Famous Firsts - Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo"

(I've decided to start announcing the winners of the previous week's trivia contest in a separate post, since my comments on them are getting longer.)

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were driving home and listening to a story on NPR about the 2009 selections for the National Film Registry. Every year, the National Film Preservation Board selects up to twenty-five films to be preserved for posterity at the Library of Congress. NPR mentioned a few of this year’s particularly interesting picks, including the Muppets’ big screen debut The Muppet Movie and Michael Jackson’s game-changing music video Thriller. Another film that got a brief mention was “a 1911 mix of live action and animation that influenced Walt Disney.” Curious, and slightly embarrassed that I didn’t immediately know what film was being described, I looked it up online once we got home. I discovered that the short in question was Little Nemo, which left me feeling both glad that the film would be preserved to be enjoyed by future generations and slightly annoyed at NPR. It turned out that their description was a very condensed version of the National Film Preservation Board’s own blurb on the short, but I still felt that it missed much of the point. I like Disney plenty, but I’m not a fan of the idea that in the world of animation, all roads lead to Disney. To suggest that animator Winsor McCay and his work are important chiefly because of their influence on Walt Disney is far from the whole story.

Winsor McCay was an amazingly prolific and influential artist, born sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Despite having very little formal art training, he became a newspaper cartoonist, producing a number of comic strips for various papers. His best-known creation is Little Nemo in Slumberland, which told the story of a young boy and his nightly visits to a fantastic dreamworld. The strip features superb draftsmanship and attention to detail, wonderfully intricate architecture, and a playful inventiveness in story and layout. Today, it is considered a sequential art masterpiece.

McCay developed an interest in the then fledgling medium of animation and partnered with J. Stuart Blackton – another animation pioneer, to create a short film based on MccCay’s comics. The National Film Preservation Board’s description of the resulting short as “a mix of live-action and animation” is somewhat misleading. It brings to mind shorts like the Fleischers’ Out of the Inkwell series or Disney’s early Alice Comedies: animated characters entering the live-action world or a live actor in an animated setting. Little Nemo is neither. It is two minutes of animation with a live-action frame story.

The title card identifies the film as “Winsor McCay, The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics,” though it is known to most people by the much less cumbersome title “Little Nemo.” The text goes on to proclaim McCay “the first artist to attempt drawing pictures that will move.” This is hyperbole at best and very strange, given that McCay’s co-director Blackton had himself experimented with using film to bring drawings to life. His Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is considered by some to be the first animated film and predates Little Nemo by at least five years. Blackton himself is not mentioned anywhere in the film, though the title card notes that the film was produced by the Vitagraph Company, which Blackton founded.



The live-action portion of the film deals chiefly with McCay explaining his idea for an animated short using his comic strip characters and then producing the drawings. Since there is no sound (beyond the jaunty, repetitive piano score attached to my copy of the short), the parts of the story that cannot be conveyed visually are explained in text. The story is a fictionalized version of the creation of the animated portion of the film. McCay explains his idea for creating moving film versions of his Little Nemo in Slumberland characters to his fellows artists, who laugh at him. He then demonstrates his drawing prowess by producing on the spot ink drawings of his creations. The text tells us that McCay promises his colleagues that he will return in one month with four thousand drawings that will create the illusion of movement. (This tight deadline is likely a gross exaggeration. Though McCay was capable of drawing very fast, a skill that was necessary for one of his other careers as a vaudeville “chalk-talk” artist, I’ve seen the actual time he spent working on this short piece of animation identified as not four weeks, but four years.) McCay sets about creating the four thousand individual drawings while enormous packages of drawing paper and barrels of ink are delivered to his studio. The packages, barrels, and door are labeled “drawing paper,” “ink,” and “studio,” for the audience’s convenience. Inside, McCay must deal with various interlopers whose nosing around threatens to knock over McCay’s numerous stacks of drawings and eventually does so. Finally, McCay presents his finished work to his peers.

Why bother with this fictional version of the film’s creation? My first thought was that it was intended as self-promotion for McCay. Selling his name to the public was an important aspect of all of McCay’s various careers. Showing McCay actually creating the animation could have been intended to create a stronger link in the minds of the audience between his name and his work. Animation was still very new to the public and few people understood exactly how it worked. So maybe the live-action footage was intended to both entertain and inform the public, filling out what would otherwise be a mere two minutes of animation with a fun and educational (if somewhat inaccurate) segment on the animation process. McCay may have simply wished to give himself some additional recognition for his hard work. This piece by Lauren Rabinovitz suggests that the live-action segments are further evidence of McCay the formalist. McCay’s comics are more focused on investigating and experimenting with the medium than the story itself. He was never afraid to call attention to or play with the structure of his comics, shattering panel borders and letting his hungry protagonists devour the letters from the strip’s title. So perhaps the scenes of McCay at work reflect the artist’s belief that the process and experimentation are as important as the finished product.

There’s an odd little moment before the animation begins in earnest. After McCay gathers his friends together and starts the camera rolling, an image of McCay’s character Flip appears line by line. But instead of continuing directly into the rest of the animation, the film then shows us McCay’s hand drawing the exact same image of Flip and sliding it into a three-sided wooden box, presumably to be filmed. It’s as if McCay is taking one last opportunity to remind his audience that no matter how magical the following scene may appear to be, he did actually draw the whole thing. The drawing of Flip is labeled “No. 1” referring back to McCay’s promise of four thousand drawings. The drawing of Flip suddenly goes from black and white to color. Since color film had not yet been invented, the film itself had to be painted by hand, one frame at a time.

Among the main characters in the Little Nemo comics and the animation is the Imp, an unfortunate racist caricature. In the strip, he is a boy from a tribe of cannibals who speaks either incomprehensible nonsense or fractured English. Fortunately, the Imp does not do anything particularly offensive in the animation and, like all of the characters, he never speaks. But he is still drawn as a sterotype of a native African, an image that would likely not have raised an eyebrow at the time of the film’s debut but looks horribly dated and ignorant today. I certainly do not approve of such imagery, but I also believe that art should be judged in the context of its time and not solely on the basis of whether or not it contains such problematic characters. Trying to ignore or erase the existence of racism in the past will neither change the fact that it happened nor prevent it from occurring in the future. If knowledgeable adults can be allowed to watch films like Gone With The Wind in spite of its rather idealized vision of the American South and the slave experience, then they should be able to watch Little Nemo (and Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, but that’s another article.)



As the animation starts, the words “Watch me move” appear above Flip’s head, which is pretty much all the animated segment of the film is. There is no plot whatsoever, just the characters cavorting about. Animation was still such a new thing at the time that audiences could be entertained just by the novelty of seeing drawings brought to life. Much of the animation consists of the characters chasing each other around, assembling onscreen, and magically distorting like funhouse mirror reflections. As the animation comes to an end, the camera zooms out to show McCay’s hand holding the final drawing, triumphantly labeled “No. 4000.”



So if there’s no story to speak of, what makes Little Nemo so special? As with McCay’s comics work, the visuals are what stand out. Not only is Little Nemo one of the earliest examples of an animated short; it’s also one of the most sophisticated of the early animated shorts. McCay’s drawings are amazingly detailed, and yet they move surprisingly well. From his very first actions of removing the cigar from his mouth and waving away the smoke, Flip looks like he exists in three dimensions. Details like Flip’s spiky tufts of hair and the Imp’s jewelry stay consistent as they run around. The distortions of the characters are not haphazardly drawn. They stretch and squash according to particular rules. While parts of their forms elongate, others compress at the top or bottom of the screen, depending on the direction they’re being stretched in. The motion isn’t always perfect: McCay seems to have trouble keeping Nemo’s large hat moving convincingly as he turns or bows his head. There are some jumps in the animation, which may be due to parts of the film being lost or damaged beyond repair over the decades. These are minor flaws though, and do not detract from the overall amazing quality of the work.

The blurb from the National Film Registry, along with many animation fans, notes how technically superior Little Nemo is t animated films that came before it. What I find equally stunning is how superior ir is to films that came after it. McCay would go on create more animation including Gertie the Dinosaur, widely regarded as the first animated character with true personality, but it would be years before the rest of the animation world would catch up with McCay. Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, all American animation would utilize a much simpler style of drawing. Why? Because animation was becoming a business, a transition that McCay took a very dim view of. McCay saw the potential of animation to become a new art form and even imagined a day when the public would be so accustomed to moving art that they would regard works like the Mona Lisa as curious, static relics of a bygone era. But animation was growing into a studio product, and one man reportedly taking four years to make two minutes of animation was not a financially viable model. Dismayed by the commercialization of the medium, McCay later chastised his colleagues at a dinner held in his honor and wished them bad luck with their future endeavors.

