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The Empress' Nightingale: Directed by Anthony Bell. With Pam Grier, Amy Hill, Robin Leach, Phil Hartman. In this soulful adaptation of Anderson's classic tale, a straight-talking nightingale teaches a greedy empress that inner beauty is more important than any material riches could ever be.
- (18)
- Animation, Adventure, Comedy
- Anthony Bell
- 1999-09-16
- Overview
- Summary
- Trivia
is the fourth episode of the third season of Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and the thirtieth episode in total. It aired on September 16, 1999.
Once upon a time there was an empress who loved the luxary of her palace so much, she felt the need to never step out of it. The Chamberlain shows the chef who is making tea for the Empress, and also pillow fluffers for Her Royal Highness. The Empress wakes up one morning, still unaware of the freedom outside her palace walls. Outside as well, a nightingale's song led people to write poems and even novels to the bird up on the tree. The Chamberlain tries reading to the Empress that the nightingale is the most precious thing. Interested, the Empress has a royal announcement and tells her royal servants that they have three days to find this nightingale, for if they fail, she'll give them peas and spinach for a month. They bring her other animals such as a cow and a pig, but none of this matches the nightingale.
One particular little girl, Mai Mai, tells her that on her way home to the sea, she listens to the nightingale sing in the forest. She leads the Chamberlain to the nightingale's tree, and she is delighted to sing for the Empress, despite mentioning her acoustics sound better outside in the woods. At the palace, the Empress believes that the nightingale is plainer than she thought. That night, the nightingale sings with her beautiful voice to the Empress, and she brings practically everyone in the room tears to their eyes, including the Empress. She gives the nightingale a gift, a ruby necklace. The Chamberlain suggests they can have an extended engagement for the nightingale, and the Empress wants to keep an eye on her "treasure". As time passes, the nightingale was the most famous celebrity in the empire, but the life of being a star began getting to her, and soon enough she was in the Empress' room singing the blues, getting tired of being loyal. One day, the Empress was given a gift from the neighboring kingdom, a mechanical cuckoo bird that sang the nightingale's song. The Empress is delighted that the bird sings the song the depressed nightingale used to sing.
Mai Mai reports this to the nightingale, and she goes and sees it. When the bird sings, she also sings with it, but the people aren't wanting to hear her as the cuckoo bird is a more powerful performer. Mai Mai decides to let her free, as she is no longer appreciated by the Empress and her subjects, and it shows as they find her departure good riddance. The cuckoo became a pleasure and everybody knew its stolen song. The bird was played and played days and days until one day the bird broke. Dismayed, she orders the Chamberlain to fix it. He rushes over to the repair man who manages to fix it. He says that the mechanism is very delicate, and because of that, the bird can only be played just once a year or else there could possibly be another breakdown. Many years passed and the cuckoo bird sat silently by the Empress. She was very tempted to hear it sing, but she remembered the words of the repairer. More years have passed and the Empress began getting older and older, and they knew she didn't have much of her life left.
As she closes her eyes, she is woken up by a mysterious game show host. The host introduces the Empress to her rude self, her greedy self, and her bad self, telling her to pick what's behind the curtains. The Empress says she's thinking what to choose, but the host says she had all her life to pick. Behind the bad curtain, her mother comes out saying that the 53 years she's been with the Empress, she hadn't smiled once at her. The Empress doesn't even know who she is. She is also shown her lying self and her greedy self, making the empress realize how empty her life had been. Mai Mai runs over to the nightingale's tree to tell her that the Empress is soon to die. The nightingale knows it's a job for her and flies back to get ready to sing. The game show host starts crying because he always wanted to be a singer, but his mother didn't want him to do that. The nightingale tells him that there is still time to follow his dreams, and so he and the other Empresses, run along to sing with him. The nightingale flies over to the Empress' bed telling her how magnificent life behind the palace walls are and now that the host of death had left, the Empress can continue to live. The Empress had became a friend to all the people in the village, and she lived happily ever after.
•Phil Hartman, who was shot dead by his wife on May 28, 1998, just a year before this episode aired, voices the game show host. It was his final ever acting role, and it was dedicated to his memory.
Bringing a feminist point of view to a classic fairy tale, this special focuses on a greedy Empress who learns a valuable lesson about the meaning of true be...
Featuring the voices of Pam Grier as the Empress' Nightingale, Amy Hill as the Empress, Tim Lounibos as Fisherman/Servant, Keone Young as Butler/Watchmaker, Julyana Soelistyo as Mei-Mei/Old Woman/Child, Phil Hartman as a Game Show Host in his final role, and Robin Leach as the Chamberlain. Note: This episode is dedicated in memory of Phil Hartman.
- 39
- March 12, 1995 –, July 18, 2000
- 3
- HBO
The Empress' Nightingale. TV-Y | 23 MIN. WATCH NOW. A greedy empress learns a valuable lesson about the meaning of true beauty in this animated special. 1.
Brief Synopsis. Bringing a feminist point of view to a classic fairy tale, this special focuses on a greedy Empress who learns a valuable lesson about the meaning of true beauty from a straight-talking, soul-singing Nightingale.
