Joan Crawford : The Wicked Queen ?

The Wicked Queen is one of Disney's most iconic and menacing villains.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the eponymous German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history.Determined to remain the fairest of all, the Queen becomes insanely jealous of Snow White, the only one whose beauty surpasses her own. She eventually uses her skills in dark magic to transform herself into the Witch.The Queen is the stepmother of Snow White and the main antagonist of the film. Once her magic mirror tells her that Snow White is fairer than she is, she immediately enlists Humbert the huntsman to kill her in the woods. After she discovers that Snow White did not die, she disguises herself as an old hag and

uses a poisoned apple in order to kill Snow White.

Disney suggested that the Queen should be a mix of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, but her face finally took the features of the American actress Joan Crawford (1908-1977), her appearance was inspired by the Helen Gahagan character in the film "She" (1935) and her general silhouette seems to be derived from the column statue at the entrance to Naumberg Cathedral in Germany. Actress Lucille LaVerne was chosen to voice both the Wicked Queen and the hag Witch because of her versatile voice intonations.The transformation of the Queen into a Witch is taken from various cinematographic versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And the Witch herself perpetuates the iconographic tradition develo

ped during the 19th century.

Walt Disney recruited some of the best European illustrators who had immigrated to America:
the Swiss Albert Hurter (1883-1942),
the Swedish artist Gustaf Tenggren (1886-1970)
his Danish counterpart Kay Nielsen (1886-1957).
and the Hungarian Ferdinand_Hovarth (1881-1973)

Trained in the art academies of their home countries,these pioneers instilled their culture in the studios’ early films,
particularly Snow White (1937), Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940).
The Queen was animated by Art Babbit and the Witch by Norman Ferguson.

Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Outrageous costumes (note the strong parallel here between Gahagan’s outfit

and that of the queen in Disney’s animated Snow White, released just two years later)

Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen and his wife Uta

Naumburg Cathedral (1249-1255)

You can admire Joan Crawford for her ambition and her professionalism as an actress but did you knew that Joan Crawford was named by her children (Christina and Christopher)

the "witch", the evil “mommie dearest.” ?

When, i see Show White i can't help thinking about Joan Crawford and all the despotic mother in this world.

Now, It can been told that Joan herself was a villain, a MGM marketing made-up actress and character from her name to her look ( she cared about more than anything about her public image) and a despotic mother that indulged severe mental and physical abuse on her children.Her life was a running commercial directed by Hollywood- The "official" story, according to the MGM Publicity Department as Directed by Louis B. Mayer.

When Christina Crawford’s tell-all book came out a year after her adoptive mother’s death, Old Hollywood divided into two camps: those who said they had witnessed Crawford’s unstable behavior with her children and those were convinced that the book’s shocking claims were untrue.

The book and Movie "Momie Dearest" help to spotlight the subject of abusive mothers and Borderline Mothers.But it's still seem that in 2009,we as individuals and a society are still uncomfortable with those kinds of issues.

"Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's the fairest one of all" ......