To be selected for the National Film Registry, a film must be deemed significant either historically, aesthetically, or culturally. Little Nemo is a film that fits all three criteria. It is historically significant as an early work of American animation by one of the first masters of the medium. It is aesthetically significant because its visuals are literally years ahead of their time. And it is culturally significant both for helping to introduce the American public to animation and the animation process, and for influencing a new generation of animation pioneers, including – but certainly not limited to – Walt Disney. Little Nemo is certainly deserving of a place in the National Film Registry, where it can continue to amaze and inspire future animators for years to come.

Trivia Time! I’ll be pretty surprised if anyone – aside from a few of my animator friends – is familiar with the answer to this week’s trivia question. Little Nemo was one of two animated films to be picked for inclusion in the National Film Registry for 2009. What’s the name of the other film?

Copyright has expired on this film, but the images are taken from the DVD Animation Legend Winsor McCay

Famous Firsts - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Part Three

It’s the same night and another lighted window, but the music accompanying this shot is celebratory and Snow White’s animal friends are crowded around, their heads and tails swaying in time with the happy music. The song here is called “The Dwarfs’ Yodel Song” or “The Silly Song.” Like the washing song before it, it has a reasonably solid plot reason for existing: the dwarfs wish to entertain Snow White. But the actual song doesn’t have anything to do with this sentiment, and even the song’s own chorus amounts to “this song is ridiculous and has no point.” Still, the scene itself is entertaining and does a good job of illustrating how well Snow White and the dwarfs are getting along and that their relationship is not limited to her teaching them good manners. The detail that this film does so well is on full display here, from Grumpy’s beautiful carved pipe organ to Dopey’s drum set. Bashful has a particularly good moment where he is supposed to recite a verse but is so embarrassed to be performing for Snow White that he can’t get past the first word without having to bury is face in his beard. Grumpy is less than thrilled about having to repeatedly start Bashful’s musical introduction over again as the dwarf continues to flub his lines. Snow White is clearly having a good time, joining in the singing and dancing. Dopey, proving that his dopiness does not make him stupid, figures out that standing on top of an obliging Sneezy and wearing a long coat will make him an ideal dance partner for the much taller Snow White. The dwarfs never try to vie for Snow White’s attention. They simply laugh and clap when she spends extra time dancing with suddenly taller Dopey. Beautiful as they may find her, she’s still more of a mother than a romantic interest. If she’s happy, they’re happy.

The dancing comes to an end as Sneezy sneezes. Dopey puts his finger to his own nose right before the sneeze, either in a fruitless attempt to preserve the illusion or in hopes that doing so will somehow prevent Sneezy from sneezing. The force of the sneeze sends Dopey rocketing up to the rafters of the house, though as always, he is completely unharmed.

As the laughter dies down, the dwarfs ask Snow White to tell them a story. Happy wants a true story and Bashful requests a love story. She tells them about how she fell in love with her prince, which leads into one of the film’s best-known songs, “Someday My Prince Will Come.” At first, it may seem like this song doesn’t need to be in the movie. Snow White already had an “I Want” song with “I’m Wishing,” right? But actually, this song expresses a slightly different desire for Snow White. “I’m Wishing,” revealed her hope that she would meet the man of her dreams. Now that she’s met him, what she wants is to be reunited with him, marry him, and live happily ever after. It’s also been a while since Snow White mentioned her original goal of true love. Her dream of a happy life with her prince is going to be very important very soon, so the audience needs to be reminded of how important that goal is to Snow White. On top of that, the song ensures that all of Snow White’s friends know that she is in love and that her fondest wish is to be with her prince. The animals, still at the window, happily nuzzle up to their mates. The dwarfs listen with rapt attention and dreamy eyes. The only person not won over is, predictably, Grumpy, who leans against his organ in a dark corner and denounces the whole thing as “mush.”



Notice that Snow White’s passivity even extends to her song lyrics. In “I’m Wishing,” her wish is for her beloved to find her, not the other way around. Now she sings of her desire for her prince to come to her, with no suggestion that she might actually seek him out herself.

The clock striking eleven snaps Snow White back into “mom” mode. She hurries the dwarfs off to bed, but Doc, taking up the role of leader once again, stops them. Snow White, he insists, will sleep upstairs in their beds. The princess protests, but Doc reassures her that they will all be comfortable downstairs, though Grumpy is again able to derail his train of thought. When Doc has trouble explaining exactly where they will spend the night, Grumpy pipes up with a surly “In a pig’s eye!” which Doc repeats before correcting himself. As the other dwarfs agree that they’ll all be fine, Dopey once again proves that he’s no fool and slips off to lay claim to the only pillow in the whole downstairs room. But the second Snow White is upstairs and has shut the door, the dwarfs’ maturity evaporates and they pounce on Dopey in a tug-of-war over the pillow. Doc attempts to calm them down, but to no avail and the pillows rips. Ever a “glass half full” kind of guy, Dopey is happy to have saved just one large feather for himself, which he fluffs and lays under his head before going to sleep.

Upstairs, with the bedroom all to herself, Snow White says her prayers before bed. She asks for blessings on her newfound friends the dwarfs and that her dreams may come true, adding as an afterthought “and please make Grumpy like me.”

Back downstairs, Grumpy is feeling anything but kindly towards Snow White. He has been reduced to sleeping in a kettle by the fire and has to contend with the snoring of his fellow dwarfs as they snooze away in their various makeshift beds. Meeting Snow White has done nothing to reduce Grumpy’s misogyny and has, in fact, only confirmed his beliefs that women are trouble. Or so it would seem.

From a billowing cloud of steam, the camera pans down to reveal the transformed Queen hunched over her cauldron, dipping an apple into a sinister green brew. As she draws it out, the viscous liquid remains on the upper half of the apple in the shape of a skull, making clear its poisonous nature. The Queen turns the apple from a foreboding greenish-black to a tempting red, which will set it apart from the green and yellow apples the Queen will carry with her. Cackling, the Queen turns to the raven and offers the apple. The bird recoils in horror, backing away and flapping its wings in an attempt to flee. “It’s not for you,” the Queen chides in a mock-sweet voice. “It’s for Snow White!” She goes on to describe in detail the effects of the poisoned apple, first stilling the victim’s breath then congealing her blood. But, the Queen suddenly realizes, there may be an antidote and she goes to check. Sure enough, the victim of the Sleeping Death can be awakened by what is known as “Love’s First Kiss.” The Queen is unconcerned. The dwarfs, she is convinced, will think the princess is dead and bury her alive, a thought which sends her into fits of cackling laughter.

What is strange about the Queen’s plan to be rid of her rival is that the method she has chosen will not, by her own admission, actually kill Snow White. The Sleeping Death leaves the victim in a weird in-between state, appearing dead but somehow still alive. The Queen had no compunctions about ordering her huntsman to cut out Snow White’s heart. So why bother with a half-measure instead of using ordinary poison? Perhaps the idea of leaving her foe alive, yet totally helpless appeals to an aspect of the Queens personality that we will see in the next shot: her cruelty.



Still cackling, the Queen descends a staircase with her basket of apples, heading for a boat in an underground waterway. As she goes, she passes by an imprisoned skeleton, one of its arms reaching out for a water pitcher that lies inches out of reach. “Thirsty?” the Queen laughs wickedly. “Have a drink!” She kicks the pitcher over, sending the skeleton’s bones flying and revealing the pitcher to be empty except for a lone spider, which scuttles off into the darkness. It’s likely that this seen replaced one of the Queen taunting the Prince with her plan to murder his love back when he was to have been her prisoner. As it stands, the joy she gets from this pointlessly cruel action only underlines the fact that the Queen is a person completely devoid of compassion or morals. As she steers her boat through the thick fog, we know that Snow White is in real, serious danger.

Morning arrives and the forest animals are still gathered around the seven dwarfs’ cottage, unwilling to leave the little princess even in this safe haven. They rush off as the door opens, but they aren’t scattering in a panic like they did earlier. They are now comfortable around both Snow White and the dwarfs.

Doc is reminding Snow White of the threat the Queen still poses to her. For a moment, their roles are reversed: he is the adult warning the innocent young girl to beware of strangers while he and the other dwarfs are away at the mines. Snow White reassures Doc that she will be fine and kisses him on the top of his head. She is back to being the adult and though the dwarfs are happy to receive a kiss from beautiful Snow White, they are still children, reacting with embarrassed giggles. Dopey’s particular brand of smarts makes another appearance as he staggers off in joy after getting his kiss, then runs around the back of the house, dives through the window, and gets back in line for another one. She humors him the first time, but sends him on his way when he tries for a third.



