General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is a 1962 American fantasy-biography film that dramatizes the lives of the fairy-tale collectors Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm while weaving in reenactments of three of their tales. Produced by George Pal for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Cinerama, Inc., and directed by Henry Levin with Pal handling the fairy-tale sequences, it has the distinction of being the first dramatic story film shot and exhibited in the three-camera Cinerama format.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	World premiere at New York's Loew's Cinerama Theatre on 7 August 1962, after a world preview in Denver on 14 July 1962³
Format	First dramatic story film shot and exhibited in 3-strip Cinerama; 3X35 mm gauge, projected on a 146-degree curved screen¹^•²^•⁴
Runtime	129 minutes (AFI catalog)²
Source	Based on the book Die Brüder Grimm by Hermann Gerstner (Munich, 1952), whose screen rights George Pal bought in 1956⁵^•²
Fairy-tale segments	"The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves," and "The Singing Bone"⁶
Academy Awards	Four nominations, including Best Color Cinematography; won Best Color Costume Design¹
Historical standing	One of only two narrative features filmed in three-strip Cinerama, the other being How the West Was Won (1962)⁴

Spoilers

Story and structure

The frame story opens in the early 19th century, when Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey) and Jacob Grimm (Karlheinz Böhm) are commissioned to write a family history for a local duke (Oscar Homolka). Wilhelm neglects the assignment to collect oral-tradition fairy tales, loses the manuscript, and falls gravely ill after retrieving it in the rain. Near death, he dreams that his story characters plead for their lives, telling him that if he dies they will never be born and asking him to give them their names: Tom Thumb, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rumpelstiltskin. On his recovery, Jacob agrees to join him in publishing a book of fairy tales, and the film ends with the brothers honored by the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.²^•³

Embedded in this biography are three of the brothers' tales: "The Dancing Princess" (from "The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces," KHM 133), "The Cobbler and the Elves" (from "The Elves and the Shoemaker," KHM 39), and "The Singing Bone" (KHM 28).³ In "The Dancing Princess," a woodsman played by Russ Tamblyn follows Yvette Mimieux's princess to her secret nightly dancing; in "The Cobbler and the Elves," Pal's stop-motion Puppetoon elves complete an old shoemaker's unfinished work; and in "The Singing Bone," Terry-Thomas and Buddy Hackett face a fire-breathing dragon slain by Pal's effects team.²^•¹

The film takes liberties with history. Its narrator gives the impression that the Grimms lived in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria, although the real brothers were born in Hanau and spent much of their lives in Hesse.³

Origins

Cinerama debuted in 1952 with This Is Cinerama, and for roughly six years the process was used only for travelogues made to showcase the wide-screen technique. By the early 1960s the MGM-Cinerama unit wanted full-scale fiction stories. Producer Sol Siegel, who had repeatedly turned down George Pal's Grimm project at MGM, remembered a script on his desk that combined a biography of the brothers with sequences from their stories; the script was attached to Pal, the Oscar-nominated special-effects specialist who had created the Puppetoons puppet-animation series in the 1940s.¹

Pal had purchased the screen rights in 1956 to Die Brüder Grimm, a collection of letters edited by Dr. Hermann Gerstner. As co-director Henry Levin remarked in the film's press materials, Pal "felt their story needed telling more than their stories needed retelling on the screen." Before 1962, no film had told the story of the brothers themselves, although their tales had long succeeded on screen.⁵

Cast and crew

Laurence Harvey, born in Lithuania, played Wilhelm Grimm, and the Austrian Karlheinz Böhm played Jacob. Claire Bloom appeared as Wilhelm's wife Dorothea, Barbara Eden as Greta Heinrich, Walter Slezak as the bookseller Stossel, Arnold Stang as Rumpelstiltskin, Jim Backus and Otto Kruger as kings in separate segments, and Beulah Bondi as the gypsy.³^•⁷

Behind the camera, the screenplay was by David P. Harmon, Charles Beaumont, and William Roberts, from a screen story by Harmon; Paul C. Vogel was director of photography, Walter Thompson the editor, George W. Davis and Edward Carfagno the art directors, Leigh Harline adapted the music with songs by Bob Merrill, and Mary Wills designed the costumes. Gene Warren, Wah Chang, Tim Barr, and Robert R. Hoag handled the special visual effects.²

Cinerama production and release

Cinerama captured action on three synchronized cameras mounted together and projected the images from synced 35 mm projectors onto a 146-degree curved screen with seven-track stereophonic sound.⁴ Location scenes were filmed in West Germany, with townspeople of Rothenburg and Dinkelsbühl and residents of the Rhine River Valley appearing in the book sequences.² Art director Edward Carfagno said in a 1991 Academy oral history that the three-camera setup was not overly complicated, but set-ups had to place vertical objects where the three frames would join on screen so the seams would not show.⁴

The film was the second Cinerama story picture to go into production but the first released. Its world preview was held on 14 July 1962 at the Cooper Cinerama Theatre in Denver, and the official world premiere followed at New York's Loew's Cinerama Theatre on 7 August 1962, where it ran for 33 weeks. It then opened in roadshow engagements across North America through August 1962.³

Reception and awards

The film received four Academy Award nominations, for Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction, and Best Music Score Adaptation, and won the Oscar for Best Color Costume Design.¹ Critically and commercially it fared modestly: it "got novelty points as the first 'story' Cinerama picture, but reviews were not great, and neither was the box office," while How the West Was Won, released a few months later, became an immediate hit.⁸ TCM's Rob Nixon notes that the film did better in European markets than in the United States.¹ The expense of production, combined with the sale of Cinerama to Pacific Theatres, ensured that these two films would be the last story films made in the three-strip format; from 1963 onward, films billed as Cinerama were shot single-camera, usually in 70 mm.¹

Restoration and legacy

Because the original negatives had suffered extensive damage, the film was long assumed impossible to restore, and it became the last of the three-strip Cinerama titles to receive the treatment after the five 1950s travelogues and How the West Was Won (restored in 2008) had been done. The restoration reversed substantial water damage, corrected colors, repaired flickers, and re-synced sound, work documented in Harrison Engle's film Rescuing a Fantasy Classic (2021).⁴ The restored film is available on streaming services and on disc.⁶

References

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