Disney’s live-action version of “Snow White” is coming the theaters this Friday and the advance word on the production is not positive. Perhaps this is a good time to recall another live-action version of “Snow White” that fell very far short of the 1937 animated classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” – the 1961 big-budget mess known as “Snow White and the Three Stooges.”
Die-hard Three Stooges fans loathe this film, and rightfully so – the stooging was watered down severely, with the only genuine laugh-out-loud moments coming at the very beginning with the zany trio disrupting the opening credits. Ellwood Ullman, who wrote many of their classic shorts, collaborated on the screenplay but brought none of his zip and zing to the story – oddly, his collaborator was Noel Langley, who co-wrote the 1939 version of “The Wizard of Oz,” but he also seemed to be out fresh ideas. Frank Tashlin was originally assigned to direct the film, and it was a shame that he was dropped since he would have brought his wacky sense of absurdity to the proceedings.
As a result, the film adheres closely to the original “Snow White” story, with occasional pops of excessively mild Stooge antics including isolated slaps and one bit of mayhem involving pies in the face.
However, the Stooges were in support of Carol Heiss, who won a gold medal in figure skating at the 1960 Winter Olympics. 20th Century Fox tried to position her as a successor to Sonja Henie, the studio’s skating star in a series of 1930s and 1940s musicals. But Heiss was too dull of a presence to become movie star material. The studio gave her a few songs that she lip-synced to a voice that didn’t match her speaking tones, and the skating numbers where she should have triumphed weren’t particularly remarkable.
The film had significant talent involved, including director Walter Lang, cinematographer Leon Shamroy and the likes of Buddy Baer, Burt Mustin and Blossom Rock in small roles; an uncredited Mel Blanc voice a puppet used in a ventriloquy scene. Producer Charles Z. Wick would later serve as director of the United States Information Agency under President Ronald Reagan.
The $3.5 million production only grossed $1.6 million. Moe Howard would later call the film a “Technicolor mistake” – actually, it was shot in DeLuxe Color, but in retrospect it might have been best if they kept the lens cap on the camera.