In the same style as the S7A sequence, the Queen, now changed into an old woman, plunges the apple into the cauldron filled with a poisoned beverage.
The beginning of the scene has been shortened: the first shot was to show the Queen stirring the brew with a femur as smoke skulls escape from the vessel. She then throws an ingredient into the cauldron, from which a thick smoke then fills the screen, a moment later chosen as the new beginning of the scene.
To my knowledge, this is the only cut scene to have been fully animated, gouached and filmed. The extract can be seen in its pencilled version on the American Laserdisc, and in its final version on the DVD released in 2001. The reason for the cut is not mentioned anywhere, but is probably due to the potentially traumatic aspect of the femur and skulls, which must have raised a few cries from the most impressionable spectators during the test screenings. However, the imagery is still present in many of the film’s book adaptations.
Production information
Sequence number: 9A
Date of final draft: November 15, 1937
Director: William Cottrell
Assistant director: Mike Holoboff & Hal Adelquist
Animators of the hag: Norman Ferguson, Tony Rivera, John Lounsbery & Chester Cobb
Animator of the raven, skeleton and spider: Norman Ferguson
Norman Ferguson assistant animator: Chester Cobb
Tony Rivera assistant animator: Norm Tate
Effects animator (Reeds): Cy Young
Effects animator (Steam): Reuben Timmons
Effects animator (Poison on apple): Art Palmer
Effects animator (Shadows): Bob Martsch
Effects animator (Test tube, cauldron steam): Paul Satterfield
Effects animator (Cauldron steam): Stan Quackenbush
Effects animator (Liquid and bubbles in retort, cauldron steam): George Rowley
Cast
Queen: Lucille La Verne
Scenes
Here is the sequence broken up into scenes with the corresponding animators.
In this sequence too, in scene 7, the pages of the spell book are translated into each of the foreign versions. It is in this scene that the Queen utters the word “dwarfs” once only (see sequence 7).
Concept drawings
Storyboard
Rotoscope
Lucile LaVerne, according to William Cottrell, was asked to model with a cauldron. She was supposed to lip-synch to her own pre-recorded sound track. Unfortunately, as excellent an actress as she was, that very specific process confused her and even though she looked very much like the character, she had to be replaced. Don Brodie was then called in to model for the witch, and he remembered that the first scene that he shot was the cauldron scene with a prop cauldron made of wood. For the boat scene, he had a six-feet long paddle.
