Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, the film follows Cinderella, the daughter of a widowed aristocrat, who is forced to become a servant of her cruel stepmother and stepsisters, until Cinderella's fairy godmother grants her the chance to attend the royal ball and meet the prince. The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen, and was directed by Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi. It features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, June Foray, James MacDonald, and Luis van Rooten.
During the early 1940s, Walt Disney Productions had suffered financially after losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II. Because of this, the studio endured commercial failures such as Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940) and Bambi (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video. By 1947, the studio was over $4 million in debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Walt Disney and his animators returned to feature film production in 1948 after producing a string of package films with the idea of adapting Charles Perrault's Cendrillon into an animated film.