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With Her Seven Buddies
They went nameless for a century. I’m talking about the seven buddies. In 1812 the Brothers Grimm published their story about the girl who was born with skin white as snow. lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony. She had a name, of course. But the dwarfs? The little guys who took the young woman in and tried to keep her safe? Completely anonymous.
Until 1912, when Winthrop Ames staged a play at the Little Theatre on West 44th Street in New York City. He recognized the importance of the seven dwarfs and gave them names. Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Snick, Whick, and Quee. Those are, I suppose, tolerable names for dwarfs, but when Walt Disney made his cute cartoon version of the story in 1937, he was looking for cute cartoon names. Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey.
There have been other versions of the story, and a wide range of dwarf names. We’ve had an Axelrod, a Boniface, a Fiddy (and no, I’m not making that up), a Moonbeam, a Lenny, we’ve had a Niffle and a Napoleon, a Purzelbaum and a Gort (not the robot who rescued Klaatu on the Day the Earth Stood Still), and may the gods forgive us, we’ve even had a Spanky.
Nobody remembers any of them, except the Disney dwarfs. The dwarf Naseweis may just as well have never existed. It’s got be discouraging for a hard-working dwarf. It’s enough to make the United Dwarf Collective move to Toronto and hide out in a row house.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
