Sunday, February 23, 2014

They Made the Magic: Dorothy Ann Blank

Hired in the summer of 1936, Dorothy Ann Blank made a substantial contribution to Snow White as a member of the story department.
Walt and Roy had been working with Hal Horne, ;publicity director for United Artists, whom Dorothy worked for.  When Horne left United Artists and found himself n financial difficulty, Disney helped him out and that was when Dorothy became am member of the Disney staff.
In his book, Fairest of the All, J B Kaufman notes that Dorothy objected to the notion of the birds helping Snow White make the pies for the dwarfs, she wasn't fond of the idea of the birds wiping their feet on the pies.
It was Dorothy who wrote the title that marked the passing seasons as the dwarfs mourned the loss of Snow White.  Walt Disney pressed Dorothy to express the story with the least amount of words.  She submitted four titles, but were changed down to three, and Walt himself rewrote the last title.
Dorothy was also given the responsibility to write the text for the November December 1937 issue of Good Housekeeping that featured snow White.  In this version she included portions of the story that were not in the final film (death of Snow White mother, soup sequence, and the bed building).  Additionally, the language includes some slang from the time. To see the magazine, check out this post from Filmic Light.

6 comments:

  1. No she is not. She was born in 1900. She was my great grandmother's older sister.

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    1. Thank you for the additional information Stef!

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    2. Hi, I was actually wondering if there was a way to get in contact with this user as I am currently writing my dissertation on Disney and women and would be cool to have some first hand comments :)

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  2. Good for her - must have been one of the very few women to be allowed to have a creative input into Disney Films

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  3. I came to learn more about her after watching the 1937 Snow White with my daughter and I noticed she was one of the few women's names in the credit. Great to hear about her specific contributions to the story!

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