Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who played the voice of Snow White in Walt Disney's Snow White?
Adriana Caselotti (May 6, 1916 – January 18, 1997) was an American actress, voice actress and singer. Caselotti was the voice of the title character of the first Walt Disney animated feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", for which she was named as a Disney Legend in 1994, making her the first female voice actor so named.
This was the first original Mickey Mouse theatrical cartoon produced in over 30 years. With the exception of re-releases, Mickey had not appeared in movie theaters since the short film "The Simple Things" (1953). Many additional characters seen in the film had also not appeared in a theatrical cartoon for several decades. The film was also the last time in which Clarence Nash voiced Donald Duck. Nash was the only original voice actor in the film as Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse) and Pinto Colvig (Goofy) had died in the 1960s, Cliff Edwards (Jiminy Cricket) and Billy Gilbert (Willie the Giant) in 1971, and Billy Bletcher (Pete and the Big Bad Wolf) in 1979. It was also the first time in animation that Scrooge McDuck (as Ebenezer Scrooge) was voiced by actor Alan Young (who had first voiced the character on the musical album); Young would continue to be the primary voice actor for McDuck until the actor's death in 2016.
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the fairy tale "Cinderella" by Charles Perrault, it is the twelfth Disney animated feature film. The film was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wilfred Jackson. Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman wrote the songs, which include "Cinderella", "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes", "Sing Sweet Nightingale", "The Work Song", "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo", and "So This is Love". It features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, Luis van Rooten, Don Barclay, Mike Douglas, William Phipps, and Lucille Bliss.
After the success of Walt Disney Productions' first feature-length animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), filmmaker Walt Disney himself made several attempts to adapt the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont into one of the studio's earliest animated feature films during the 1930s and 1950s. However, the project was continuously abandoned due to the fairy tale's "static" plot and main characters. The filmmaker was also concerned about the "unnecessary intensity" required to depict Belle's imprisonment. Inspired by the unprecedented success of "The Little Mermaid "(1989), Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg green-lit another attempt at adapting "Beauty and the Beast" under the direction of Richard Purdum. However, Katzenberg did not approve of Purdum's dark, somber version of the fairy tale, and ultimately ordered that it be restarted from scratch in favor of creating a Broadway-style musical film starring a strong heroine, more similar to "The Little Mermaid". Opting instead for a "feminist twist" on the original story, largely in response to critics' negative reception to Ariel regarding her pursuit of Eric being her overall character, Katzenberg hired television writer Linda Woolverton, who had never written an animated film before, to write the film's screenplay.
Audiences at the time of "Steamboat Willie"'s release were reportedly impressed by the use of sound for comedic purposes. Sound films or "talkies" were still considered innovative. The first feature-length movie with dialogue sequences, "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson, was released on October 6, 1927. Within a year of its success, most United States movie theaters had installed sound film equipment. Walt Disney apparently intended to take advantage of this new trend and, arguably, managed to succeed. Most other cartoon studios were still producing silent products and so were unable to effectively act as competition to Disney. As a result, Mickey would soon become the most prominent animated character of the time. Walt Disney soon worked on adding sound to both "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho" (which had originally been silent releases) and their new release added to Mickey's success and popularity. A fourth Mickey short, "The Barn Dance", was also put into production; however, Mickey does not actually speak until "The Karnival Kid" in 1929 when his first spoken words were "Hot dogs, Hot dogs!" After "Steamboat Willie" was released, Mickey became a close competitor to Felix the Cat, and his popularity would grow as he was continuously featured in sound cartoons. By 1929, Felix would lose popularity among theater audiences, and Pat Sullivan decided to produce all future Felix cartoons in sound as a result. Unfortunately, audiences did not respond well to Felix's transition to sound and by 1930, Felix had faded from the screen.
Margaret Brainard Hamilton (December 9, 1902 – May 16, 1985) was an American film character actress best known for her portrayal of Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's classic film "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).
Mickey Mouse (originally Mickey Mouse Sound Cartoons) is a character-based series of 130 animated short films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The films, which introduced Disney's most famous cartoon character, were released on a regular basis from 1928 ("Plane Crazy") to 1953 with four additional shorts released between 1983 and 2013. The series is notable for its innovation with sound synchronization and character animation, and also introduced well-known characters such as Minnie Mouse, Pluto, and Goofy.
