Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. / The Vitaphone Corporation
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
By a fireplace, a mother tells her little girl the story of "So White an' de Sebben Dwarfs", and the whole cast is Black, speaking in rhyme. The Wicked Queen is a wartime hoarder, sitting on stockpiles of rationed rubber, sugar and coffee. She asks her magic mirror for a prince, but when Prince Chawmin' arrives in his flashy car he prefers So White, whom he finds doing the laundry, and the two break into a wild jitterbug. The jealous Queen calls Murder Incorporated to "black out So White". The hit men take her into the woods and let her go, covered in her lipstick. In the woods she meets the Sebben Dwarfs, a squad of army men who sing "We're in the Army Now", and becomes their cook. The Queen, disguised, gives her a poisoned apple, and So White falls into a deep sleep. Prince Chawmin's kiss fails to wake her. Then the smallest dwarf kisses her, and she springs awake, explaining that his kiss is "a military secret".
Why It Matters
- Clampett intended it as both a parody of Disney's Snow White and a tribute to the Black jazz musicals of the early 1940s, after seeing Duke Ellington's revue Jump for Joy. His unit visited the Club Alabam in Los Angeles to study the music and dance, and the animation by Rod Scribner and Robert McKimson is among the most energetic of the period.
- It is also built from the minstrel-show caricature that was routine in Hollywood at the time, and its designs and sexual jokes are deeply demeaning. It is one of the "Censored Eleven" withdrawn from U.S. television in 1968 and has never been officially released on home video.
Notes and Trivia
- The working title was So White and de Sebben Dwarfs; producer Leon Schlesinger thought it too close to Disney's title.
- So White is voiced by Vivian Dandridge, sister of the actress Dorothy Dandridge.
- See also: All This and Rabbit Stew (1941), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).