Evil Queen (Disney)

Storyline . In "another land, far away," "many, many years ago," about "the time of fairy-tales of castles, knights, fair maidens, romance, magic and witches," a mysterious and icily beautiful woman with magical powers has gained her royal position by marrying the widowed King, giving her rule over his kingdom before he died. The vain Queen Grimhilde owned a magical mirror with which she could look upon whatever she wished. The Magic Mirror shows a haunted, smokey face which replies to Queen Grimhilde's requests. She regularly asks the mirror who is the fairest in the realm and the mirror would always reply that she is. Queen Grimhilde has magical power only over her own domain, which is the castle. One day, however, the mirror tells her that there is a new fairest woman in the land, her 14-year-old She then conjures a poison apple, which will cause "the Sleeping Death", and leaves the castle. She is sure that no one would know or perform the counter-curse to her spell, and believes the Dwarfs would bury her rival alive, thinking her dead. Queen Grimhilde comes to the cottage and finds Snow White baking a pie for Grumpy the dwarf as she passes herself off as a traveling peddler. Snow White's forest animal friends feel there is something wrong about this strange old woman. After an unsuccessful attempt to warn Snow White by attacking Queen Grimhilde, they hurry to warn the Dwarfs of Queen Grimhilde's arrival. Now alone, Queen Grimhilde successfully tricks the princess into letting her inside the cottage and eating the bewitched apple, telling her that it is a magic wishing apple. Snow White takes a bite of the apple, which puts her in a deep sleep. Queen Grimhilde rejoices in her victory, but is soon discovered by the angry Seven Dwarfs and attempts to escape. The Dwarfs, who have lost all fear of her, grab pickaxes and chase her deep into the forest as a great storm begins. Queen Grimhilde climbs up into the mountains, where she is trapped upon a precipice that overlooks a seemingly bottomless canyon. She tries to push down a large boulder to crush the approaching vengeful Dwarfs. Just before she can do so, a lightning bolt strikes between her and the boulder, destroying the precipice and sending Queen Grimhilde (along with the boulder) down the cliff to her death, screaming while she falls to the jagged rocks below. As the Dwarfs look wide-eyed over the cliff's edge, they cannot see her, but the vultures descend into the valley towards the meal they have been waiting for. Queen Grimhilde's dark reign is over, and her castle is then taken over by the revived Snow White and Florian who broke the spell. (A 1936 pre-release Good Housekeeping novelization by Dorothy Ann Blank, a member of the film's story team, affirms that the Queen in fact dies: "Far below, in a chasm as dark as her own wicked soul, lay the body of the hateful Queen. No magic would ever bring her to life again.") Conception, design and portrayal Early concepts for the film called for a "fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied" Evil Queen. However, Walt Disney became concerned that such an approach would make the character seem less plausible. Sensing that more time was needed for the development of the Queen, he advised that attention be paid exclusively to "scenes in which only Snow White, the Dwarfs, and their bird and animal friends appear." Disney further developed the main plot himself (Ollie Johnston said the film's story was based on the idea that the Queen's character was going to murder "another drawing" and Disney decided to make it appear believable), finding a dilemma in the characterization of the Queen, whom he envisioned as a mixture of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, and decided to set on "a high collar stately beautiful type" whose "beauty is sinister, mature, plenty of curves – she becomes ugly and menacing when scheming." Her appearance was inspired by Queen Ayesha ("She who must be obeyed"), an "ageless ice goddess" from the film She, played by Helen Gahagan. The Queen, who originally had the name Grimhilde), was also modeled in part on Kriemhild in the film Die Nibelungen. Her face may have been inspired by Joan Crawford Also noted was her resemblance to two Hollywood stars from Europe, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Her costume and figure may have been based on a column statue at the Naumburg Cathedral depicting Uta von Ballenstedt who was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman of Medieval Germany. Both the Queen and Snow White were refined by Grim Natwick and Norm Ferguson, who would often override Walt Disney's instructions. As in the case of other characters for the film, the Queen's appearance had to be approved by Albert Hurter before being finalised. Unlike much of Disney's animation of human characters in the era, none of Art Babbitt's lead animation work on the character was rotoscoped. The animators were noted to prefer to draw the Queen over Snow White "because she was more real and complex as a woman, more erotic, and driven to desperate acts by her magic mirror." The