The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces

CROSS-CUT CLIMAX

It starts with the dwarfs’ arrival at the mine still singing then whistling “Heigh-ho Heigh-ho” as they get down to work – loading the mine cart with their tools and dragging it toward the tunnel. Doc as usual at the...

PREPPING FOR THE CLIMAX

Another cross-cut back to the old Peddler Woman now advancing through the daylit forest, mumbling to herself still reviewing the niceties of her scheme. She passes beneath a tree in which two vultures perch, watching her. They exchange a knowing...

OFF TO WORK WE GO!

Bright morning sunrise on the dwarfs’ cottage. The animals sleeping outside the front door, including a deer snoozing on the stoop, are startled awake at the click of the doorhandle’s turn. They scatter. Doc emerges followed by Snow White. He...

POISONING THE APPLE

Cross-cut back to the simultaneous action occurring now in the setting of the scene before this extended “Entertainment Sequence”, that laboratory in the depths of the Queen’s palace where she has just transformed herself into an old Peddler Woman. Gradually...

SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME

Happy now suggests that the princess “do something” and when she wants to know what, Sleepy suggests she tell them a story. Happy specifies a true story and Bashful wants it to be a love story. As Snow White obliging...

A SILLY SONG (AND DANCE!)

The yodeling intro precedes the song proper. Happy sings the first verse of clever meaningless lyrics followed by a group chorus during which he tap-dances (though silently). The chorus is a model of self-deprecation: “Ho-hum, the tune is dumb; the...

PARTYTIME!

Cross cut back to some festivity at the dwarfs’ cottage where a jolly evening of entertainment contrasts dramatically with the dark evil of the preceding sequence. The camera trucks out of the forest toward a brightly lighted window of the...

QUEEN’S TRANSFORMATION

Here Walt made another excision, a big one, eliminating the “Soup Eating Sequence”, which had been fully brilliantly and painstakingly animated by another superior early Disney artist, Ward Kimball. Along with it another song bit the dust too, Churchill/Morey’s “The...

BLUDDLE-UDDLE-UM-DUM!

Dashing down the stairs and across to the fireplace, Snow White uses a cloth to swing the stewpot off the fire and to lift the lid. She samples its contents with a spoon. The dwarfs assemble on the landing outside...

THE BEDROOM SEQUENCE

Assigned to Fred Moore (1911-1952) this “Bedroom Sequence” – as it became known – was one of the first to be animated. Snow White yawns and stretches and starts to wonder whether the “children” have returned then notices seven pairs...