RonPrice

ANIMATION AND THE PLAN

The first cinematic environmental hero may have been in Walt Disney’s nine minute animated film Little Hiawatha released on 15 May 1937. This was at the very start of the first Bahá'í teaching plan; in fact, the film went into theatres as the delegates left the national convention in Chicago and arrived back in their homes. In the film an Indian boy is on a journey to become a hunter and he befriends the animals he had intended to kill. This film was released seven months before a second animated film Snow White. The Disney studio had begun its full artistic bloom. The extravagant artistry developed for Disney's first features was very evident in these debut films.

Hiawatha ventures forth with his little bow and arrow intent on emulating the mighty hunters of his village. It turned out that he was too soft-hearted to kill a rabbit. Later, when he was endangered by a ferocious bear, the rabbit rounded up an animal posse and saved him. Hiawatha rowed off in his canoe into the sunset safely back to his home, but empty-handed.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in the week before Christmas in 1937, eight months to the day after the inception of the Seven Year Plan: 1937-1944. This animated film was based on Snow White, a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length animated feature in motion picture history as well as the first animated feature film produced in America. It was the first animation produced in full colour by the Walt Disney team. It was the first to become part of the Walt Disney Animated Classics canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, and the film was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 4, 1938. The noted filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein went so far as to call this animated film “the greatest film ever made.” -Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 8 April 2010.

The mission they inaugurated
animated the world little-by-
little and day-by-day.....little
did that world know......This
new life, this animation, had
begun releasing the greatest
potentialities of the community
of the Greatest Name & lending
a lustre no-less-brilliant than the
immortal deeds that signalized
the birth of this emerging world
religion for humankind. Indeed
the animation was far, far, more
than Hiawatha & Snow White ever
produced & would be part of the...
greatest story ever to be told....!!!!

Ron Price
8 April 2010:cool

Pollwr

Wow, Ron! You find connections in things that I would not have ever thought to put together. This is an interesting and creative perspective.

arthra

I thought originally there were nine dwarfs..:cool

RonPrice

As far as I know, arthra, there were seven. But I am no authority on dwarfs-animated or otherwise.-Ron

arthra

Yah see, Snow White was actually a Travelling Teacher and joined the seven dwarves.. The witch was the ninth! What an Assembly!:lol

BruceDLimber

Yeah; it was seven.

Speaking of which, I remember a Johnny Carson show decades ago where for some reason they were all trying to remember the names of the seven dwarfs.

They'd gotten six of them, and kept guessing at who the seventh was. One of them suggested "horny" and was immediately shouted down! :-S

(BTW, the name they couldn't remember was Sleepy.)

Cheers! :-)

Bruce

RonPrice

Thanks for your responses, folks. With the release of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937, Walt Disney carved for himself an indelible place in history and in the hearts of movie lovers for more than half a century. The film was Disney’s first full length feature production, as well as the reason for his 1939 receipt of an Honorary Academy Award for significant screen innovation. Although not his first Oscar, this special award was unique in one particular respect: Disney received not just the one traditional statuette, but also seven miniature statuettes.
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Those seven miniature statuettes represented, of course, the film’s seven dwarfs (not “dwarves,” according to the company). A brief general description of each will make them easily distinguishable:

Dopey: the youngest, sweetest, and silliest of the seven, and the only one to be completely bald and beardless; wears a too large lime green tunic and purple cap.*

Grumpy: the grouchiest and most curmudgeonly of the group, though even he is supremely devoted to the beautiful Snow White; wears a red tunic, long white hair and beard.

Doc: the only one of the dwarfs to wear glasses (so presumably the most intellectual); wears an orange-brown tunic, long white hair and beard.

Happy: the most rotund of the dwarfs; wears a brownish two-tone tunic, yellow cap, long white hair and beard.

Bashful: evokes his bashful nature through a classic pose of shyness (hands clasped behind back, shoulders slightly raised, eyes upturned); sometimes difficult to distinguish between Sneezy and Sleepy; depicted in purple tunic and magenta cap (on video), as well as long white hair and beard.

Sneezy: frequently shown with one finger underneath his nose, as if trying to stifle a sneeze; sometimes difficult to distinguish between Sleepy and Bashful; wears a yellow-brown tunic, long white hair and beard.

Sleepy: perhaps the most difficult to differentiate between Sleepy and Bashful, though he wears a perpetually sleepy looking, heavily lidded expression on his face; wears a brownish tunic, green cap, long white hair and beard.

As the dwarfs’ occupation is working in the diamond mines, they are often depicted carrying rudimentary tools of the trade (lanterns, picks, etc.)

Keeping track of all seven dwarfs is actually quite simple once you have mastered this simple mnemonic device: two S’s, two D’s, and three emotions. Two S’s: Sleepy and Sneezy; two D’s: Dopey and Doc; and three emotions: Happy, Bashful, and Grumpy.

It should be noted, of course, that Walt Disney himself did not author the “fairy tale” of Snow White, which is traditionally attributed to the Brothers Grimm. It should go without saying that Disney and his team took many liberties with and added many embellishments to the story, effectively adapting it for a modern audience of both children and adults. The information contained in this article is, in large part, based on the Disney version of the story since Grimm’s version does not even name the dwarfs.
I thank: Essortment Home >> Arts & Entertainment >> Entertainment:General >> Keeping track of the seven dwarfs names---for the above.