Grumpy has already declared the whole kissing business disgusting, so you would think he would be sneaking out the back to avoid getting kissed himself. But what’s this? Grumpy is in front of a mirror, rubbing his forehead, setting his cap at a jaunty angle, and straightening his beard. Could the proud woman-hater actually be…primping? He retains his Grumpy scowl, but he removes his cap as he approaches Snow White and clears his throat several times to get her attention. He warns her not to let anyone or anything in the house and she exclaims happily “Why, Grumpy, you DO care!” Despite his clear efforts to get the princess’s attention, he struggles to get away from her and stalks off in a huff after she kisses him. But as he goes, his face softens into an actual smile and he steals a doe-eyes glance back at Snow White with a happy sigh. Snow White kisses her fingertips and sweetly waves at him. Suddenly remembering himself, Grumpy snaps back to his customary scowl and storms off – straight into a tree. Adding insult to injury, his nose gets stuck in a knothole. Once he dislodges it, he stomps off again, only to fall into a stream and hit his head on the footbridge as he stands up. Snow White calls a last cheery goodbye to him as sloshes off angrily to join the other dwarfs.

Of all the characters in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Grumpy is the only one who undergoes real change. Other characters may have a change of circumstances, but he alone is a different person at the end. The change in him can seem somewhat forced; one minute he is totally against Snow White and the next he is all but completely won over by her. But what makes the transition work is Grumpy’s clear struggle with his growing affection for Snow White. Even as her charm and sweetness are having their effect on him, he still fights to remain Grumpy. But as we see in this scene, the effort causes him nothing but pain. He’s so distracted by the need to keep up his image that he runs headlong into everything in his path. Only when he accepts the fact that he really does care about Snow White will he be able to stop being a permanent sourpuss and learn to enjoy life.

As the dwarfs are leaving, the Queen is drawing ever nearer to their home. Two vultures watch her pass by, grin menacingly at one another, and slowly take to the sky, following in her wake. Through some combination of instinct and insight they know that this woman has death on her mind.

Snow White is not totally alone. Her forest friends watch through the window and help out as she makes the gooseberry pies she promised the dwarfs. She sings a reprise of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” keeping the importance of her dreams of love front and center. As with the huntsman before, the Queen’s shadow engulfs Snow White and frightens off the animals before we see her leaning through the window. “All alone, my pet?” she coos with false warmth. Snow White admits that she is. She always seems on the verge of saying something more to the stranger confronting her, explaining perhaps that she is not supposed to let anyone in. But the disguised Queen quickly cuts her off at every turn and Snow White is far too sweet and polite to take a stand.



The animals, though spooked, have not gone far and watch with concern as the old peddler woman talks up her apples to Snow White. They seem suspicious, but it’s not until they notice the vultures perched on a nearby tree that their fears are confirmed. The birds twitter amongst themselves and decide to take action. They can’t do much, being very small. They fly at the Queen and cause her to drop the apple she is offering to Snow White. The princess is saved, but only for the moment.

This is the first time we see the limit to the animals’ abilities. Up to now, they have been able to help Snow White with whatever she needs. But here, their inability to communicate anything but the simplest of ideas proves a terrible handicap. They cannot say to Snow White “Our instincts are telling us that this woman is up to no good,” or even remind her that she must be wary of strangers. All they can do is physically attack the Queen with their very limited strength, a move that ultimately benefits no one but the Queen. Shocked by their behavior, Snow White rushes out of the house and shoos the animals away, scolding them for scaring the “poor old lady.” The animals can only watch as the wily Queen turns the unexpected attack to her advantage. She feigns heart problems and Snow White’s instincts to care for others immediately overwhelm her fears and her promise not to let anyone into the house. The animals gather worriedly at the window and watch the Queen surreptitiously smile over her good fortune while Snow White’s back is turned. With no other options, the animals race into the forest to find the dwarfs and somehow make them understand the terrible danger Snow White is in.

The dwarfs are just arriving at their mine and getting to work when they are set upon by the stampeding creatures. Still unable to explain the situation, the animals desperately grab hold of the dwarfs’ clothing and try to push or pull them into action. Unfortunately, the dwarfs cannot figure out what’s going on. They try to shoo the animals away just as Snow White did, wondering what could be causing them to act so strangely.

Back at the cottage, the Queen has come up with a plan to get Snow White to try the poisoned apple. She was smart enough to exploit her stepdaughter’s kindness to a poor old woman and now she will shrewdly exploit her dreams. Supposedly repaying Snow White’s kindness to her, the Queen reveals that the bright red apple is actually a “wishing apple,” capable of making your dreams come true with a single bite.

We cut back to the dwarfs under siege by the panicked animals. The dwarfs have started to guess that there must be something wrong, but they can’t figure out what. It is Sleepy, too tired to even realize the horrible implications of what he is saying, who at last yawns, “Maybe the old Queen’s got Snow White.” The others immediately realize that this must be what has the animals so upset. So what happens next? Does Doc, the self-appointed leader, take charge and lead the dwarfs into battle? No. Fear has reduced him to stammering and repeating what the others say. He doesn’t mix up words – this is no time for that sort of comedy – but he’s in no shape to lead anyone anywhere. So who is going to get the dwarfs out of their initial panic and into action?

Grumpy.



Once the dwarfs realize that Snow White is in danger, is it Grumpy who cries out “The Queen’ll kill her! We gotta save her!” And while the other dwarfs agree but are at a loss for what to do – Doc included, Grumpy is the one who leaps onto the back of a stag, shouts “Come on!” to the other dwarfs, and rides off to rescue the princess. Doc may be capable of taking the lead when the threat is an imagined monster or a trough of water, but in a real crisis, he’s all but useless. Grumpy may be a bad-tempered individual capable of making the most minor issue into a battle. But when his forceful personality is combined with his growing affection for Snow White and a real cause, he rises to the occasion without a moment of hesitation.

While the dwarfs ride on deerback towards the cottage, the Queen continues to make her pitch to Snow White, suggesting that there must be something she wants, maybe someone who she loves. Snow White is literally backed into a corner. She seems to be aware that she should be afraid of the old woman, but she just doesn’t have the strength of character to act on it. The promise of her dreams coming true is too much for her to resist and she is soon holding the apple and making her wish.

The dwarfs are still speeding to the rescue. The next few scenes will cut rapidly between Snow White and the Queen at the cottage and the dwarfs on their way, heightening the tension as the audience wonders whether the dwarfs will arrive in time. Snow White finishes her wish and the Queen urges her to take a bite of the apple. The dwarfs are still racing home. The Queen tells her victim not to “let the wish grow cold” and watches with bated breath as Snow White takes the fatal bite of the poisoned apple. The camera remains on the Queen’s face as she recites the process of the Sleeping Death taking hold while Snow White gasps for air. The camera pans down and we see Snow White’s arm fall to the floor, the apple with a single bite out of it slipping from her fingers in a great bit of “less is more” storytelling. The Queen’s triumphant laughter is punctuated by a crash of thunder and lightning, indicating that a storm is coming. “Now I’ll be fairest in the land!” she crows, despite still being an old hag with a wart on her nose.



Leaving the cottage, the Queen spots the dwarfs and an army of forest animals racing towards her. She makes a hasty exit. Grumpy pulls his stag to a stop in front of the cottage, but instead of going in, he points in the direction that the Queen fled and urges his comrades to join him in chasing her. For a while, this puzzled me. Why would the dwarfs go after the Queen and not go into the cottage and make sure that Snow White is safe, especially when there are seven of them and they could easily split up? Then I realized that as long as the dwarfs believe that Snow White is still alive, they are pursuing the Queen in order to stop her from harming Snow White. If they had found Snow White seemingly dead and then taken off after the Queen, they would have been chasing her out of a desire for revenge, which would have thrown their status as “good guys” into question.

The Queen flees and becomes briefly tangled in branches, just as Snow White did in her frightening run into the forest. She climbs up a rocky cliff, with the dwarfs not far behind. Reaching the top, she suddenly realizes the there is nothing but a precipitous drop in front of her and the dwarfs closing in at her back. The vultures who began following her earlier settle on a branch overhead. Snow White, not being truly dead, is of no use to them, but their instincts once again tell them that death is near. With the storm growing worse, the Queen grabs a fallen tree branch and shoves one end of it beneath a convenient bolder. She intends to send the bolder down the cliff-side and crush the dwarfs. Grumpy, still in the lead, yells “Look out!” but can the dwarfs get away before the Queen sends the huge rock down upon them?

