Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is a 1943 Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Bob Clampett. The short was released on January 16, 1943.

The film is an all-black parody of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White, known to audiences at the time from the popular 1937 Walt Disney animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The stylistic portrayal of the characters is an example of "darky" iconography, which was widely accepted in American society at the time. As such, it is one of the most controversial cartoons in the classic Warner Brothers library, being one of the Censored Eleven. The cartoon has been rarely seen on television since it was pulled from circulation in 1968 and has never been officially released on home video.

History

In this version of the story, all of the characters are black, and speak all of their dialogue in rhyme. The story is set during World War II in the United States, and the original tale's fairy tale wholesomeness is replaced in this film by a hot jazz mentality and sexual overtones. Several scenes unique to Disney's film version of Snow White, such as the wishing-well sequence, the forest full of staring eyes, and the awakening kiss, are directly parodied in this film. The film was intended to have been named So White and de Sebben Dwarfs, which producer Leon Schlesinger thought was too close to the original film's actual title, and had changed to Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.

Clampett intended Coal Black as both a parody of Snow White and a dedication to the all-black jazz musical films popular in the early 1940s (like Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather). In fact, the idea to produce Coal Black came to Clampett after he saw Duke Ellington's 1941 musical revue Jump for Joy, and Ellington and the cast suggested Clampett make a black musical cartoon. The Clampett unit made a couple of field trips to Club Alabam, a black club in the Los Angeles area, to gain a feel for the music and the dancing, and Clampett cast popular radio actors as the voices of his three main characters. The main character, So White, is voiced by Vivian Dandridge, sister of actress Dorothy Dandridge. Darrel Payne voices the Wicked Queen.

In April 1943, the NAACP protested the caricatures which appeared in Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, and called on Warner to withdraw it.

Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is one of the "Censored Eleven": 11 Schlesinger/Warner Bros. cartoons produced at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood animation based on its unflattering and stereotypical use of blackface. Because it was produced in America during World War II, there is also anti-Japanese sentiment: the firm "Murder Inc." advertises that it does not charge to kill "Japs".

The same basic stereotypical elements present in the earlier Censored Eleven films are also present in Coal Black, depicted with more detail and made to conform to Clampett's "wacky" directorial style. In Racism in American Popular Media, Behnken and Smithers assert, "The racism in Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is unparalleled in cartoon history. This short throws virtually every black stereotype into the mix, beginning with the Mammy character, who, while in shadow, is clearly a large black woman with a distinct "Negroid" voice. The child is a big-cheeked pickanniny with a bow in her hair... The Prince is a similarly caricatured black man: he has straightened hair, wears a white zoot suit and a monocle, and has gold teeth (his two front teeth are dominoes). So White is portrayed as a hypersexual, big-bottomed younger black woman, with perky bosoms and revealing clothing. She is less representative of blackface characters and instead represents the black Jezebel or whore, voluptuous, lascivious and sexually available."

Clampett would revisit black jazz culture again in another 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon, Tin Pan Alley Cats, which features a feline caricature of Fats Waller in a repurposing of the wacky fantasy world from Porky in Wackyland (during the opening sequence, the "Fats" cat is distracted by what appears to be So White). Clampett's colleague Friz Freleng directed a cartoon titled Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears in 1944, essentially Coal Black remade with a different fairy tale, and Warner's director Chuck Jones directed a series of shorts starring a prepubescent African hunter named Inki from 1939 to 1950. Like Coal Black, Tin Pan Alley Cats and Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears would also end up in the Censored Eleven.

Bob Clampett claimed in the cartoon's defense that;

Coal Black in later years

The racially stereotyped portrayals of African-Americans in Coal Black and the other "Censored Eleven" cartoons led to their being suppressed from television broadcast. In 1968, United Artists, which then owned the rights to the pre-August 1948 Warner Bros. cartoon library, officially banned the cartoons from circulation, and they have not been officially broadcast or released on home video since - even as the rights returned to Warners.

Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs has been praised and defended by film scholars and animation historians. Jerry Beck's 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, placed Coal Black at number 21, based upon votes from over 1,000 members of the American animation industry. It is often bootlegged for release on home video.

It was seen briefly in the 1989 Turner Entertainment VHS release Cartoons For Big Kids, hosted by Leonard Maltin, and in the Behind the Tunes featurette "Once Upon a Looney Tune", which is included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 DVD box set.

On April 24, 2010, Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, along with seven other titles from the Censored Eleven, was screened at the first annual Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Film Festival as part of a special presentation hosted by film historian Donald Bogle; the eight shorts shown were restored for that release.

Credits

Crew

  • Produced by Leon Schlesinger
  • Directed by Robert Clampett
  • Story and storyboards by Warren Foster
  • Animation by Rod Scribner, Art Babbitt, Robert McKimson, Virgil Ross, and Sid Sutherland
  • (note: only Scribner receives screen credit, as per a Schlesinger edict that, in the interest of saving money on title card lettering, only one animator could be credited on each cartoon)
  • Musical score by Carl W. Stalling

Voice cast

  • Vivian Dandridge as So White
  • Darrell Payne as Wicked Queen
  • Ruby Dandridge as Wicked Queen laughing
  • Leo Watson as Prince Chawmin'
  • Mel Blanc as Prince Chawmin' (one line: "Rosebud")