Evolution of the Seven Dwarfs Costumes! - DIStory Ep. 20 - Disney Theme Park History

what's going on Disney fans it's Disney Dan here with another episode of district but before we jump into this video here's a quick message from my pal Mickey clicks away plus find Dan on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and say hello Oh see ya real soon thanks Mickey in this episode of district it's off to work we go as we dig dig dig into the long and interesting evolution of the Seven Dwarves both in out of Disney theme parks in 1934 Walt Disney announced that his first feature-length animated film was under production to the New York Times starting with a budget of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars he set off to retell the classic story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves the development of the story and style for the film would flip back and forth for over a year with plans ranging from a comical feature film centered primarily around the dwarves to a scarier plot with multiple murder attempts by an overweight baddie Queen initially there were close to 50 different dwarf name selected for the film that were ultimately narrowed down to just seven after long debates in the writers room the film was finally produced with a budget that skyrocketed to nearly one and a half million dollars requiring Walt Disney to mortgage his own home to keep the studio afloat the film debuted to massive commercial and critical success and led to a profit of over eight million dollars helping concrete Disney as a full-length featured animated filmmaker with Snow White in the Seven Dwarves being Disney's first featured animated film Walt pulled out all the stops to make sure the red-carpet premiere was a great one this included commissioning scale models of many of the animated scenes and a set of custom costumes to be featured in the event these costume characters included some of the earliest costume versions of Mickey Minnie and Donald but the fab three were not the star of the night the Seven Dwarfs were these seven costumes were each a unique representation of the seven individual dwarves from the film the head of each was a hard cast unique sculpt with a fabric hat pulled over the top and trimmed with long white scruffy fake hair these unique scopes did a pretty great job of bringing the characters to life on the red carpet and were portrayed by both little people performers and young children this practice of using costume characters from the film is something Walt would continue to use in the future for other later major film releases like the legendary Pinocchio premiere event check out one of our other past history videos about that horrible story and has even seen done to this present day with Chewbacca appearing most recently at the red carpet premiere of solo like we've covered in many of our past videos a majority of Walt Disney's first professionally made walk-around costume characters were the result of an early partnership with the Ice Capades company looking to bring his characters to many fans all around the country Walt littered the ice skating shows with many of his characters songs and stories for close to a decade for Walt's first sponsored to show segment he decided on a brief retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves so in 1949 Walt Disney's characters made their first debut on the ice the Seven costumes for the dwarfs each had their own unique oversized hard-shelled heads with detached spring-loaded jaw pieces allowing for the mouth to open and shut as the heads bounced around on the ice the features in the face were heavily exaggerated with thick black lines drawn around the eyes and eyebrows helping to identify the various moods that each dwarf represented the big heads were then wrapped in a thick cottony fabric to add the beards and mustaches as you can see from the images the performers inside had very low visibility through the foam mesh panels installed around most of the noses and mouths the characters costumes were made of a thick plastic vinyl type material perhaps to make them more durable and weatherproof as they perform nightly on the wet ice the suits also featured live gloved hands that would hold onto large axe props these suits were used for several years and would make many appearances in the various Disney Ice Capades segments as the years went on before eventually ending up in the happiest place on earth when Disneyland opened in 1955 Walt reached into his stock of Ice Capades costumes and pulled out every character he could for opening day including the Seven Dwarfs over the several years of use from their original debut in 1949 the thick plastic costumes were eventually replaced with regular fabric ones which were seen in the park on opening day as they rode along with Snow White on a float in the Baker aid but these costume dwarfs were the only one the park heading over to Fantasyland you could also spot seven colorful characters as animatronics inside the dark ride Snow White's scary adventures various scenes from the film were recreated in beautiful vignettes that were accented by figures and animatronics a clever technique of painting the figures with black light reactive paint helps make the animatronics pop and otherwise dark and gloomy scenes the few dwarf scenes in this ride are some of my favorites particularly the dance party scene with this silly song while this rides still exist in its original form Walt Disney World's version of the ride would ultimately be retired with its animatronics repurposed but more on that in a little bit a summer of fun in 1961 introduced a brand new wave of costumed characters into the Disneyland theme parks moving away from the hard plastic head costumes and switching gears to a phase we like to call the big heads we've touched on these big-headed costumes in many of our past history costume evolutions before and they continue to be