The Queen’s ultimate demise is something of a deus ex machina. As she laughs, believing herself triumphant, a bolt of lightning, much like the one she seemed to summon before to finish her potion, strikes the ground in front of her. With a horrible scream, she plummets to her doom and the boulder tumbles after her. Even the elements, it seems, have turned on the Queen. Where the lightning once heeded her call, it now saves the lives of her next intended victims and brings about her death. In case there is any doubt remaining about her fate, the vultures’ eyes widen in hungry anticipation before they take wing and circle slowly towards the ground below.



I don’t think I can possibly overstate how much of a risk this next scene is. Nowadays, we are used to characters in animated films crying, mourning, and dealing with very serious matters. But back in the 1930s, animated characters weren’t expected to engage an audience for more than a few minutes at a time. Now Disney is asking audiences not only to watch an animated film over an hour in length, but also to believe that an animated character can die and to feel as strongly as they would if that character were being portrayed by a live actress. Was the outcome of the film ever a mystery to filmgoers? Of course not. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was a classic fairy tale long before it was a classic animated film. Even a person who had never heard the story before could likely guess what is going to happen just by watching the film. In order for audiences to suspend their disbelief, they have to buy into the character of the dwarfs. If the film hasn’t won them over, if the artists and animators and voice actors and everyone else haven’t made the dwarfs into convincing and believable personalities, if the audience isn’t connecting to the characters as real people, then the scene doesn’t work and the whole film falls apart. The fate of the entire Disney studio rested on whether or not moviegoers could be convinced to sympathize with the heartbroken dwarfs, even knowing that Snow White will soon be free of the evil spell and that every last one of the characters is really just ink and paint and a little rouge.

The dwarf’s cottage is dimly lit by two candles, with only the suggestion of rafters and a few furnishings in the background to tell us where we are. Snow White lies motionless on a bed at the center of the room. Soft organ music makes the funerary atmosphere unmistakable. Slowly, the scene becomes bright enough to reveal the dwarfs gathered around her. Tears stream down their faces and none of them says a word. Almost as soon as the camera is on him, Grumpy loses his composure and his grouchy expression. He hides his face in the chair he’s leaning on as he breaks down sobbing. Grumpy has finally learned to truly care about another person, only to have her die and leave him broken-hearted. Even normally joyful Dopey is weeping, burying his head in Doc’s shoulder as the older dwarf gently pats his back to comfort him. The forest animals crowd around the door and window and bow their heads in sorrow, heedless of the rain that gives the sense that all of nature is mourning the death of Snow White.

The next shot is of text, presumably excerpted from the storybook we saw at the beginning, as it starts off mid-sentence. We are told that the dwarfs just could not bring themselves to bury Snow White, saving her from the Queen’s prediction that she would be buried alive. Instead, they make a gold and glass coffin and keep constant watch over her. Behind the text, there is a single tree branch, which is first shedding its last dry leaves, then weighted down with snow. As the branch blossoms, heralding the arrival of spring, the text informs us that the tale of the lovely yet seemingly dead maiden has reached the Prince. (Remember him?) He has apparently been searching for his beloved this entire time and decides to seek out the beautiful girl in the coffin.

Because it’s been so long since we last saw the Prince, we get a reprise of “One Song” before he appears to help remind us who he is. The dwarfs and the forest animals gather around Snow White in her ornate coffin to lay bouquets around her and mourn their loss. Doc and Happy remove the glass coffin lid to place a bouquet in the princess’s hands, but the real purpose is to make it easier for the Prince to deliver the all-important kiss. The Prince says nothing when he arrives; he only continues to sing his song. But the dwarfs move aside to let him by, realizing who he must be. The Prince leans down to kiss Snow White, then kneels at her side and joins the dwarfs and animals in mourning her. None of the characters know that Snow White can be revived by the kiss or anything else, so their reaction is only sadness. Snow White’s prince has found her at last, but too late. But as the Disney Chorus begins singing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” Snow White stirs and stretches as if she had merely been asleep. First the dwarfs and then the animals look up and stare in amazement and joy at the miracle. Though he is the nearest to her, the Prince is the last to notice that Snow White is alive and well. Once he does, he is overjoyed and sweeps her up into his arms. The whole forest breaks out in celebration, with dwarfs and animals alike dancing and leaping about, overcome with happiness.



The Prince, perhaps not wanting to take any chances this time, immediately sets Snow White on the back of his white charger. He lifts each of the dwarfs up to her so she can give them all a goodbye kiss. Grumpy has learned from his experience and not only gladly accepts Snow White’s kiss, but blows her one in return! They all wave a last farewell to her, once again happy that she’s happy, even if they’re losing her. The princess and her prince head off to their happy ending, visually represented by his castle, gleaming in the sunset as it towers over even the clouds. It almost redundant when the book informs us that they, like all good fairy tale couples, lived happily ever after. The book closes and the very first Walt Disney feature film comes to an end.

After over seventy years, does Snow White still hold up? I cannot say that it is a flawless film or that it is indistinguishable from modern animated films. But the visuals remain stunning even today. And although our cultural has changed in the decades since this film was made, there is still plenty in the movie to keep modern audiences entertained. Whether viewers are drawn to the sweetness and innocence of the title character, the power and cruelty of the jealous Queen, the comedy and warmth of the dwarfs, or the artistry that has stood the test of time, they will keep coming back to the one that started it all.

All images in this article are copyright Disney.

Famous Firsts - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Part Two

When we last saw her, Snow White was enjoying cleaning up the mysterious cottage where she hoped to take shelter. The queen...well, we really don't know what the queen is up to since her trusted huntsman was unwilling to carry out her fiendish plot to be rid of her rival. We will find out how she reacts to Humbert's betrayal, but not just yet. Right now, we're going to meet the film's other protagonists, who are much more active than the little princess.

The film goes straight from one song into another, another two if you count “We Dig” and “Heigh-Ho” as two separate songs. These songs here have a clear purpose: to introduce the seven dwarfs. We still don’t know any of their names, but we can learn more about them by watching them. As both visuals and song make clear, the dwarfs are miners, digging away in a mine brimming with enough sparkling gems to make the dwarfs very wealthy indeed. Their industrious nature combined with the long white beards most of them have would seem to indicate that they are nothing like the children Snow White is expecting. But for once, the song provides a clue to what’s really going on:

“We dig up diamonds by the score.
A thousand rubies, sometimes more.
Though we don’t know what we dig ‘em for,
We dig, dig, dig-a, dig, dig.”

The idea that the dwarfs don’t really know what to do with the gems they unearth is repeated a few more times. Before heading home, the dwarfs toss sackfuls of the gems they’ve dug up into a clearly labeled vault located near the mine. The key to this vault is placed on a hook on the mine’s doorframe, so the mine’s security must not be a concern for the dwarfs. (Though the dwarf who puts the key there is the one named “Dopey,” so it could just be his idea that the key should be left at the vault.) The dwarfs’ cottage, while beautifully decorated with wood carvings and little knickknacks, is nowhere near as opulent as the Queen’s throne room and does not indicate that the dwarfs are using their gems or selling them to enrich themselves. Are the dwarfs really digging up precious gems just for something to do? They may not actually be children, but perhaps they’re more childlike than they look.



Giving the dwarfs individual personalities is perhaps Disey’s biggest contribution to the story of Snow White. Up to this point, the film has been a largely straight retelling of the fairy tale. But in the original, the dwarfs were completely interchangeable. Now each one is distinct from the others and we begin to see that even in this early scene. There’s the one dwarf with glasses who tests the gems for quality while the others dig them up or haul them out of the mine. He’s also the one who starts off the “Heigh-Ho” song, telling the other dwarves it’s time to head home. When the dwarfs march back to their cottage, he is at the head of the line. Then there’s the little bald dwarf, the only one of the seven without a beard. He’s charged with sweeping up the dud gems and tossing them away, giving us an idea of what kind of work he is and isn’t capable of. His lack of hair makes him look much younger than the rest of the dwarfs, which fits in with his silly, playful, demeanor. Watching the lead dwarf inspect gems with a jeweler’s loupe, he picks up two diamonds and puts them over his eyes to imitate him. He seems almost permanently happy; whether he’s being knocked over the head or accidentally throwing himself into the vault with the sack of gems he’s carrying, he always comes up smiling. He’s the last in line when the dwarfs leave the mine for the day, and constantly falling behind. Aside from these two, we may also notice a permanently scowling dwarf and a dwarf whose eyelids are always at half-mast.

Back at the cottage, Snow White and the animals decide to see what’s upstairs. They discover seven little beds, each with a name carved into the footboard. So now we know the dwarfs’ names: Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, and Sleepy. We’ll get a formal introduction shortly, but even now we can probably start to guess which name goes with which dwarf. Snow White does comment that they are “funny names for children,” though I guess they’re perfectly ordinary names for dwarfs. After reading Sleepy’s name, she realizes that she’s feeling rather sleepy herself. She lies down across three of the beds and falls asleep while the birds cover her with a blanket. The animals start to settle in, but bolt awake when they hear the dwarfs singing and clear out of the cottage speedily.

