General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Hans Christian Andersen (1952 film)

Hans Christian Andersen is a 1952 American musical film directed by Charles Vidor and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, starring Danny Kaye as the Danish fairy-tale writer. The film opens with a written prologue that states its own premise: "Once upon a time there lived in Denmark a great storyteller named Hans Christian Andersen. This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about the great spinner of fairy tales."¹ TIME's reviewer called it "an unusual cinebiography in that it candidly disclaims having anything to do with the facts of its subject's life."²

Key fact	Detail
Release	New York opening 25 November 1952; general release 19 December 1952, distributed by RKO Radio Pictures³
Principal cast	Danny Kaye (Hans Christian Andersen), Farley Granger (Niels), Zizi Jeanmaire (Doro, "The Famous French Ballerina")³
Music	Ten original songs by Frank Loesser, including "Thumbelina," "Inchworm," "Wonderful Copenhagen," and "The Ugly Duckling"³^•⁴
Production	Samuel Goldwyn Productions; Technicolor; 112 minutes; budget over $4,000,000³
Awards	Six Academy Award nominations, including Best Cinematography (Color) and Best Song ("Thumbelina")⁵
Box office	About six million dollars in earnings⁴
Reception today	83% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (6 reviews); 6.9/10 on IMDb from about 4,700 votes⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Hans is a small-town cobbler in Odense, Denmark, whose stories are so entertaining that the local children skip school to hear them, to the displeasure of the schoolmaster. He is asked to leave town and travels to Copenhagen, where he falls in love with Doro, a ballerina, only to discover she is already married to Niels.⁸^•⁶ Hans writes "The Little Mermaid" for her, and it becomes the ballet's latest work; the unrequited love inspires a ballet sequence that the Australian Centre for the Moving Image describes as about seventeen minutes long and one of the film's highlights.⁶^•⁹ Hans finally returns home to the acclaim of his fellow townsfolk.⁹

Production history

A fourteen-year project. According to press material in the AMPAS production file, Goldwyn conceived the idea in 1936 and over time employed twenty writers on early drafts of the screenplay.³ A Turner Classic Movies account dates his script commissions to 1938 and says he pushed the project into production when Paramount expressed interest in one of the thirty-two versions of the story; Goldwyn called it "a long labor of love, because if ever I loved anything in my entire career, this has been it."⁴ In 1941 Goldwyn briefly considered a deal with Walt Disney Studios to produce the film, and in 1946 Joe Pasternak purchased it from Goldwyn as a possible vehicle for Van Johnson at M-G-M, though neither plan reached production.³

Moss Hart's screenplay, completed in 1951, finally met Goldwyn's approval, and filming ran from 21 January to 26 May 1952.³ A credit dispute followed: Myles Connolly claimed authorship of the original story, and the Screen Writers Guild ruled that the onscreen credit should read "Screenplay by Moss Hart based on a story by Myles Connolly."³ IMDb also lists Ben Hecht and Lewis Meltzer as uncredited writers.¹⁰

Casting and music. Goldwyn considered the ballerinas Moira Shearer and Margot Fonteyn, but Shearer's pregnancy led to their replacement by the Parisian-born Renée (Zizi) Jeanmaire, whose name was shortened to the single name Jeanmaire in the credits.³ After failing to engage Rodgers and Hammerstein for the score, Goldwyn secured Frank Loesser, then known for Guys and Dolls on Broadway, to write ten original songs.⁴ Walter Scharf served as musical director.³

The ballets. The film features four dance sequences: "The Ice Skating Ballet," "The Dream Fantasy," "The Wedding Fantasy," and the climactic "The Little Mermaid."³ The French choreographer Roland Petit, dancing the Prince in "The Little Mermaid," used 28 supporting dancers, and the film marked his first American film credit; the music for that ballet is based on works by Franz Liszt.³ The film also contains an 80-second animation, the only completed material from Disney's repeated attempts to make an Andersen feature.¹¹

Reception and controversy in Denmark

Before the December 1952 release, the Danish Foreign Office considered a formal protest over the film's inaccurate portrayal of Andersen, in which the scholarly poet appears as a vagabond shoemaker.³^•¹² Goldwyn invited Foreign Office representatives to view the film, and they dropped the complaint after the film was credited with drawing large tourist crowds to Copenhagen.³ The film's Danish release was delayed by a dispute over the percentage of profits Goldwyn and RKO were requesting; it opened in Copenhagen on 6 September 1953 and was not well received in Andersen's hometown of Odense.³

The film's cost, over $4,000,000, also drew scrutiny at home. Exhibitors complained that Goldwyn was forcing them to raise admission prices to cover it, and the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division asked RKO for information on possible price fixing; a Variety report noted that exhibitor contracts contained no specific clauses on admission prices.³

Awards and legacy

The film received six Academy Award nominations: Best Cinematography (Color), Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Color), Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, Best Costume Design (Color), and Best Music for the song "Thumbelina."³ It was also nominated for Golden Globes for Best Film Musical/Comedy and Best Actor (Kaye), a Directors Guild award for Vidor, and a Writers Guild award for Best Musical Screenplay.⁵

The AFI Catalog records it as apparently the only American feature-length cinematic portrait of Andersen.³ It was Goldwyn's last film for RKO, and one of his last productions before he stopped making pictures on his own after 1959.³^•¹³ A 13 April 1952 CBS broadcast of a fifteen-minute See It Now segment on the "Ice Skating Ballet" was the first time television featured a behind-the-scenes look at a film production.³ The film remains available on streaming services in the United States, including Amazon Prime Video and free ad-supported platforms such as Pluto TV, Tubi, and Plex.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026