The Little Prince

The Little Prince is a 1974 British-American sci-fi fantasy-musical film with screenplay and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and orchestrated by Angela Morley. It was both directed and produced by Stanley Donen and based on the 1943 classic children-adult's novella, The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), by the writer, poet and aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who disappeared near the end of the Second World War some 15 months after his fable was first published. The film and its music were unsuccessful at the box office but became somewhat popular after its theatrical run, and have been released for sale on various media. Background The original Little Prince was first published in 1943, and is the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944). It is a poetic tale self-illustrated in watercolours in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes societal criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated The Little Prince in New York City and Asharoken, N.Y. in mid-to-late 1942 while exiled in the United States after the Fall of France, with the manuscript being completed in October. It would be first published in early 1943 in both English and French, but only in the U.S. It would later appear in his native homeland of France posthumously, after the liberation of Paris, as all of Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned in Nazi-occupied France. Since first being published the novella has been adapted to various media over the decades, including audio recordings, stage, ballet, and operatic works.