The lead dwarf, who we may have guessed by now is “Doc”, is the first to notice the light is on in their cottage. He starts mixing up his words, a character trait that comes up whenever he’s excited or distracted. The dwarfs all creep closer to get a better look and exclaim, weirdly enough, “Jiminy Crickets!” (Pinocchio would not be released in theaters for three more years.) Wielding their pickaxes, the dwarfs decide to investigate, and we begin another mini-drama. Snow White was presented with the mystery of who lives in the little cottage and now the dwarfs have to figure out who or what is in their house and what that individual has done to the place. The dwarfs enter their home and search for the intruder while the bluebird family, who stayed inside, watches from the rafters. As they investigate, the dwarfs react with shock and confusion to the cleaning that’s been done in their absence. One dwarf notes that “our cobwebs are missing.” Another points out that the sink is empty, concluding that their dishes have been stolen. A third dwarf discovers the dishes have actually been “hid” in the cupboard. A fourth laments that his cup has been washed and the “sugar’s gone.” If the mess Snow White found upon entering the cottage didn’t convince us that the dwarfs need someone to take care of them, their reactions to finding their house clean and items put away correctly certainly do. Two of the dwarfs are happy to discover a tasty smell coming from a pot on the fire, but the irritable dwarf, “Grumpy”, keeps them from trying any, declaring that the steaming concoction is “witch’s brew.”

Right now we’re just making educated guesses at which dwarf has what name, but one of the seven makes it unmistakable. When another dwarf shoves a bouquet of goldenrod under his nose, he reacts with a stuffy “My hay fever!” before letting loose a gale force sneeze that sends the other dwarfs and various objects flying across the room. If the dwarfs’ names mean anything, then this has to be Sneezy.

Noticing the dwarfs’ nervousness, the bluebird family taps on the rafter they’re perched on, then lets out as bloodcurdling a shriek as three small birds can mange. I’m not quite sure what their intention is. Do they want to scare the dwarfs out of the cottage? Lure them upstairs so they’ll discover Snow White? Or are they just having fun at the dwarfs’ expense? Whatever the birds’ reasoning, the noise causes the dwarfs to run for various hiding places. Once they come out, they conclude that whatever is in their house is upstairs in the bedroom and someone needs to go up there and chase it down. Dopey is given the task, which briefly erases his usually happy expression, though he’s smiling again as Doc tries to hand him a candle. “Don’t be nervous,” he tells the grinning Dopey as his own hand shakes violently. Dopey cautiously enters the bedroom. Still asleep Snow White moans and stretches under the blanket. Dopey yells and runs in terror from the “monster.” His yell is one of the few places in the movie where I feel a voice performance falls flat. It’s not even that Dopey is otherwise mute; the voice is just too low for a character whose design and behavior are so childlike.

After briefly mistaking Dopey for the monster, the other dwarfs pepper him with questions about what he saw. Dopey hasn’t said a word up to this point but it’s only when he pantomimes his answers that we realize he is actually mute. Although he only saw Snow White under a sheet, Dopey confirms every one of the dwarfs’ suspicions: the monster is a giant, horned, drooling, fire-breathing dragon. The only accurate piece of information he relates is that the “monster” is asleep in their beds.

The dwarfs decide that they have to attack while the monster is sleeping and now the real tension begins. We know that there’s no monster, only a sleeping princess. But the dwarfs don’t know that and in their fear and confusion, they may attack Snow White. They may be little more than children jumping at shadows, but their pickaxes and clubs are capable of doing real harm and their calls of “Off with its head!” “Break its bones!” and “We’ll kill it dead!” show that they are serious.



Doc leads the dwarfs upstairs and over to the beds where they surround the “monster”, weapons at the ready. Doc pulls back the blanket and they stop mid-swing as the “monster” is revealed. Snow White is introduced to them with sparkling music, her chest gently rising and falling as she sleeps on unaware of the latest brush with death she’s had.

Further pushing the idea that the dwarfs don’t quite possess full adult intelligence, one of them asks upon seeing Snow White “What is it?” Doc may not be quite as smart as he thinks he is, but he can at least recognize that “it’s a girl.”

Most of the dwarfs are delighted at the discovery of their unexpected visitor, calling her “might purty” and “just like an angel,” but Grumpy is anything but. The intruder, he announces, is a female and “all females is poison” and “full of wicked wiles.” When asked to explain what “wicked wiles” are, Grumpy admits that he has no idea but is nonetheless against them, suggesting that his misogyny has no basis in experience or reality. Snow White begins to stir and is soon face to face with the occupants of the cottage. She introduces herself with a polite “how do you do?” The dwarfs, as lacking in knowledge of manners as they are in housekeeping ability, look at each other in confusion and when she repeats herself, Grumpy responds with a surly “How do you do what?”

Snow White insists that the dwarfs let her guess their names and we finally get a formal introduction to each of the seven. She first identifies Doc, the pompous leader of the group. Next is the dwarf who called her an “angel” before. He starts to turn away and play with his beard the second Snow White turns her attention to him and she guesses that he is Bashful, which he confirms by turning beet red and tying his beard into a knot. Sleepy’s yawn gives him away, as does Sneezy’s hay fever.

Snow White starts to identify a fifth dwarf, but trails off and he introduces himself as Happy. Of all the dwarfs, Happy is the least distinct, having little in the way of physical or personality traits to differentiate him from the others. All seven dwarfs – except for Grumpy – are usually pretty happy, so being happy is not enough to make Happy unique. Happy goes on to introduce Dopey and explain that “he don’t talk none.” Even Dopey is unaware of whether he can talk or not; he’s simply never tried to. This keeps Dopey’s muteness comedic rather than tragic and ensures that we’ll continue to see him as a funny character.



There’s only one dwarf left, the one regarding Snow White with folded arms and a nasty scowl. Dropping her voice to the lowest register it can reach and folding her own arms, she says, “Ohhhh, you must be Grumpy.” Grumpy looks shocked and even a little hurt by her teasing. Quickly changing the subject, he demands that Doc ask the girl who she is and why she’s here. Doc does so, initially imitating Grumpy’s irritated tone of voice. Grumpy is particularly adept at throwing Doc off his train of thought and getting him to say things he doesn’t mean. When Snow White introduces herself, Grumpy gets Doc to go from trying to express how honored they are to have her in their home to saying that they’re “mad as hornets.” It’s Doc’s eagerness to be a good leader and say the right thing in any given situation that leads to him becoming flustered and mixing up words.



Despite living out in the woods, the dwarfs do know that Snow White is the princess. They’re also well aware that the Queen a wicked, mean person and Grumpy even calls her “an old witch,” a term he means in the literal sense. Grumpy sees this as all the more reason to kick Snow White out. If the Queen find out the dwarfs have been hiding Snow White from her, she could take vengeance on all of them. Snow White pleads her case, promising that if they let her stay, she’ll wash, sew, sweep, and cook for them. The dwarfs obviously haven’t missed most of these services, but cooking catches their attention at once. The way to their hearts is clearly through their stomachs. Doc gets particularly excited over the possibility of what he ends up calling “crapple dumpkins.” When Snow White mentions that she can make gooseberry pie, the dwarfs are sold and decide their guest will stay, Grumpy’s objections non-withstanding.

Snow White runs downstairs to take the soup pot off the fire. The dwarfs smell the tasty aroma and rush downstairs. Grumpy may be a woman-hater and earlier wrote the soup off as witch’s brew, but he’s no going to let any of that stand between him and a hot meal. The dwarfs table manners predictably atrocious. They descend upon the table in a mob, leaning over to grab at bread rolls and fighting over who gets what. In the same gentle tone she used with the animals, Snow White informs the squabbling dwarfs that supper isn’t yet ready, so they’ll have just enough time to wash up.