one of the more interesting choices made for costuming in the parks each of the Seven Dwarfs got their own unique giant rubber head scoped with giant oversized hats and big stylized rubber beards the size and weight of these huge rubber heads often led to them wrinkling and collapsing in on themselves because of the overall weight of the materials making them kind of look deflated and sad because the head stretched out over the torso of the cast member inside the suits their hands were free to interact with different features inside of the masks and it made for some pretty fun gags including Dopey's wiggling ears Doc adjusting his glasses and bashful blinking coyly ultimately though these costumes were abandoned as guests felt they lacked interaction and connectivity the Frobisher bodies had stubby little arms that weren't actually controlled by anything so the characters couldn't hug or shake hands and after about 10 years in the park they were retired and never seen again when Disney launched their first national touring show Disney on parade in the late 60s a new set of dwarfs had to be made and they took this opportunity to improve upon the original bighead design the new look kept the oversized rubber heads but played around a bit with proportions and made the characters a bit more accessible the biggest enhancement was the use of the character's hands static posed fake arms and hands were controlled using sticks instead of a large rubber cavity of the head the new rubber faces were designed to be stronger and more rigid preventing the crumpled up wrinkled faces for like the previous versions had their solid structure helped make them look more friendly and welcoming with a fresh new paint job they really felt like cartoon characters brought to life and the attention to detail was really wonderful especially the white eyebrows on happy who is the only dwarf in the original film not to have black eyebrows these new dwarf costumes only had one little issue the fact that none of them safe for dopey were wearing the correct color hats and outfits for some reason the costume team mixed up and matched colors into a unique palette separate from the one seen in the original animated film these new dwarf designs were so popular that shortly after debuting them in the Disney on parade tour they made the range of the parks and were present for opening day of Walt Disney World in 1971 these were the dwarf costumes used for almost ten years in both parks for meet-and-greets and parades the Mickey Mouse revue was an opening day attraction for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in 1971 which featured a cast of animatronic characters playing fan favorite songs of the many classic Disney cartoons led by the mouse himself the show to begin with an orchestration of all of the various featured movies in the show including hi-ho and whistle while you work after the Three Little Pigs performed their iconic number snow-white would enter immediately followed by the dwarves and their cottage scene playing all their various instruments and singing the silly song these simple yet adorable animatronics would hang out in the Magic Kingdom for approximately 12 years before the entire show is relocated Tokyo Disney [Music] in the mid-70s when Disneyland debuted its ambitious and spectacular nighttime Main Street Electrical Parade the dwarfs costumes would get a little bit of an unexpected tweak first the hats were fitted with small lamps and painted a shiny metallic color next some of the doors were outfitted with small glowing buckets of gems and so the costumes finally had to be modified to allow for live hand control with five fingered human gloved hands finally and perhaps a bit stranger the costumes made a sudden switch to actual furry beards replacing the previously used rubber ones I'm not quite sure why this change was made perhaps to be more visible during the dark parade or maybe was a weight issue with the added metallic finish and battery for the glowing effects whatever the case may be the dwarfs were now part of the parade full-time later in the mid-1980s they'd finally received their own float in the electrical parade with their costumes continually being updated in the parade to go along with whatever version was currently being used in the parks long before Disney's invasion of Broadway in the 90s they first a build in a full-scale live musical production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs this live-action musical was packed full of great costuming scenery and effects including seven fun new unique costumes for the dwarves the production employed seven little people performers to portray the dwarfs as they mind sung and protected the fair Snow White from the evils of the world to bring the dwarves to life on stage the seven actors were each fitted with a detailed custom mask designed to look like each of these seven colorful characters from the original film from a distance these masks looked presentable and okay but unfortunately because they were filmed with tight shots and close-ups for a televised HBO special the masks became sort of horrifying to bring the large wide-eyed look of the animated cartoon dwarves to life the live actors had their entire faces painted white with small black dots put around their actual physical eyes the mask then had large open gaps which in theory would have left us with bright fun white cartoony looks but instead gave us this kind of horrified sunken creepy eyed Nightmare fuel it got even worse with dopey whose solid one-piece mask sat on the actors head leaving very deep holes for the eye that when looked at closely gave dopey this horrified hollow-eyed zombie look the rest of the outfits were pretty much on point with each of these seven wardrobes closely resembling the original film's colors and designs even happy was given white eyebrows for his mask the show ran for a short time in 1979 before