals.

[2] In 1925 it was made into a silent feature film, A Kiss for Cinderella, by Paramount, directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Betty Bronson.

[3] Hilda Trevelyan created the role of Miss Thing, a poor London girl who takes care of a group of refugee children from various countries during the First World War.

Mr. Bodie, a middle-aged artist of independent means, is visited in his studio by a policeman who wants to admonish him about showing a light in the blackout and to ask about suspicious activities on the part of his cleaning girl.

Cinderella believes that this is the night when she will go to the ball—she has arbitrarily decided this because it has to be sometime—and, after putting the awed children to bed, she steps outside so her fairy godmother won't miss the house.

The fairy godmother duly arrives, wearing a Red Cross uniform, and grants Cinderella's three wishes: to go to her ball, to help nurse the wounded, and to gain the love of the man of her heart.

The Prince, who resembles the Policeman but is a bored cad, judges the marriageable girls at the ball in the manner of a horse show, including having their temperatures taken to see who is morally good.

When Cinderella arrives, dressed splendidly in a gown of inexpensive fabric, he is still bored and rude as she passes the thermometer test, but when she shows him her feet he is instantly transformed into a true lover filled with all the virtues.