Though the dwarfs know what washing is, the idea of washing before a meal is foreign to them. Grumpy snarls that he “knew there was a catch.” As they try to unravel the mystery of washing, Snow White sweetly asks if perhaps they’ve already washed and Doc, seeing an out, suggests that, yes, perhaps they have. “But when?” Snow White counters, hand on hips, clearly not buying it. Doc, after sputtering through progressively longer periods of time suggests that they’ve washed “recently” and the others back him up. Naïve as she may be, Snow White still isn’t fooled and asks to see the dwarfs’ hands. The dwarfs immediately put their hands behind them and start backing away. Ages aside, the roles are clear here: Snow White is the all-knowing, no-nonsense “mother” while the dwarfs are guilty-faced little children. Their hands are, of course, filthy and Snow White sends them out to wash, or no supper. Grumpy stays on the sidelines, scowling at the whole drama. He does, however, pull one hand out from his folded arms at glance at it before tucking it back behind his elbow. I wonder what he might have done if his hands were actually clean. After the others have marched themselves outside, Snow White confronts Grumpy. When he doesn’t respond to her, she teasingly asks, “Cat got your tongue?” Flustered, Grumpy sticks out his tongue at her and stomps off, nose in the air, crashing right into the open door. Snow White laughs before asking sweetly, if a little condescendingly, “Oh, did you hurt yourself?” With a final “Hmph!” Grumpy storms out the door, hoists himself up onto a barrel, and chews on the end of a cattail. “Hah, women!” he grunts, at the height of masculine rebellion. To his shock and dismay, the others don’t share his view and are nervously approaching the water trough.



How long has it been since the dwarfs last washed? Their observations that the water is not only “cold” but also “wet” show that it’s been quite some time. Doc reminds the frighten dwarfs that if they wash, it will make Snow White happy, which is incentive enough to brave the cold, wet water. Grumpy points out from his seat on the barrel that, as he predicted, “her wiles are beginning to work.” And though Doc dismisses him, Grumpy isn’t entirely wrong. Snow White may not have a wicked wile in her but her feminine charms are certainly having an effect on the dwarfs, convincing them to do something they normally wouldn’t.

“Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum,” also known as “The Dwarfs' Washing Song,” is mainly an explanation song. The dwarfs clearly don’t know how to wash, so Doc explains it to them in song form. It’s not introducing a character or highlighting a moment of high emotion, but it has a little more reason for existence than “With a Smile and a Song.” It’s also another gag sequence, with plenty of jokes as the dwarfs work through the process of washing.

Grumpy continues to sit on the sidelines, warning the others that before they know it, Snow White fill be decorating their beards in pink ribbons and spraying them with “per-foom.” While the others go through the ordeal of washing in order to please the princess, he remains unswayed. Or does he? Having insulted the other dwarfs throughout the whole procedure, he loudly declares “I’d like to see anybody make ME wash, if I didn’t wanna.” Now Grumpy does put up a huge struggle and protest vehemently when the dwarfs take him up on his “suggestion” and drag him over to the tub. But what did he expect after teasing the others and all but suggesting that they force him to wash? And why add on the qualifying statement “if I didn’t wanna,” indicating that it’s not so much that he would never wash as that he doesn’t want to right now? Grumpy, it seems, is faced with a dilemma. He wants to eat the delicious soup that Snow White has made, but she has made it clear that there will be no supper for anyone who doesn’t wash his hands. Grumpy does not want to wash his hands. He’s made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to wash his hands and that he thinks that Snow White making them wash their hands proves everything he has said about her. But if he doesn’t wash, he doesn’t eat. And maybe on some level, he does actually want to please the princess. As we’ll se later on he isn’t immune to her charms. But if he washes, he’s admitting that he was wrong and he’s not being grumpy, which is literally who he is. So perhaps his inner conflict between wanting to have supper and wanting to protest the “washing” rule leads him to goad the other dwarfs into making him wash, but still protest all the way.



After enduring his taunts while they washed, the other dwarfs can’t resist having some fun at Grumpy’s expense. They don’t have any pink ribbons or “per-foom”, so blue ones and a flower wreath will have to suffice. Snow White calls them in for supper and the dwarfs, in their rush to go eat, “accidentally” drop Grumpy back in the tub.

Snow White has become aware of her stepmother’s desire to kill her and found a safe haven. The dwarfs, while they may not have been actively looking for a housekeeper, are certainly happy to have Snow White staying with them and cooking for them. So once again, the story leaves our passive protagonist and turns to the lady with the ability to make things happen.



It’s a cloudy, moonlit night and the castle is a dark silhouette against the sky. Snow White no longer lives her and nothing but wickedness remains in this place as the camera zooms towards the same window we saw at the start of the film. Before anything else, we see a familiar box with a dagger-through-the-heart clasp in the hands of the Queen. We know that Snow White’s heart is still safely in her own chest, so what’s going on here? The phrasing of the Queen’s question – “Who now is the fairest one of all?” – tells us right away that even though Humbert didn’t kill Snow White, she believes he did. She is so certain that her stepdaughter is dead that she doubts the mirror when it tells her otherwise and even opens the box to show her grisly trophy. (The box is kept at a height and angle that prevents the audience from seeing inside.) But the mirror reveals the truth to her. Humbert has presented her with the heart of a slaughtered pig instead (and, we would hope, gathered up whatever family he may have and got the heck out of Dodge.) But whatever the Queen had planned for Humbert is going to have to wait. Her first priority is to finish off Snow White, which she now realizes she will have to do herself.

The only other living creature in the Queen’s lair beneath the castle is a raven. Though we might guess that the bird is the Queen’s familiar, that doesn’t seem to be the case. It is not her faithful servant like Maleficent’s raven in the much later Sleeping Beauty. Rather, the bird seems wary of the Queen, even frightened. It is there primarily to give the Queen someone to talk and to reflect the terror that the audience feels as her sinister plan is revealed.

Up to this point, the only magic we’ve seen the Queen perform is to summon the spirit in the magic mirror. But now, we get to see the full extent of her abilities. Now only can she mix magical potions, she can capture and use strange ingredients like the night’s darkness, an old woman’s sinister cackle, and a frightened scream to serve as ingredients. Even the weather itself seems to bend to her will, providing her with wind and lightning as she needs them. When she drinks the potion, we see not only the physical result of her transformation, but also what the experience feels like to the Queen. She drops the goblet from her hand and grasps at her throat, gasping for air as the room around her dissolves into a swirl of colors and bubbles. Lightning flashes as her dark hair streams out from her head and turns to white. “Look! My hands!” she cries, as her delicate fingers grow long and gnarled. A wave of bubbling green liquid and a formless tangle of darkness flash across the screen. We see the shadows of the Queen’s now spindly hands against the wall as she croaks “My voice! My voice!” She cackles wickedly as the camera pans down to show a figure shrouded in a black cloak and the Queen’s new face is revealed. With her scraggly white hair, hooked nose, and round, bulging eyes, she could hardly look less like the regal figure she was but moments ago



If as Santayana says, fanatics are those who redouble their efforts while losing sight of their goals, then the Queen belongs in the same category as Wile E. Coyote. All through the film, the Queen wanted is to be the most beautiful of all women. Yet she has become so fixated on eliminating the competition that she has turned herself into an ugly old hag, the exact opposite of what she wishes to be. We can assume that her plan is to turn herself back into her true form once she no longer needs her disguise, but the fact is that she will live and die as the hideous peddler woman and the irony is inescapable.

Again, the scene ends with a reminder of the threat the Queen poses to Snow White. Looking through her book of spells, she selects “a special sort of death” for her intended victim: a poisoned apple that will cause whoever takes a bite to suffer an affliction known as the Sleeping Death. A close-up shot of the Queen’s horrifying, grinning visage is the last thing we see before the screen fades into darkness.

To be concluded...

All images in this article are copyright Disney.

Famous Firsts - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Part One

The story of how Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came to be is almost as famous as the story of the movie itself. All these years later though, it does seem hard to believe that the very idea of an animated fairy tale musical was once considered a colossal risk, if not a guaranteed failure. It was the first animated feature film in the United States (though not in the world). Hollywood pundits predicted disaster for Disney, citing everything from the expected broad slapstick humor getting dull after more than five minutes to the bright colors becoming painful to the audience’s eyes. But as we all know, “Disney’s Folly” became Disney’s First and set the tone for much of the studio’s work to come.

After the opening titles and credits, the film starts with a live-action storybook opening. The book sets up the idea that we are going to be told a story, specifically a classic fairy tale. Making a direct connection between the film and a physical book would further cement the blending of the familiar classic fairy tale and the new format of feature-length animation in the minds of the audience. Connecting something new to something well-known is a tried and true method for getting the public comfortable with a new concept. The image of a book also invokes the concept of a narrative, which was important to let moviegoers know that “Snow White” was going to focus on story and not just gags loosely tied together by a simple plot, as many short cartoons of the time did.

Looking at it today, the book feels like a somewhat clunky start to the film. The rest of the movie does wonders conveying ideas visually, so it’s odd to start off with a prologue that relies on text. But we aren’t completely denied visual information. The little animals nestled in the scrollwork around the crowned “O” introduce the idea that the creatures of the forest love the little princess we’re reading about. At the bottom of the page, a crown rests atop a scrub-brush, highlighting the plight of the princess reduced to a scullery maid by her jealous stepmother. The Queen herself is just barely visible behind the initial “E” on the next page. In case we aren’t clear about what sort of woman she is, a peacock perches in the scrollwork beneath the letter. The text hints that Snow White’s well-being is dependant on the mirror identifying the Queen as the fairest one of all, but it’s the dagger at the bottom of the page that tells us that “the Queen’s cruel jealousy” makes her capable of far worse things than dressing her stepdaughter in rags.

