Information
Full name: unknown
Age: 18
Designers: Albert Hurter, Ferdinand Horvath, Gustaf Tenggren
Animators: Grim Natwick, Paul Busch, Jack Campbell, Clair Weeks, Hamilton Luske, Hugh Fraser & Milt Kahl
Voice actor: Harry Stockwell
Model: Louis Hightower
Appears in sequences: 2A, Prince in Dungeon, discarded part of S8B, 16A
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Mr. Right
The Prince was a challenge for the crew at almost every step. In the final film, he is almost a metaphor for a character, the embodiment of an ideal, with little to no backstory, almost no dialogue, and a self-effacing personality. Nothing is known about him except that he is a prince who lives in a castle and has fallen in love with Snow White. It so happens that the narrative tightness benefits from this choice.
However, the character was originally meant to play a much bigger part of the project. The tentative outline of 10/22/1934 describes the Prince as a “Douglas Fairbanks type – 18 years old”. At the time, Douglas Fairbanks, star of adventure films, was about to release his penultimate movie in the United States. He was still fresh in people’s mind as the incarnation of the juvenile bouncing athletic hero with a sense of humor, which is exactly how the Prince appears in early story sketches. Not only was this concept no longer in line with the aim of making the human characters realistic, but it would have meant inordinate animation costs.
The Prince’s role was thus reduced to a minimum, except in the comic strip adaptation where some of his scenes and characteristics were kept. The Exhibitors’ campaign book describes the character so: “The handsome young Prince who seeks Snow White’s hand is, like the heroine, a human character without any exaggeration.”
Design
As with the other realistically human characters, the Prince’s appearance and movements relied heavily on the rotoscope technique, with Marge Belger‘s then dancing partner, Louis Hightower, used as a model for the character. The latter was chosen partly because he had “sturdy legs” and Walt Disney wanted the character to look both graceful and masculine. The difficulty in achieving this goal meant that several scenes and even entire plot points involving the Prince had to be cut from the final version of the story.
The Prince’s legacy
The Prince remains unamed in studio meetings, in the finished film, and in the official comic strip adaptation. In 2000, the Disney company launched the Disney Princess media franchise. At this occasion, the French division came up with the names Florian and Henri. Since then, few productions have used the name Florian (Disney Royals (2017) with Bruce Weber being an exception), but even the merchandise refer to the character as “the Prince”.
In the 2025 remake, the character disappears altogether. The princess’s love interest is now a thief named Jonathan, played by Andrew Burnap, in the style of Flynn Rider from Tangled.
Other Productions
Appears in the following productions:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Live on stage) (1969)
House of Mouse (2001)
Snow White — An Enchanting Musical (2004)
Once Upon a Studio (2023)
Go to Sequels and references