Screenwriter and director Brad Bird conceived Violet as "a teenage girl who just wants to be invisible". In early drafts of the screenplay, Violet is depicted as an infant as opposed to a teenager, since parents Bob and Helen Parr were originally intended to be introduced as retired superheroes who have just begun to attempt to live normal lives much earlier during the film. Violet is voiced by American author and actress Sarah Vowell, who related that she was offered the role unexpectedly. While beginning to cast the film's main characters, Bird had been listening to the National Public Radio program "This American Life", to which Vowell is a frequent contributor. During one of Vowell's regular appearances on the show, Bird heard her contribute an anecdote about a cannon she had helped her father, a gunsmith, build. Bird wanted to cast Vowell based on her description of the event, deciding that she was "perfect" for the part and immediately calling her to offer her the role. Vowell had already earned a reputation for declining several voice acting jobs prior to "The Incredibles", to the point at which her agent warned Bird, "She's a serious writer and she wouldn't do this, so don't waste your time!" However, Vowell states that she simply avoided pursuing animated roles in general because she was content being a writer and found few animated projects particularly interesting prior to "The Incredibles".
The animators animated a rough test sequence to some of Vowell's dialogue from the radio segment about her father's cannon, in which Violet is depicted being startled by a gun that repeatedly fires in her hands. Despite experiencing some hesitation due having never voiced an animated character before, Vowell accepted the role after receiving an e-mail from the film's producer, agreeing to participate in "The Incredibles" because she believes that Pixar is consistently "the best at what they do", comparing the offer to "if Nelson Mandela showed up asking for your help to fight racism". Additionally, she had also been a long-time fan of Bird's work as a filmmaker. Vowell ultimately decided to accept the role based on a sole image she had been sent of the character: a drawing of Violet surrounded by her schoolmates, all of whom appear to be happy and outgoing apart from Violet herself, who is instead hunched over and hiding behind her long hair. Vowell concluded, "I can be that kid. I was that kid. I love that archetype of the morose, shy, smart-alecky teenage girl."
In 2004, Vowell provided the voice of Violet Parr, a shy teenager, in the Pixar animated film "The Incredibles", and returned to her role for the film's sequel, "Incredibles 2", in 2018. Additionally, Vowell has also lent her voice to the character for various related video games and "Disney on Ice" presentations in the years following the film's release. The makers of "The Incredibles" discovered Vowell from episode 81 – "Guns" "This American Life", where she and her father fire a homemade cannon. Pixar made a test animation for Violet using audio from that sequence, which was included on the DVD of "The Incredibles". She also wrote and was featured in a documentary included on the same DVD entitled "Vowellett - An Essay by Sarah Vowell", where she reflects on the differences between being superhero Violet and being an author of history books on the subject of assassinated presidents, and what it means to her nephew Owen. Vowell also played Fernanda, Theacher "Aunt" Deborah and Mary Kelly in "The School Future".
Ursula is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Pictures' 28th animated feature film "The Little Mermaid" (1989). Voiced by American actress Pat Carroll, Ursula is a villainous sea witch who tricks a mermaid princess named Ariel into trading her voice for a pair of human legs, at first appearing to be providing the character with an opportunity to become human by temporarily transforming her into one so that she may earn the love of Prince Eric within three days. However, Ursula is, in fact, determined to sabotage Ariel's chances at any expense so that she can ultimately replace the mermaid's father King Triton as ruler over Atlantica.
In 1928, to recover from the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney came up with the idea of a mouse character named Mortimer while on a train headed to California, drawing up a few simple drawings. The mouse was later renamed Mickey Mouse (Disney's wife, Lillian, disliked the sound of 'Mortimer Mouse') and starred in several Disney produced films. Ub Iwerks refined Disney's initial design of Mickey Mouse. Disney's first sound film "Steamboat Willie", a cartoon starring Mickey, was released on November 18, 1928 through Pat Powers' distribution company. It was the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon released, but the third to be created, behind "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho". "Steamboat Willie" was an immediate smash hit, and its initial success was attributed not just to Mickey's appeal as a character, but to the fact that it was the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound. Disney used Pat Powers' Cinephone system, created by Powers using Lee de Forest's Phonofilm system. "Steamboat Willie" premiered at B. S. Moss's Colony Theater in New York City, now The Broadway Theatre. Disney's "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho" were then retrofitted with synchronized sound tracks and re-released successfully in 1929.