The animation begins with a lovely castle on a beautiful day, but what we’ve learned from the book and the creepy music as the camera zooms in on a particular window make it clear that we’re not going meet Snow White just yet. The large mirror and the crown, long regal robes, and stately bearing of the woman we see next all tell us that this is the Queen. As the villain of the film, the Queen is responsible for driving most of the plot and the action. Her motivations are clear – she wants to be the most beautiful woman of all and is willing to kill anyone deemed lovelier – but we never learn why the Queen is so obsessed with beauty. She wields great power as queen of the land, with no king even mentioned. On top of that, she has the power of magic, carefully established early in the film so her later use of it doesn’t come as a surprise. So why is she so fixated on being beautiful when surely no one but her own magic mirror would dare to call her anything else?

It’s interesting that the film begins by introducing us to the antagonist rather than the protagonist. We learn about a character through other characters talking about her. Before we even meet her, we know that Snow White is beautiful and that she is in great danger because a very vain and powerful woman has her in her sights. So even though Snow White has yet to appear on screen,
we’re interested in her and sympathetic to her. The Queen is one of the more active characters in the movie, and therefore better equipped to get the story rolling. She is someone capable of setting events into motion. Snow White, we will learn, is not.

As we’ve been told, Snow White is a lovely maiden reduced to wearing tattered clothes and scrubbing the palace steps. She’s not completely alone in the world as she’s surrounded by a flock of doves who are more than just the reason she has to scrub the stairs. She’s humming to herself as she works and looks reasonably happy. But right before she gets up, she pauses, looks up at nothing we can see, and sighs. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but it hints at something that we rarely be seen in this movie. One of the virtues of many of the classic Disney princesses is how they remain virtuous despite the horrible injustices they suffer. They may not be happy about it, but they almost never complain, get angry, or mope. They find ways to remain “ever gentle and kind” as Cinderella will be describe over a decade after Snow White. But Snow White sighs and as small a thing as it is, it suggests a hint of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. It shows that she is capable of realizing the unfairness of her stepmother robbing her of her birthright, demoting her to a lowly servant, and making her dreams seem almost impossible. It makes her human. But it doesn’t last and the idea is never touched on again. Snow White is 99% sweetness and compliance, but it’s nice to see another side of her, if only briefly.

As Snow White draws water from the well, she talks to the doves, who nod and coo in response. This makes two important points. One, Snow White is friends with animals, a concept that will be explored further later in the film. This is a commonly used device in animation – not just Disney – to give characters someone to talk to and relate to who is not quite on the level of an actual human companion. Two, the animals in the movie may be smarter than average, but they are largely realistic animals. They don’t talk, wear clothes, or ride bicycles. Their anatomy is handled relatively realistically; birds cannot use their wings as hands and deer cannot stand up on their hind legs and walk around. As with the Queen’s use of magic, it is important to establish the boundaries of a fantasy world early on so that the audience isn’t confused about what is and isn’t possible.

This scene includes the film’s first song, “I’m Wishing” which leads into “One Song.” The songs are something I keep going back and forth on. On the one hand, the score contains a number of catchy and memorable tunes. I’m sure you can hum or sing at least one of them. And they are generally well integrated, partly because so much of the movie’s dialogue is in verse. Since the characters are frequently speaking in rhythm and rhyme already whether there’s a song coming or not, it feels natural when they slip into singing. But “Snow White” is a musical and songs in a musical should support and enhance the story, not bring it to an abrupt stop. By that measure, the success of the songs in “Snow White” is varied. “I’m Wishing” is extremely light on content, but it is one of the main character’s two “I Want” songs, which highlight her major goals in the story.

At this point, Snow White wants to find true love. So what does she do about it? She tells a wishing well her wish. Snow White doesn’t do much other than wishing to get what she wants because Snow White is an extremely passive character. Her actions are almost entirely determined by other characters. She has dreams, but circumstances and personality combine to keep her from doing anything about them. Life as a servant and her stepmother’s determination to conceal Snow White’s beauty reduce the young princess’s chances of meeting anyone she could fall in love with and she’s simply not the type to try to sneak out or escape her plight altogether until someone else actively tells her to. So other characters act while Snow White wishes. Unlike the later Cinderella, the movie never says outright that having faith in your dreams against all odds is a path to making them reality. Aside from antidotes to evil spells, there is no “good magic” in the movie.” Snow White wishes and for whatever reason, things fall into place for her, eventually.

Snow White’s first goal – to find true love – is accomplished in about five seconds without her doing anything other than singing her desires. As luck (or the wishing well?) would have it, a handsome prince is riding by and happens to hear Snow White singing. He climbs the castle wall and instantly falls in love. Snow White is initially startled, but is quickly won over. Most of the early Disney fairy tales follow this pattern. Love happens instantaneously and the drama comes from the outside forces that keep the two lovers apart rather than internal conflict.

If Snow White is a passive perfect princess, the Prince is almost a nonentity. He appears only twice in the film, once when he first meets Snow White, and again at the end. He has only a few lines of dialogue and a single song – appropriately entitled “One Song.” We’re given no hint as to his whereabouts during the rest of the film, beyond a brief mention in the book towards the end. His role in the film never goes beyond “love interest.”

The meeting of the two lovers provides an interesting clue about one of the other characters. As the Prince sings his song of undying devotion to Snow White, the Queen silently watches from her window. Glaring at the scene below, she angrily pulls her curtains shut. So what’s on her mind? Has the Prince’s arrival merely confirmed what she already knows: that Snow White’s beauty surpasses her own and dressing her in rags can’t hide that fact? Or is this what the Queen really fears: that Snow White’s beauty will prevent the Queen from being able to attract men?

In an earlier draft of Snow White, the young princess decides that the only way she can meet a handsome prince is to make one. She uses some rags and a bucket with a face painted on it to create a scarecrow of sorts, which she dubs “Prince Buckethead.” While she talks to her ersatz prince, the real Prince happens upon the charming scene and is instantly smitten. He slips inside of the scarecrow while Snow White plays at preparing for an imaginary ball. Snow White is shocked to hear “Prince Buckethead” respond when she speaks to him again. The real Prince reveals himself and confesses his love to her. Rather than telling her his real name, he says he likes the one she’s given him: Prince Buckethead.

Unfortunately, the Prince’s arrival does not go unnoticed, and the Queen has the Prince seized and thrown into the palace dungeons. Despite his plight, the Prince is still overjoyed at having found his true love, but Snow White weeps over the cruel fate that has befallen her poor Prince Buckethead.

Much as I like the film as it is, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been stronger if these scenes had been included. It gives both Snow White and the Prince a little more character. Snow White gets to actually do something about her dreams, even if it is just make-believe. It accounts for the Prince’s absence from the rest of the film. Later scenes allow the Queen and the Prince to interact, which they never do in the final film. In early concepts for the movie, it was even suggested that the Queen wanted to marry the Prince herself, which would give her a clear motivation for wanting Snow White out of the way.

Alas, the scenes were abandoned, primarily due to animation problems. Animating realistic humans was still a very new thing for the Disney artists and the Prince was particularly troublesome for them. Rather than go forward with a major character who just didn’t look very good, the filmmakers decided to cut the Prince’s role back. These “lost” scenes were never animated, but they did make it in to a comic book adaptation of the movie and Disney fans sometimes refer to Snow White’s prince as “Prince Buckethead” for lack of a better name.

As it stands, the Prince’s courtship of Snow White ends suddenly and without any clear reason. He sings to her of his love. She sends one of her doves down with a kiss for him, draws back behind the curtains and…that’s it. We see no further contact between the lovers, nor do we learn what either of them does after finding true love. Does the Prince go to the Queen to ask for her servant’s hand in marriage? (No one has told him that she’s a princess.) Does he head home to tell his parents that he’s in love with a scullery maid? Is there some issue he needs to attend to before he can marry Snow White? We never find out; he just disappears.

Snow White wanted true love and no sooner do we meet her than it finds her. Her only goal has been fulfilled without her really having to do anything. If the story is going to keep going, we need someone who still has unfulfilled desires and the will to realize them to make a move.

