NEW WRITE-UP:
#9 - Adriana Caselotti as Snow White - Snow White (1937)
Best Song: Someday My Prince Will Come
This has been a very difficult write-up to actually sit down and do. After all, what does one say about Snow White? After all, she's the first Disney Princess of all time, so it's kind of hard to say anything unbiased - some people love her, some people (for some reason) hate her. Honestly? I have an extremely difficult time fathoming the latter.
I suppose her voice might be considered a little bit annoying at times (Whistle While You Work would seem to be the most obvious culprit here). But whenever the word "high" is replaced with "annoying" in music, I suppose I'm just going to have to find a different profession. The fact is, she's a soprano, and a surprisingly good one for someone who basically sounded like she was no more than 13 or 14 years old.
This really is hard. Snow White is the classic, and I happen to be among the people that love it. I think of it as being one of the most perfectly-told of all Disney stories, right down to Snow's voice. But when I try to explain it, I find I can't really put it into words. I think it's just that her voice is so damned distinctive in its own way... it's kind of like this. If someone tried to describe Gilbert Gottfried's voice, they might sound a little silly. "Well, he's got this voice... he yells... and he's kind of annoying but funny... and he... yells..." Snow White has the same problem. "She's got this voice... and it's high... and she's kind of annoying but very endearing... and it's... high..." You can see my predicament.
So at the risk of this write-up being really s***ty, I'm basically just going to leave it here, because otherwise this thing is never getting posted. The distinctiveness of her voice gets me real nostalgic and seems to embody the phrase "Disney magic" almost better than anything else. There's a reason Walt loved her voice so much that he wouldn't let her appear anywhere else - there's a certain perfect naivete about it, something untouchable in a way. For better or for worse, Caselotti had THE classic Disney voice, and I for one love both the voice and the movie it is from. She also benefits from one of the greatest soundtracks ever in a Disney movie - definitely, I would say, the greatest one before Alan Menken. I mean just LISTEN to this: . The last 10 minutes of the movie legitimately make me cry sometimes, and it's the soundtrack that really does it. (Particularly 3:20 onward).
HINT: This next write-up might not be any easier to draft. I believe some people were calling it for #1 in the last topic before the purge.