Production information
Release dates: December 19, 1980 (USA)
Studios: 20th Century Fox & IPC Films
Director: Colin Higgins
Writers: Colin Higgins & Patricia Resnick
Producer: Bruce Gilbert
Cinematography: Reynaldo Villalobos
Editor: Pembroke J. Herring
Animation director: Lee Mishkin
Animation supervisor: Nicholas Eliopoulos
Animators: Fred Lucky, Fred Hellmich, Norton Virgien
Main Cast
Judy Bernly: Woody Allen
Violet Newstead: Lily Tomlin
Doralee Rhodes: Dolly Parton
Franklin Hart, Jr.: Dabney Coleman
Back to References to Snow White from other studios
Snow White takes revenge
When Colin Higgins’s film Nine to Five was released, a full-page ad in Variety featured glowing review excerpts praising the movie. Most of them highlighted the scene where one of the three women dreaming of getting rid of their boss imagines it as a fairy tale. In her mind, a fairy tale seems to correspond primarily to Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And the critics picked up on the reference immediately. For instance, Robert Osborne wrote: “Surely one of the year’s wittiest treats is Tomlin dessed and coiffed like Snow White, surrounded by animated bunnies and bluebirds.”
Indeed, the nods are plentiful. As the boss asks for his usual cup of coffee, Violet—played by Lily Tomlin—imagines herself dressed as a princess, surrounded by forest animals dressed like characters from Robin Hood, which had come out seven years earlier. Two bluebirds flutter around her and begin to whistle—one of them hitting a sour note and blushing with embarrassment, just like in Disney’s Snow White. In a very “Evil Queen” gesture, Violet pulls poison from a ring set with green stones—reminiscent of the Queen’s piercing green eyes—and a skull-shaped puff of smoke rises from the coffee as she pours it in, echoing the skull that appears on the Queen’s poisoned apple in Snow White.
The entire scene is set to a parodied version of the Whistle While You Work theme.
In classic cartoon fashion, Violet poisons her boss and, just for good measure, launches him out the window with an ejector seat—this, after he proudly admits to being a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.”
The sequence was animated in part by Disney veterans such as Fred Lucky, who had worked on The Black Hole and The Rescuers, and Fred Hellmich, who had contributed to The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and Robin Hood.
