Lucille La Verne: Disney Villain

It’s time to explore the voice behind the original Disney villain. I’m talking about Lucille La Verne, who provided the voice of the Evil Queen and the Old Hag from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

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I’ve mentioned once or twice on this blog that I hate Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and always have, but I actually sat down to watch it again when I started researching the ‘Disney Voices’ series and I have to say, I think I get it now: it’s all because of the Evil Queen.

She’s utterly freaking terrifying. That whole sequence of her turning into the Old Hag? The skulls? The poisoned apple? All that long black hair just seemingly escaping from the cap she’s wearing and turning white? WHAT EVEN IS THAT?!

God, everything about her animation and Lucille’s chilling voice is terrifying. That’s the mark of an excellent villain, and an excellent voice actress.

Lucille La Verne was an old veteran of the stage and screen by the time she was cast in Snow White. And she had to work to get the role. The Evil Queen was relatively young and glamorous, and she’s definitely a beautifully vain woman. Lucille, by contrast, was in her 60s, and the suits at Disney were wary about casting her because of her age.

Snow White’s director, David Hand, said of the concern: “The main point of argument is really that La Verne knows how to deliver lines. We are willing to sacrifice a little to get that correct delivery, that punch we need.”

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In an interview with David Johnson, another one of Snow White’s directors, Bill Cottrell, said of Lucille’s audition: “Lucille La Verne was brought in late one afternoon. She was almost brusque. This was a no-nonsense character. She took the script from me and read it without looking at the storyboard. You could have made a take of that voice that she read as the Queen.

“She was a professional actress, and I think when she was told the Queen is a vain, imperialistic personality she visualized something. She read the lines beautifully and then when she went into the Witch with the maniacal laugh; it rang over the soundstage. It was blood curdling.

“We weren’t thinking of having one actress do both parts. With the Queen’s voice, no one read with any great authority or with anything outstanding. We made a test of her voice and ran it for Walt. He said, ‘That’s it!’”

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Voicing the dual roles of the Evil Queen and the Old Hag meant Lucille spent a lot of time with the recording directors, Cottrell and Joe Grant, and they were quick to offer suggestions. When it came time to voice the Old Hag’s lines, they thought her voice was “too smooth and not rough enough,” so Lucille left the room, removed her false teeth, and went back in to re-record. The men were awed by the move; it became Disney lore immediately.

Lucille also didn’t provide any live action reference modelling for her characters; but the animators did notice that she would change her posture and movements depending on which version of the Evil Queen she was recording, and they worked some of this into the final movie.

Notably, unlike Marge Champion and Helene Stanley—who provided live action reference for Snow White (Champion) and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (Stanley)—the Evil Queen did not have a reference model. She was designed without the use of rotoscope by Art Babbitt. The Old Hag, however, did have a model: a man named Paul Godkin, who was big and burly and wore a wart on his nose.

But back to Lucille. Her character is the first to ever speak in a feature-length animated film—the line is: “Slave in the Magic Mirror, come from the farthest space. Through wind and darkness, I summon thee. Speak! Let me see thy face.”

Hers is also the first Disney character to die in their film; and her villain is perhaps the most terrifying of all the Disney Villains. The Evil Queen is ranked 10^th on the American Film Institute’s list of Top 50 Villains (the unnamed hunter who shoots Bambi’s mother—spoiler alert—is number 20; and Cruella De Vil from One Hundred and One Dalmatians is number 39).

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Unfortunately for us, Lucille doesn’t appear to have done any interviews about Snow White; and how could she? She was uncredited at the time, and this was her final film role. She did reprise the role twice more on radio to promote the film.

Lucille passed away on March 4, 1945 of cancer. She was buried at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in an unmarked grave for 75 years, when a group of fans raised money to give her a proper headstone.

Lucille’s contribution to the Disney pantheon can’t be understated. Sure, more terrifying villains came along after her Evil Queen, but without Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs setting the benchmark, you don’t have Lady Tremaine, Captain Hook, Lady Tremaine, Ursula, Gaston, Jafar, Scar…the list goes on.

But perhaps the best compliment came from Walt Disney himself, who said, when a writer suggested changing the Evil Queen’s dialogue, “All the dialogue sounded bad to me until she read it.”