WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK
Declaring this dwelling to be “adorable – just like a doll’s house”, Snow White dashes up to it with a little skip in her step and all her new animal buddies follow her, last of all that green-shelled turtle which shortly becomes a focal point among them. The girl approaches the window next to the front door and – seen from inside – she rubs away a circle of dust on the glass and peers within. A racoon next to her on the sill mimics her, rubbing away a smaller circle. “Ooo, it’s dark inside,” she tells her friends. She steps up to the door, fluffs her hair, then knocks five times in rapid succession. Her knock is repeated by violins. The same a second time, after which she guesses there’s nobody at home and brazenly cracks open the door. Again seen from within, she calls out “Hello?” and asks to come in. When she gets no answer, she shushes the animals behind her and enters cautiously. As she crosses the room, the animals also invade, lastly the turtle which creeps along stealthily. Well into the place, the girl throws her arms in the air and shouts “Oh!” Her exclamation sends all critters scurrying back out the door, on the way upending the turtle and setting him spinning. “What a cute little chair!” Snow White continues, trying the seat out for size. The animals poke back inside and slowly re-enter the premises.
Albert Hurter [1883-1942]… had earlier been assigned the job of drawing all the nooks and crannies of this special house. His Swiss heritage and keen powers of observation made him ideally suited for capturing the story book charm of a cottage that dwarfs might have built, and now he had so many drawings of the stairs, the beds, the windows, the fireplace, and even the kitchen sink, that the whole structure almost could be visualized.[1]
Hurter was in fact Disney’s first “inspirational” sketch artist and responsible for the old-world illustration style of this entire film. He had immigrated to the USA from Switzerland sometime before 1916 and joined Disney’s staff in 1931. Walt made it clear that all backgrounds had to pass muster with this master illustrator.
Inside the cottage Snow White observes that there are seven little chairs like the one she sat in and concludes that seven little children must live here and untidy ones at that, judging by the look of their very unkempt dining table, which is pierced by a pickaxe with a sock dangling from its handle.
Dirty dishes clutter the surface and inside a kettle she finds a shoe. Further investigation reveals dust all over the fireplace, cobwebs everywhere, towering stacks of unwashed dishware and an idle broom neglected in a corner. Squirrels, chipmunks, pheasants and other birds all illustrate this rampant untidiness by sneezing in the dust, tangling in the cobwebs, whistling at the dishes and clucking at the broom. Snow White starts to wonder at the indulgence of the children’s mother but interrupts herself with the thought that “perhaps they have no mother”. The doe confirms this suspicion as her fawn nuzzles her with affection. Jumping to the conclusion that the children are orphans, the Princess decides she will clean the house as a “surprise” in hopes that they will allow her to stay there. As she doffs her cape, two birds take it from her and hang it aside on a hook. She then doles out assignments – once again in rhyming dialogue – to the animals all ’round. The bluebird family chirps out a bugle-like call to action and Snow White begins singing the film’s next song “Whistle While You Work”.
Mickey Mousing, close synchronization between image and music, is a prominent feature of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, contributing to the work’s success… the entire movie is laid out to musical beats… this organization enabled the synchronization [of] any given action with music. The sequence that most prominently features this technique is the scene in which the animals help Snow White clean the Dwarfs’ cottage.[2]
The reminder of this sequence is essentially a series of ingenious house-cleaning gags timed to orchestral variations on the song in ever-higher modulations of key. Small touches punctuate the action throughout, too numerous to appreciate in a single viewing. Among these gags are the following… The turtle transports a precarious tower of dirty dishes on the back of its shell. Squirrels use their fluffy tails for polishing, dusting, sweeping – at one point rousing the ire of a mouse into whose hole they brush a pile of dirt. A chipmunk raveling cobwebs like a ball of yarn confronts an angry spider. Snow White several times corrects the animals, admonishing them to put dirty dishes in the sink for washing rather than licking them clean and not to sweep dirt under the rug. She dusts the dwarfs’ elaborate organ – our first glimpse of this intriguing instrument – then shakes her dustrag out a window; a squirrel mimics her, shaking its dust-laden tail out the same window. Birds drop flowers into a vase and transport a broad leaf filled with water indoors through a window. A hummingbird pokes a hole underneath to soak their beautiful arrangement. Gathering soiled clothes off the floor as the animals drag them over to her Snow White hangs them in the buck’s antlers and drapes them across his body, a bird dropping a glove over his tail as he stumbles out the door. The scene shifts now outdoors where racoons are washing various fabrics in the stream. The turtle’s grooved tummy becomes a washboard with a chipmunk scrubbing a shirt on it, tickling him, the sound of his laughter produced musically by muted trombones. Birds wring out the shirt in midair then tie its sleeves to hang it on a clothesline. And so it goes, Snow White now standing on the doorstep, broom in one hand and baby bluebird on a finger of the other, repeating the final lyric of “Whistle While You Work” as the camera trucks back to show the activity continuing all around her outside the dwarfs’ cottage.
[1] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p. 224.
[2] Bohn, James: op. cit., p. 68.
