Snow White Grotto, July 1972
Grottos. There's the famous Blue Grotto on the island of Capri. There are the Yungang Grottos in Shanxi. And the Grotta dello Smeraldo on the Amalfi Coast. But those all stink! It's the Snow White Grotto you want! With its sculptures of Snow White and her pals, the Sieben Zwerge. Not to mention some woodland chums who will use their butts to help clean a dusty cottage.
One of the things I am impressed by is that the characters are all "on model", truly looking like they did in the 1937 movie; so often you'll see things like this that are just a bit "off". But the Italian sculptor did it right, each Dwarf is spot-on.
For decades there was a story going around (promoted by Disney) that the sculptures were a gift from a particular sculptor (named Leonida Parma); he just sent them, out of the blue! I can't remember the author (possibly Todd James Pierce?) who located an actual order slip for the sculptures (presumably in the Archives). Another Disneyland legend debunked!
4 comments:
Major-
I see "Mom" had her hair 'done' for the occasion - attempting to out-do Snow White. Hmmm.
Thanks, Major.
In 1994 we debuted The Walt Disney Imagineering Collection - a series of serigraphs of WED/WDI artwork .. the silkscreened prints were produced by the WDI graphics group on the exact same equipment the park attraction posters were screened on since the mid 70’s. We had a big luncheon with Marc Davis , John Hench , Nina Rae, Vaughn ( who hand cut many of the serigraph screens ) to train the Gallery cast members and get them familiar with the artwork . One of the serigraphs was the Snow White Grotto- by John Hench ( not the same version released by the Disney Gsllery as lithograph in 1987) anyway , John Hench himself told us that snow and the dwarfs were done by sculpting students … and Disney had purchased them . When Hench asked why Snow was basically the same size as the dwarfs , the instructor explained that all the students were given the same size of marble before being assigned a character .
… Walt told John Hench that I guess we should display them down at Disneyland so Hench was tasked with coming up with how to display them… the first ideas Hench came up with looked like a cemetery before coming up with the grotto . WED artists added the animals … over time the marble originals began to develop some kind of discoloration .. so they were removed and placed in storage at WDI and today castings are displayed in most of the magic kingdoms around the world.
That’s the story we were told by John Hench himself … was he lying to all of us??
You know that the Dwarfs' cottage was realllly filthy if, after the forest critters used their butts to do the cleaning, it actually got cleaner!
I guess I'm a Grotto purist. I get miffed if a human is included in the picture. And this is a particularly nice picture of the Grotto. The water looks all sparkly, the lighting is perfect, and all the detail can be seen. Dopey is peeking at us from behind the railing. (That's peeking, not peeing.)
Ah, now here's a pristine photo of the Grotto! It's as nice as the first one, but without people. I think I'll keep this one!
Nanook, "to out-do Snow White". 'Mom' just painted a big bullseye on herself! The Wicked Queen will not allow anyone to outshine her! I think i smell the pungent odor of poison apples wafting in the air.
Nice photos, Major. Thanks.
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