[3][4] Based on the fairy tale Cinderella, the film is about an orphan who is sent to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle after graduating from boarding school.

Her life is made difficult by her snobby cousin who arranges that she stay home while the rest of the family attends a major social ball.

Meanwhile, the police detain the Clinton family car until almost midnight when they can be brought before a judge, since the chauffeur is missing the vehicle's proof of ownership.

In April 1938, Universal announced Durbin would star in Cinderella directed by Henry Koster and producer by Joe Pasternak from a script by Bruce Manning and Felix Jackson, in color.

[9] However in late May it was reported the film was abandoned due to protests by exhibitors and also the objections of Walt Disney who said he owned the title.

[10] In June 1938, Peter Milne and Irma Von Curbe were reported writing the script, now called First Love.

[16] In his review in The New York Times, Frank S. Nugent wrote that the film "affords the usual pleasant scope for the talents, graces and charming accomplishments of Miss Deanna Durbin.

The most pretentious item is an Englished version of Puccini's "Un bel di" ending prettily with a romantic crisis when Prince Charming walks in tactfully on the correct note to save Deanna from a life of school-marmish spinsterhood.

The story is slight, fragile and appropriately dewy, as befits the Dresden-in-modern-dress spectacle of Miss Durbin standing with exceedingly unreluctant feet where the brook and river meet.

That much advertised First Kiss is consummated with such idyllic restraint that not even the queasiest stockholder could fear that Miss Durbin will burn herself out emotionally before she is 20.