Voice cast: Sumi Shimamoto was the character's Japanese voice actor in the 1984 animated film adaptation of "Nausicaä". For the 2005 English dub, released by Buena Vista, Alison Lohman performed the role.
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and Walt Disney Pictures. Based on the Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Little Mermaid" tells the story of Ariel, a mermaid princess who dreams of becoming human. Written, produced, and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (who also served as a co-producer), the film features the voices of Jodi Benson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, Jason Marin, Kenneth Mars, Buddy Hackett, and René Auberjonois.
Donald Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is most famous for his semi-intelligible speech and his mischievous and temperamental personality. Along with his friend Mickey Mouse, Donald is one of the most popular Disney characters and was included in "TV Guide"s list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time in 2002. He has appeared in more films than any other Disney character, and is the most published comic book character in the world outside of the superhero genre.
Ursula is voiced by American actress and comedian Pat Carroll. Carroll was not the filmmakers' first choice for the role; Clements, Musker and Ashman had long debated who should voice the villainness, the casting of whom was long and tedious, spanning an entire year. In his book "Makin' Toons: Inside the Most Popular Animated TV Shows and Movies", author Allan Neuwirth documented that the filmmakers searched "for just the right performer who could put across the deep-voiced, world-weary, deadpan villainness they had in mind–but never quite snaring their catch". While Ashman was interested in actress Joan Collins because he was a fan of her performance as Alexis Colby in the soap opera "Dynasty", Clements and Musker favored actress Bea Arthur, for whom they had actually written the role, describing Ursula as "having a Bea Arthur-type basso voice" in early drafts of their screenplay. Clements and Musker expected Arthur to accept the role because she had already been working for Disney's Touchstone Television on the sitcom "The Golden Girls". However, Arthur's agent resented the directors-writers for insinuating that her client voice a witch, refusing to even present the script to the actress.
White is the traditional color of witches in Oz. The Good Witch of the North wears a pointed white hat and a white gown decorated with stars, while Glinda, the Good Witch of the South (called a "sorceress" in later books), wears a pure white dress. Dorothy is taken for a witch not only because she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East, but because her dress is blue and white checked.
At the time, Walt Disney Productions had suffered from losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II, enduring some box office bombs like "Pinocchio" (1940), "Fantasia" (1940), and "Bambi" (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video. At the time, however, the studio was over $4 million in debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Walt Disney and his animators turned back to feature film production in 1948 after producing a string of package films with the idea of adapting Charles Perrault's "Cendrillon" into a motion picture. It is the first Disney film in which all of Disney's Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators. After two years in production, "Cinderella" was finally released on February 15, 1950. It became the greatest critical and commercial hit for the studio since "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), and helped reverse the studio's fortunes. It received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Music, Original Song for "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 30th Disney animated feature film and the third released during the Disney Renaissance period, it is based on the French fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont who was uncredited in the English version but credited in the French version, and ideas from the 1946 French film of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. "Beauty and the Beast" focuses on the relationship between the Beast (voice of Robby Benson), a prince who is magically transformed into a monster and his servants into household objects as punishment for his arrogance, and Belle (voice of Paige O'Hara), a young woman whom he imprisons in his castle to become a prince again. To break the curse, Beast must learn to love Belle and earn her love in return before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose or else the Beast will remain a monster forever. The film also features the voices of Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury.
Other notable characters include Snoopy's friend Woodstock, a bird whose chirping is represented in print as hash marks but is nevertheless clearly understood by Snoopy; three of Woodstock's friends who usually appeared when on a scouting trip with Snoopy as their scout leader; Pig-Pen, the perpetually dirty boy who could raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk, in a snowstorm, or inside a building; and Frieda, a girl proud of her "naturally curly hair", who owned a cat named Faron, much to Snoopy's chagrin.
Sarah Natochenny is an American voice actress most known for providing the English dub voice of Ash Ketchum in the "Pokémon" anime series since 2006.
