I came across a story in a 1938 newspaper about how Adriana Caselotti got the job of being the voice of Snow White in Disney's 1937 movie:
Three years ago when Adriana Caselotti, above, was 18, she was a naughty little girl who listened in on the phone calls of her father, Guido Caselotti, Hollywood voice teacher. When the Walt Disney studio called one day asking him to find the right voice for Snow White, she piped "Me, me, me, how about me?" into the extension on which she had been eavesdropping. The studio liked her cheerful chirping, and she became the "voice" of the fairy story heroine. Now she hopes to become a movie actress.
Unfortunately for Caselotti, her dream of becoming a movie actress didn't turn out as she hoped. In fact, providing the voice for Snow White turned out to be the worst career move she could have possibly made as an aspiring actress — because Walt Disney, wanting to preserve the "illusion of Snow White," decided he couldn't have her voice be heard in any other context. So he prevented Caselotti from ever finding work as an actress again, except for minor appearances in The Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life.
As a consolation prize for having destroyed her career, the Disney company named her a "Disney Legend" in 1994.
In 1935, after a brief stint as a chorus girl at MGM, Walt Disney hired Caselotti as the voice of his heroine Snow White. She was paid a total of $970 for working on the film (worth approximately $16,160 as of 2011). She was under contract with Disney, and Disney prevented her from appearing in further film and other media, even for Disney, after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Jack Benny specifically mentioned that he had asked Disney for permission to use her on his radio show and was told, "I'm sorry, but that voice can't be used anywhere. I don't want to spoil the illusion of Snow White." The only other work Caselotti did following her premiere was an uncredited role in MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939); she provided the voice of Juliet during the Tin Man's song, "If I Only Had a Heart", speaking the line, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" In 1946, she had an uncredited role in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, singing in Martini's bar as James Stewart was praying.
Here in the fortieth anniversary year of Star Wars, let us pause to consider all the ways in which it elevated the genre of science fiction, inspiring such followers as Yogi's Space Race.
The uproarious laughter by the human executive at the antics of Tommy Telephone, a plainly impossible vision, proclaims that the fellow is gratefully descending into the dark swamp of insanity due to the high stresses of his job.
I've previously posted an example of a comic book created by a government for the purpose of propaganda or education ("Confidencias de un Senderista"). In a similar vein is the 1955 film Animal Farm, which was the first animated feature film released in the UK. It was produced by the CIA. As reported in the NY Times (Mar 18, 2000):
Many people remember reading George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was which."
That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.
The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.