character, however, turned out to be especially problematic for the animators, as she had to be "regally beautiful, with confined but graceful movements," and "the experiments on her lovely cruel mouth and eyes alone represent drawings enough to fill a paper house." especially since Disney insisted on showing how the Queen felt as she changed. might have been inspired by Spain's Alcázar of Segovia. Walt Disney wanted the Queen's castle to serve "as a symbol of domestic control and imperial power" and the throne she uses has a peacock motif to symbolise her extreme vanity. The Queen is clad mostly in black and other "negative" dark colors, providing a contrast to Snow White's bright colorful wardrobe, and has "shiny black hair" under her hood. The Queen's music tracks were created with low celio notes, basses, and bassoons; the scribblings in her book of spells were written in Italian. The mysterious entity in her mirror was described as her familiar demon in a press book, Lucille La Verne provided the voices of both the Queen and her old hag form, the latter by removing her false teeth. Joe Grant, who contributed the design for her Witch form, The Queen was the first character to meet death in a Disney film. As part of elimination of the original story's more gruesome aspects, and to make Snow White seem more a "nice girl", the Evil Queen is no longer cannibalistic and her destruction was made "just as certain but more merciful" than in the original story, where she is forced to dance to her death in red-hot iron shoes on her feet as an invited guest at Snow White's wedding. Snow White's role in the Queen's demise was removed, and the Queen "dies more neatly and quickly," One of the Witch's animators was Ward Kimball, whom Walt Disney suggested draw the two vultures watching her fall "to make it a little easier" for him, as Kimball had been reassigned after his own sequence was cut from the film, since Disney thought these additional dwarfs gag scenes would distract from "the real drama" of the tension between Snow White and her wicked stepmother that was supposed to drive the film. The film's 1936 press book describes the manner of her death as inspired by what the company fancifully claimed was the Queen's invocation when she had sold her soul to the evil spirits in exchange for her dark powers, supposedly present in "famous folk lore" of German peasants that the Grimms obtained their story from (in what the book claims as a translation to English: "If I had to keep my vow / That I take and swear to now, / May the vultures, wolf and bear / On my body feed and tear / Mock my agony and groans / Rend the red flesh from my bones / Where the dark pine branches wave / Be this wilderness my grave!"). Abandoned concepts The original outline of the story featured another attempt by the Queen to kill Snow White, using a poisoned comb, an element taken from the Grimms' version of the tale (the Dwarfs would arrive in time to remove it). The Queen was originally intended to have seven black panthers guarding the entrance to her secret room with the Mirror; In one 1937 novelization, the Queen vows the Huntsman would pay dearly for allowing her stepdaughter to escape, but first she would deal with Snow White herself. In another version, the Huntsman would also be dragged to the dungeon when the Queen finds out that he has betrayed her, The envious Queen would also decide to take possession of Snow White's attractive young suitor, the 18-year-old She would later visit him there and use her sorcery to taunt him by bringing the dungeon's skeletons (also chained to the walls) to life and making them dance, identifying one skeleton as "Prince Oswald" (the name was an inside joke reference to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit According to production story-meeting notes from October 1934, "Queen wants to marry Prince, but he refuses to acknowledge 'that she is the fairest in the land,' since he has seen Snow White." A story note states about their meeting in the dungeon: "This is a sequence of gruesome comedy ― of dancing skeletons ― fantastic shadows ― witchcraft and deviltry." Later, after transforming herself, she decides to punish the Prince for having scorned her. She informs the Prince of her plan to have the Dwarfs bury Snow White alive and then leaves him to his death, still chained and trapped in a subterranean chamber filling with water to slowly drown. She then makes her way to the Dwarfs' cottage with the poisoned apple, while birds and forest animals were to help the Prince escape the Queen's minions and find his horse as would race to try and save Snow White. and several inspirational sketch pictures of the dungeon scenes were drawn by Ferdinand Hovarth. It is said that Disney "knew that the Queen would have to look scary without being too scary." except in Australia's censored original theatrical release version. Similar motifs and scenes were later used in Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin. Elements of this sub-plot have also made their way into some other Disney's Snow White fiction and visitor attractions. ==Other appearances==