So we're back to the Queen, seated on her ornate throne. (I could easily write pages about the background detail in this movie. If I handed you a background from this scene, no characters, you could tell plenty about the person who lives in this room just by looking at the stunning carved peacock on the back of the throne, the scepter resting on a cushion nearby, and the overall richness of the decor.) She orders her faithful huntsman to take Snow White out to some secluded spot and kill her. In that moment, everything the movie has been building up to regarding the Queen comes to a head. This woman wants to be the most beautiful woman of all so badly that she’s willing to kill anyone who stands in her way, though without dirtying her own hands.

The huntsman is never named during the film, but internal Disney documents refer to him as “Humbert.” We see right away that Humbert is no cold-blooded killer. He is so horrified by the idea of slaying the little princess that he dares to protest. But the Queen silences him, reminding him that he knows the penalty should he fail to carry out her orders. We don’t know what this penalty might be, but Humbert certainly does and it’s enough to make him reluctantly consent. The Queen also commands Humbert to bring her Snow White’s heart in a box she provides him with. To put an extra visual emphasis on the seriousness of the threat to the young princess’s life, the clasp of the box is a dagger piercing an iconic heart.

Earlier versions of the movie had the Queen explicitly stating that if Humbert failed her, she would have his own children executed. Fortunately for audiences who find the movie scary enough as is, this element was dropped in favor of the more vague threat.

Humbert follows the Queen’s orders and takes Snow White out to pick wildflowers. Oddly, Snow White is out of her tattered scullery maid clothes and wearing a dress more suited to a princess, the one she wears through the rest of the movie. I have no idea why the Queen would allow her to go back to dressing like a princess right before having her killed. Maybe she’s concerned about people outside of the castle seeing the princess dressed in rags and knowing that she’s being mistreated, but isn’t the point of Humbert taking her somewhere secluded to ensure that no one sees her or what’s about to happen?

Snow White is happily picking flowers, singing her Prince’s song, still filled with the joy of true love. The sad chirping of a baby bluebird catches her attention. Setting aside her flowers, she scoops him up in her hands and comforts him. This is our first look at a big part of Snow White’s personality: her maternal nature. She is the mothering type and is ready and willing to take care of anyone who needs it. She quickly calms the little lost bird and helps him to find his parents.

Seeing his chance, Humbert glances around to make sure no one is watching. The reflection of light off the metal blade ensures that we don’t miss seeing him draw his knife. Snow White is shown from the back noticing the baby bird’s parents (off-screen, in case we had any ideas about them coming to her rescue), emphasizing her vulnerability, while the large rock in front of her shows that she has nowhere to run. Humbert approaches, taking up most of the screen as he draws closer. The bird flies off to join its parents, leaving Snow White completely alone. Since Snow White is in front of Humbert and he’s behind the camera, we see his shadow enveloping her rather than coming up behind her on the rock. At the last second, she turns around and screams. Passive even if the face of death, she does nothing more than cover her face with her arms.

Instead of trying to show Humbert’s split-second realization that he can’t bring himself to murder the princess through his facial expression, the Disney artists cut to his trembling hand holding the knife and finally dropping it as he sobs “I can’t do it!” Snow White seems completely unaware of how deep her stepmother’s hatred of her runs. When Humbert explains the reason for his actions by telling the princess “She’s mad! Jealous of you! She’ll stop at nothing!” Snow White replies with a puzzled “But who?” Humbert all but commands Snow White to run away and hide, as if the thought might not occur to her otherwise. Now that she has mostly accomplished her first goal, Snow White is given a new one: to escape from the stepmother who wants her dead. Or, more generally, to survive.

There is a very abrupt transition from the sunlit glade to the shadowy nightmare forest Snow White flees into. Whether this reflects the actual nature of the wood or how Snow White sees it in her frightened state is unclear. Fear does quickly cause her imagination to run away with her. To her terrified eyes, the forest becomes a den of monsters. Tree branches catching her skirt become clawed hands grabbing at her. A dead tree sprouts glaring eyes. A hole in the ground that she falls through becomes a gaping maw. Frightened out of her wits and thinking herself surrounded by monsters, Snow White collapses in a sobbing heap.

The darkness recedes, suggesting that it, like the monsters, was all in Snow White’s head. The eyes surrounding her go from fearsome and menacing to round and curious and are revealed to belong to the adorable little animals of the forest. Though they’re drawn in a cute and cartoony style, like the doves, their movement and behavior is fairly realistic. They approach the newcomer cautiously and immediately scatter when she notices them and exclaims “Oh!” They do, however, slowly return when she ask them please not to run off and apologizes for being so foolishly frightened. Among the animals is a family of three bluebirds, presumably the same one Snow White helped to reunite just minutes before. They likely know that she is a nice person and poses no threat to them, but the other animals don’t. Yet they still warm up to her remarkably fast. The doves may have known her for a long time and the baby bluebird was lost and crying, but these animals have no need or reason to trust her. Again, there is no explicit “good magic” in the movie, but Snow White does appear to have a power, born of her sweetness and gentleness, to win over almost anyone, human or animal. The little forest creatures are still initially wary enough to be believable. A chipmunk darts off when Snow White brings her hand down towards him and a little fawn shies away when she reaches out to him. But seconds later, the chipmunk is back at he side and the fawn is nuzzling her arm.

The scene of Snow White befriending the animals is accompanied by “With a Smile and a Song,” which is one of the film’s weaker musical numbers. Rather than highlighting an emotionally charged moment in the story, this song comes directly after a big emotional scene. It’s not about feeling excited, but about calming down and feeling OK. It could be said to be introducing the forest animals, who do play an important role in the story, but the song itself says nothing about them. The story doesn’t come to a complete stop while it’s going on, but it is still nothing more than a song.

Feeling much better, Snow White asks her newfound friends if they know where she could spend the night. The birds take the lead in bringing her to a little cottage nestled in the woods. Since none of the animals can talk, we don’t know their exact reasoning for choosing the cottage. It could just be the closest dwelling for people that they know of, or maybe the animals are familiar with the dwarfs and are certain that they will allow Snow White to stay.

After determining that no one is home, Snow White opens the unlocked door and starts to explore the cottage. Now Snow White has somewhere to stay – for the moment at least – and the Queen is not going to re-enter the narrative for a while yet. So with no threat from the Queen and no immediate goals for our heroine, what is there to keep the story interesting? The film solves this problem by doling out little mini-dramas, events that are not life and death matters, but interesting enough to keep the audience engaged. The first of these is Snow White entering a house without knowing who lives there. She and her animal friends are cautious entering the darkened house and the animals race out the door when Snow White again exclaims “Oh!” before they realize she’s just commenting on a cute little chair she’s discovered.

Just as we learned about Snow White before actually meeting her, we and Snow White are now learning about the dwarfs before they show up. Snow White notices that there are seven small chairs and a distinct lack of housekeeping, leading her to conclude that this is the home of “seven untidy little children.” (What she thinks children are doing with a pickaxe I don’t know.) Looking over the mess, Snow White starts to remark “You’d think their mother would….” before stopping herself and realizing that they may have no mother which would makes them orphans, though they could well still have a father. She never brings up the fact that she herself is an orphan, with no family aside from a stepmother who just tried to have her killed. She just sympathetically laments, “That’s too bad.”

We already know that Snow White is wrong about who lives in the cottage; the film isn’t called “Snow White and the Seven Untidy Little Children.” But looking around the piles of dishes, scattered clothing, and dusty mantle, we do see that the place is in need of some serious housekeeping, what 1930s audiences would have called “a woman’s touch.” So when Snow White suggests that they should clean up the cottage to surprise the “children” and that doing so might convince them to let her stay, it makes sense, even as it seems more than a little sexist. You would think that after being forced to scrub the castle steps for who knows how long, the last thing Snow White would want to do is clean. But her maternal instinct is her main feature and she and the animals are soon at work tidying up.

Famous as it is, “Whistle While You Work” does little beyond relating what’s obviously happening in the scene. The characters are cleaning up and they’re happy about it. The song’s main purpose is to highlight the series of gags based around the idea of animals doing housework. Since the Disney artists had only worked on short cartoons up to this point, it’s not surprising that parts of Snow White are filled out with entertaining visual humor, sort of shorts within the film. The animals serve as comic relief until the real comic relief shows up and this sequence features some of their best gags. Considering that they are wild animals, they do a shockingly good job cleaning. But they’re still animals and some of the funniest jokes come from them not really understanding the right way to clean up. Two squirrels sweep a pile of dust into a convenient mouse hole, where it is quickly kicked back out by the angry resident mouse. A group of squirrels, chipmunk and the baby fawn clean of dishes by licking them and the fawn even pauses between dishes to lick his own back. Snow White never does more than gently scold them and correct them and the animals seem perfectly happy to use soap and water instead.

To be continued...

All images in this article are copyright Disney.