Another genre of Santa films seeks to dispel doubts about his existence. One of the first films of this nature was titled "A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus" (1907) and involves a well-to-do boy trying to convince his poorer friend that Santa Claus is real. She doubts because Santa has never visited her family because of their poverty. "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), starring Natalie Wood as Susan Walker, revolves around the disbelief of young Susan, whose mother (Maureen O'Hara) employs a kind old man (Edmund Gwenn, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) to play Santa Claus at Macy's; he later convinces Susan that he really is Santa. This film was remade in 1994 and stars Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle and Mara Wilson as Susan Walker. The television special, "Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Claus" (1991), follows the true story of a young girl, Virginia O'Hanlon, who writes a letter to the editor of the "New York Sun" in 1897 after her friends tell her there is no Santa. The newspaper editor tells her that indeed there is a Santa: "He lives, and he lives forever." Francis Pharcellus Church was the real-life editor and is played by Charles Bronson in the film. "The Polar Express" (2004), based on the children's book of the same name, also deals with issues and questions of belief as a magical train conducted by Tom Hanks transports a doubting boy to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus.
Critical reception towards the character of Snow White has been polarized. "TV Guide "described Snow White as iconic, unique and incomparable, writing, "never again would Walt's heroine have such a fantasy singing voice, and for that reason, she's the favorite heroine of many animation auteurs." Calling Snow White a "fairy-tale princess," Otis Ferguson of "The New Republic "simply described the character as "just what you would have her." "Variety"'s John C. Flinn deemed Snow White "the embodiment of girlish sweetness and kindness, exemplified in her love for the birds and the small animals of the woods that are her friends and, as it subsequently develops, her rescuers."
Animators' initial sketches for Snow White's character, some of which bore a resemblance to Betty Boop, did not meet Walt Disney's expectations, as they were too cartoonish. Hamilton Luske, whom Disney had selected as the supervising animator for Snow White's character, was tasked with the challenge of making Snow White more believably human and realistic than any of the Disney studio's previous animated characters. This was a challenge Luske and co-animator Les Clark had previously been asked to explore while developing the character of Persephone for the "Silly Symphonies" animated short "The Goddess of Spring". Of that project, Les Clark later remarked, "I'm sure Walt was thinking ahead to "Snow White"." Though the Persephone character ended up appearing somewhat lifeless and devoid of personality, that experiment in imitating realistic human movement and anatomy was continued and its lessons were applied in the development of Snow White's animation techniques. Snow White and the Queen were refined by Grim Natwick and Norm Ferguson, who would often override Walt Disney's instructions.
One version of Snow White is the 1937 American animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" by Walt Disney. Disney's variation of Snow White gave the dwarfs names and included a singing Snow White. The Disney film also is the only version in which Snow White and her prince meet before she bites the apple; in fact, it is this meeting that sets the plot in motion. Instead of her lungs and liver, as written in the original, the huntsman is asked by the queen to bring back Snow White’s heart. While the heart is mentioned, it is never shown in the box. Snow White is much more mature (about 14). And she is discovered by the dwarfs after "cleaning" the house, not vandalizing it. Furthermore, in the Disney movie the evil queen tries only once to kill Snow White (by a poisoned apple) and fails (this was likely to save time). She then dies by falling down a cliff and being crushed by a boulder, after the dwarfs had chased her through the forest. In the original, the queen is forced to dance to death.
Disney also launched a search for actresses who had played Snow White at Disneyland, Disney World and its overseas parks for a planned reunion. However, the company could not locate or identify Disneyland's first Snow White from its opening day, since Killingsworth had been employed by ABC, rather than the Walt Disney Company, for the television special. Killingsworth remained unaware of Disney's planned 1987 Snow White reunion until she was told by a friend about the planned event. She contacted the company and attended the event. Killingsworth was one of approximately 50 former Snow Whites who attended the reunion. She told the "Associated Press" at the time, "I didn't realize Disney was looking for me...If I had, I would have called somebody and said, 'Here I am. Here's Snow White'." Bob Roth, Disney's spokesperson at the time, confirmed that "I'm really quite certain this is the right person." The company gave her a jewelry box to mark the 50th anniversary.