Known as "Disney's Folly" when it was in production, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) was so successful that it made possible the animated features of Disney's golden age ("Pinocchio," "Fantasia") and provided the inspiration for countless parodies and updates ("Enchanted"). The template: beautiful princess flees jealous queen, finds sanctuary with crusty but harmless bachelor miners, bites apple and dust.
While Snow White was hand drawn, the model for her was very much alive. Dancer Marge Champion was used by Disney animators to make sure that Snow White's movements were realistic. This was not her only claim to fame, however. She teamed up with husband Gower Champion to appear in a number of MGM's fabled musicals ( "Show Boat," "Lovely to Look At") before becoming a choreographer in her own right.
The "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" DVD was released Oct. 6, 2009.
Q: Do you still teach?
A: Yes. I turned 90 this month. I still have my marbles, and I'm still dancing, and I still remember a lot of the things that happened to me when I was 14. Because I went to work for Walt Disney when I was 14.
Q: How did you come to his attention?
A: They needed a young girl who they could really get the personality out of because the animators put their own personalities in the animals and dwarfs. They had a talent scout looking in dancing schools for girls who could move and do improvisation. This scout picked three of us out of my father's dancing school. I didn't hear from them, and I had forgotten all about it until they said, "Come over to the studio and get measured for a costume." Incidentally, last week they showed me the bodice to the dress I wore. And we could tell that somebody else had worn it and been dismissed or something, because there were two sets of hooks and eyes. I was so astonished when they showed it to me because that was something that nobody ever told me.
Q: Did they film you?
A: Yes, they filmed me in 16mm on one of the sound stages with very crude scenery. When I was running through the forest they hung a clothes line with a lot of ropes from it so I could improvise going through the forest and the weeds catching my dress and my reaction to that.
Q: I'm thinking especially of that dancing sequence with the dwarfs.
A: When it came to dancing with the two dwarfs one on top of the other with a long coat on, I danced with Ollie Johnston because he was the tallest animator, so that my eye line would be correct.
Q: What about sight lines with the dwarfs?
A: There was a time when I was shooing them off to work and the animators who were assigned to that section were backing up on their hands and knees because my eye line had to be down there.
Q: I didn't realize it was that detailed. I just assumed they were using you as a rough sketch.
A: If you want to know how detailed it was, I had to learn to lip sync when I was doing "Someday My Prince Will Come." When I first saw the storyboards, Snow White looked like Betty Boop. She had round eyes and little eyelashes and a tiny little waist and all of that. After they started using me as a model, they loosened her waistline and made her eyes almond-shaped.
Q: Did she look like you at all?
A: The hair was different, because she had black hair. The first day I worked they had gotten a football helmet and painted black hair on it and put it on my head. By lunchtime I was nearly fainting because it was so hot under there. And they had a big conference and decided that they could figure it out (without the helmet).
Q: How much time did you spend being filmed?
A: I was on that for about two years, but I only worked one or two or three days a month because I could do enough to keep them busy for weeks.
John Clark is a freelance writer. E-mail him at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.
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