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 them starts to narrate her tale, the dialogue shifts into rhyming verse, a sure sign that another song is on the way; and so it is, the film’s most famous and perennial hit “Some Day My Prince Will Come”. This poetry preceding the singing – spoken between Snow White and several dwarfs – makes for a charming introduction accompanied by simple tuneful phrases on violins. At the end of it – Snow White actually does sing the final line – a couple measures of cheerful orchestral interlude accompany the dwarfs as they settle in comfortably around the princess – Dopey filling in the final spot – to savor her story, which is not so much a narrative as it is a detailed wish for the return of her true love (whom you will remember she met for the first time that very morning!) and their immediate marriage.
“Her rendition of ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’ is simple and unadorned, letting the beauty of the song speak for itself” remarks J.B. Kaufman in his aforementioned book. This final version is indeed drastically less ornamented than the elaborate story-boarded dream sequence Kaufman describes featuring cherub stars, a swan-shaped love boat navigating celestial cloudscapes and a castle in the cumulus. Apparently the more and more ever-evolving advanced planning this sequence got the less and less advisable it became from a story-telling perspective and was eventually abandoned altogether. In its place simple shots of Snow White singing are diplomatically interspersed with others showing the rapturous reactions of her onlookers – not only the dwarfs individually in a long slow pan across them, but also those animal couples in the window, now smooching together. Grumpy sulks alone in a corner off beside the organ, discrediting her song as “Mush!” Sleepy is lulled by her song into unconsciousness but gets suddenly re-awakened by her high note toward its end.
James Bohn in his aforementioned book explains how the structure of the song’s melody supports the wish-fulfillment theme of its lyrics:
…the melody is unresolved, with both phrases beginning and ending on scale degree five… This consistent melodic emphasis of the dominant leaves the song feeling unresolved in much the same way that a dream is open for resolution by its fulfillment.[1]
At song’s end and after a blissful sigh out of the dwarfs in chorus the romantic atmosphere is abruptly dispelled at the intrusion of another of these craftsmen’s hand-carved devices, a cookoo clock, but no ordinary one. Theirs chimes the hour by means of a mechanical squirrel striking an acorn-bell and instead of a bird a bullfrog squatted on a lilypad popping out and croaking. [A second precursor in this film to the magnificent clock sequence in Disney’s next animated feature Pinocchio.] It’s eleven o’clock and a surprised Snow White declares “Past bedtime!”
Re-assuming her maternal mantle she starts shooing the dwarfs toward the staircase to go upstairs to their bedroom, Dopey pogoing ahead of the others. At the bottom landing, Doc yanks him back behind, calls a halt, announces that the princess will sleep upstairs in their bedroom and reassures her that they will be quite comfortable downstairs – “in a pig’s eye!” Grumpy interjects, again befuddling Doc. Meantime while they resolve the matter forward-thinking Dopey espies and takes possession of the only pillow in the room. He lies down on a bench and snuggles into it. Snow White accepts their offer, but pauses on the upstairs landing one last time for their consent, which they give again, then she bids them “pleasant dreams” and goes into the bedchamber.
Immediately at the sound of the door shutting, a sudden melee downstairs as all the dwarfs converge on Dopey and that sole pillow, grab it away from him, pulling on it in all directions until it bursts at the seams and a flurry of feathers fills the screen. As they flutter down to the floor, Dopey is revealed now in possession of only one single plume, which he settles his head upon contentedly.
Upstairs in the moonlit bedroom Snow White kneels beside one of the dwarfs’ small beds and utters her evening’s prayer, the only one of several such invocations to survive the film’s tight editing.
The princess asks blessings on the seven little men and beseeches that her dreams come true, amen. She starts to rise but quickly gets back on her knees in order to add a little post script to her supplication, namely a request that Grumpy come to like her. Cut to that very dwarf now tucked for the night into the stewpot swung away from the fireplace downstairs. Scowling he again expresses his disdain for women and wiggles down into the pot only to encounter the spoon stuck under him. He tosses it aside cursing “A fine kettle o’ fish!” and spits into the fire, which hisses back at him as though scolding.
Scrunching himself further down Grumpy pauses to gaze around the room. The camera shows us what he sees as Churchill and Morey provide discreet somnolent and beautiful lullaby accompaniment: Bashful asleep in the bottom drawer of a kitchen counter with Happy inside the cabinet above, his snoring pushing and pulling the doors open and shut; Doc lounging in the sink, gargling a drop of water out of the spout; Sneezy resting his head on Dopey’s rump. Dreaming, Dopey whimpers like a puppydog and kicks his legs. Sneezy wakes, gives him a poke to calm him down, then fluffs his fanny like a pillow and resumes resting his head upon it. Back at the hearth Sleepy is splayed across the logpile. The camera trucks close-up on his nose where his housefly buddy lands and circles ’round and ’round then lays down comfortably and starts snoring in its own tiny reedy sound. A peaceful exterior shot finishes this sequence: the camera trucks slowly back away from the looming dusky forest and the charming dwarfs’ cottage, its moonlit entrance reflected in the little stream that flows in front of it and in a nearby pond as crickets chirp quietly amongst an otherwise dormant Nature. All of these backgrounds are painted in muted tones mostly of bluegrays lending a convincing semi-darkness to this nighttime scene.
[1] Bohn, James: op. cit., p. 70.
