The traumatic image of Snow White on her deathbed was what sent the opening night audience into a tailspin, with the dwarfs crying as much as the audience. It was then that the artists realized that they had succeeded in their gamble: to make their characters accepted as living beings with feelings.
However, when Dopey’s grimaces of pain during an initial presentation caused mockery, the shot was shortened to start at the moment when he turns around. The sound of his sobs, on the other hand, was reused many times in later productions of short and full-length films. For example, listen carefully and you’ll hear that Princess Aurora, when her crown is placed on her head in Sleeping Beauty, cries in an extremely unladylike manner in Dopey’s voice.
Production information
Sequence number: 15A
Date of final draft: December 2, 1937
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Assistant director: Ford Beebe
Animators of the dwarfs: Frank Thomas
Animator of the animals: Milt Kahl
Milt Kahl assistant animator: Murray McClellan
Frank Thomas assistant animator: Art Elliott
Frank Thomas’s inbetweener: Bob McCrea
Effects animators (Rain): Cy Young & Cornett Wood
Effects animator (Candle): Ed Aardal
Cast
Grumpy: Pinto Colvig
Dopey: Eddie Collins
Additional dwarfs voices: Jim MacDonald, Clarence Nash, Hal Rees & Lem Wright
Scenes
Here is the sequence broken up into scenes with the corresponding animators.
