AllMovie

Pinocchio, a 1957 60-minute television special production of Pinocchio, is a live musical version directed by Paul Bogart and starring Mickey Rooney in the title role of the puppet who wishes to become a real boy. Based on the 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, which also inspired the Walt Disney animated film, this version featured a now-forgotten new score by Alec Wilder and William Engvick. It was telecast once on NBC as a television special, and, as far as is known, never rebroadcast by NBC, or even restaged with a different cast as was Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. Nor has it ever been issued on VHS or DVD. Other notable actors who appeared in the special included Walter Slezak, Fran Allison, Martyn Green, Jerry Colonna, and Stubby Kaye as a Town Crier, a role he repeated in Wilder and Engvick's 1958 television musical, Hansel and Gretel. Pinocchio was directed by noted Broadway choreographer Hanya Holm. It was also simultaneously broadcast on NBC Radio stations.