temporarily closing for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and then reopening again in early 1980 it ran for approximately 109 shows before closing and the recording was later televised in 1980 on HBO and later again on the new Disney Channel it was in the early 1980s that the modern-day dwarf design was introduced to the parks finally shrinking the characters heads back down to a normal size the dwarves now fit within the normal costumed character look inside the parks the smaller heads each with their own rolled flat front resting cap were finally given thick real stylized fur beards the characters clothing palette switched back to one more closely resembling the film's and each of the different costume bodies finally got their own unique shapes and sizes dopey was now thin and tall while Doc had a big muffin top and happy was was around as a ball they swapped back to the normal black eyebrows for happy perhaps because the color contrast wasn't bold enough on the plain white hearts shelled heads for a very short time - will even sported his own unique hat design where it stood straight up in the back but it was removed shortly after the costumes debuted it was in these versions of the dwarves that their iconic look and feel was finally captured correctly for the first time and like we mentioned before as these costumes slowly changed over the years they also got upgraded in the longer-lasting productions and parades such as the Main Street Electrical Parade around the mid-1980s when the dwarves finally got their own floats in the parade their costumes also got an upgrade to include fun lighting effects in the actual fabric tunics these line of costumes continued to be used to this day in the current version of the parade when and if it's running it's also worth mentioning here that thieves dwarf costumes get a holiday overlay whenever they're used during the Christmas season there and matching green hats scarves ribbons bells everything that kind of is Christmasy is added to the costume to put the Seven Dwarves into the Christmas spirit in the late 1980s Dobby got a brand new head design which modified his big adorable smile the previous closed mouth sculpt of Dobies head had a more pronounced chin and smaller cheeks leaving his mouth kind of on the smaller side the new look brought the corner of his smiles up a bit more rounding out his cheeks and kind of filling out his face it was a small change but it made the character costume all the more charming moving forward from this current dwarf design or as I like to call him the modern dwarves the only thing to really change about them is their costumes so we're now gonna cover the many different variants and upgrades made to these seven colorful characters over the next 20 years but for the most part their head scopes are gonna stay the same and not really change the brand-new nighttime light parade spectral magic debuted in 1991 for the Magic Kingdom's 20th anniversary celebration with a brand new sort of enchanted magic only found at Disney parks the new parade took all of the current costumes for each character and turned them white and gold then lined the costumes with various lights that would phase between bright white and colorful the dwarfs got this treatment and their current costumes were simply remade with shiny white and gold fabric and then lined with lights the parts of the costumes not lined with lights were then covered with rhinestones and glitter the effect of the spectrum magic parade was actually quite remarkable in clever and this parade ran for approximately ten years but made a brief return in the 2000s who knows when we will see it again in 1994 the dwarfs returned to the ice where a brand new touring show called Walt Disney's Snow White on ice while the costume design stayed mostly the same the colors and fabrics were kind of changed up a bit to be more muted and earthy you'll notice that to help with the visibility for the skaters the hats for each of the dwarves were filled with various new few holes lined with matching colored mesh the Snow White on ice story was remounted several years later with the majority of the costume simply just being pulled out of storage and reused or slightly modified to include a new fabric or design here and there [Music] in 2001 a modern Electric Light Parade debuted at Tokyo Disneyland called dream lights this was the ultimate modern update to the classic electrical light parade scene for decades it featured dozens of floats over several units including one with these Seven Dwarfs while the core design of the costume stayed mostly the same the fabric is upgraded into this new highly reflective material the hats were then lined with bright colorful sequins and the clothing looked to be practically infused with glittery rainbow magic and of course each of the dwarfs got to wear their classic mining headlamps as we saw way back in the original debuted and the electrical light parade in 2004 The Snow White story returned to live theater as a brand-new 25-minute stage show at the Fantasyland theater in Disneyland the show retold an abridged version of the story featuring gorgeous sets and creative costuming learning from the mistakes made with Radio City and the very terrifying masks the Disneyland productions dwarf design was actually gorgeous and inventive each Dorf was outfitted with a large prosthetic head cap that covered the cast members forehead and eyebrows the prosthetic cap would continue down over the actors face with a large fake exaggerated nose Dobies head cap would also feature his giant signature ears the awesome caps combined with the beautifully detailed costume work made these Seven Dwarfs look better than they had ever been seen on stage the show unfortunately only ran for a few short years before being closed and replaced by Mickey's detective school the finale of the 2004 one man's dream to the magic lives on show in Tokyo Disneyland features a white and gold Adobe costume only found in this short ending sequence of the show the costume is almost identical to the common dopey look but made out of shiny white and gold fabric here's where it's important to mention that typically when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs needs to be represented in a show or parade but they have limited cast members to wear costumes dopey is often the one dwarf that they pulled out and put on display because of this we're gonna be seeing a lot of dopey one-off costumes the 2011 version of fantastic and Tokyo's Disney sea park featured a unique dopey costume only found on the finale float while it's still his traditional long green overcoat the costume is accented in line with stars and bright orange stripes this is another one of the many dopey one-off costumes continuing to lead the charge on fun new dopey costumes Tokyo Disneyland once again outdid themselves in the 2013 happiness is here parade the new costume takes inspiration from the silly song scene in the animated classic when dopey dons a long coat and jumps onto the shoulders of sneezy to dance with Snow White the infect is incredibly convincing and super charming and it allows for them to dance with the snow white in the parade perfectly recreating the scene from the film the designers were even clever enough to build in a simple mechanic that moves sneezies eyes from side to side giving the otherwise static character a bit of life the happiness double dwarf costume has since moved to other parks and can be spotted in several different parades the Seven Dwarfs got a major technology upgrade when their very own roller coaster opened in 2014 as riders passed the gem lined caves of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train roller coaster they were greeted by all seven dwarves digging and collecting piles of brightly lit colorful jewels the new animatronics utilized a new type of eye mechanism that gave their eyes a classic animated look this new technique made the dwarf animatronics look like they were literally pulled right up the original classic animated film and I am a super big fan of them I think they are beautiful an updated set of the Seven Dwarfs debuted for a one-of-a-kind meet-and-greet during the 2015 and not-so-scary Halloween party not to sound like a broken record of course but the core design and concept of the costume stayed mostly the same but were tweaked and refined first the dwarfs shirts were accented with patches on the elbows and sleeves just like the original film and the sleeves also featured new rounded and stuffed cuffs making them more pronounced happy was the only dwarf to feature a color change with the addition of new orange sleeves to his green vest the back of the shirts for all seven dwarfs were now vented helping to keep the cast members cool inside during the long sits for the photo-op the second big change came with the hair and beards a few of the dwarves like Doc and happy got brand new beards made of short pile fur and all the dwarves that featured facial hair now had the hair go up and wrap around the back of their heads and tuck into their hats giving them a kind of fun new fresh look we also saw the return of Happy's signature white eyebrows these new signature upgraded Dwarfs continued to be the standard meet-and-greet moving forward for all special events in 2016 the de Bua the new golden fairytale fanfare stage show in Shanghai Disneyland brought out a new set of updated costumes for the dwarves combining the glittery shine of the dream lights parade with the earthy tones seen on Disney on Ice these new dwarf costumes really stand out as something new and unique the heavily quilted pattern and earthy tone glittery fabric make for a really distinct look unlike anything the dwarfs have been seen in up to this day the debut of Mickey's most Marius celebration stage show in 2016 brings us to our final dopey one-off costume currently who knows there might be more in the future like most of the costumes featured in this state-of-the-art state show dopey got a christmas-themed overhaul his jacket is now a dark green velvet with an accompanying bright red cap topped with golden Holly and jingle bells because dopey is mute we will likely never see an articulated version of his head like most of the other characters seen in this show but overall I think this Christmas dopey is super adorable the Seven Dwarfs have seen many changes since their debut on the red carpet in 1937 and their status at the Disney Company is legendary their films helped cement Disney as a major filmmaking studio and we are sure they will be around the parks for many many more years to come so which version of the dwarves is your favorite or did I miss out on any of your favorite dwarf costume variants that I didn't cover in this video let me know in the comments below and as always thanks so much for watching and a special thanks to the hard-working people like Sam from puppy be pets character central net and Kenny the pirate for helping document the rich history of costume characters in the park and a big thanks to all my amazing Disney Dan fans for all their support thanks for a great first 20 episodes of district and over 60,000 subscribers if you're new to the channel make sure you hit that subscribe button and if you know someone who likes awesome Disney history content make sure you share this video with your friends and don't forget to say hello on social media like Twitter Instagram Facebook I love hearing from you guys and chatting with you it really means a lot and as always guys you rock [Music]

Channel: Disney Dan

Views: 437,093

Rating: 4.8564849 out of 5

Keywords: Disney, Disney Dan, Disney Parks, History, Toys, Toy Unboxing, Funko, LEGO, Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Theme Parks, DIStory

Id: gWFxqlf9gOs

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 11 2018