THE EIGHT HARRIS BROTHERS

AD LIB AROUND THESE IDEAS. EITHER AS THEM AS GUESTS IN STUDIO, OR A REPORT

Re-release of Snow White and Seven Dwarves. Interview with the men who inspired the Walt Disney film.

REP Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A perenial favourite for generations of children. But behind this cheerful life enhancing cartoon film is a story of betrayal and grief that none of the laughing, over-excited or frightened children seeing iy could even imagine.

REP I have come to this beautiful enchanted forest, just outside Shrewsbury to meet the men the film is based on, the original seven dwarves.

DOC Come in, come in.

DOC Yes, well, we first wrote the proposal for a film about our lives, based on the struggles we had growing up together as orphaned dwarves with the many problems that beset us. Centering around my difficulties in bringing up my dwarf brothers.

GRUMPY And the film producer loved it, bought up the rights and was talking about getting James Stewart in it, and Mickey Rooney. Cary Grant was interested…

DOC You know so when we went along to watch it at the pictures we were very excited wondering who would be playing each of us and how our terrible struggle would be portrayed.

GRUMPY So you can imagine how upset, surprised and offended we were when we’d been represented as singing, comedy cartoons with those ridiculous nicknames who spent all day working in a diamond mine.

DOC That’s ridiculous. I mean I am a doctor, Doctor Matthew Harris. I work at the local hospital, and so occasionally the guys would call me Doc. You know but generally I like to be called Matthew or Mr Harris. And all the other nicknames are pretty much obsolete now. Like Nicholas, who was Sleepy in the film.

SLEEPY Yes, they used to occasionally call me Sleepy, because you know I seemed to be asleep a lot of the time.

DOC But when I’d qualified I realised he was displaying some of the classic symptoms of narcolepsy.

SLEEPY So I went down the local hospital and Matthew put me on a course of drugs and the problem was sorted out.

DOC Occasionally if he sleeps in a bit we might jokingly call him Sleepy, but otherwise it’s Nicholas or Nick.

GRUMPY Similarly, Rowland, or Dopey as he was known, as a kid we would call him Dopey, you know because he had difficulty reading. One of those cruel things that kids do.

DOC But then you know I took him down the local hospital for some tests and I found out he’d been suffering from Dyslexia, and in fact had above average intelligence. He now works as a Professor at DeMontford University and it’s very embarrassing for him when his students find out that he’s Dopey from Snow White. And you Neil, we used to call you Grumpy didn’t we?

GRUMPY Yes then you took me down to the local hospital and ran some tests and found out I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Matthew gave me some drugs and it’s cleared up. So if anything I should be called Irritable Bowel Syndromy.

DOC Our brother Ian, Sneezy, I found out he was allergic to certain foods and that cleared up and Simon, Happy, he was always happy but as it turned out this was because he was an autistic savant. Apparently Walt Disney felt that it was inappropriate for some reason and just changed him to that grinning character, which is an insult to Simon I think.

GRUMPY Yeah, but the Simon part of the film turned up years later almost word for word as the film Rainman, and we never got a penny. They changed Matthew’s character into the very able-bodied Tom Cruise, which was offensive.

DOC At least with Dustin Hoffman they stuck to the dwarf thing.

GRUMPY They also ignored the eighth brother, Peter. As a child he seemed to display some of the classic signs of leprosy, you know flaky skin, so we called him Leprosy-y but then Matthew took him for some tests down the local hospital and found out he did actually have leprosy, dry leprosy luckily so he wasn’t contagious. His death was a very moving part of our original film, but Walt Disney wanted only seven dwarves in his film so he just cut him out as if he never existed.

DOC Actually they made him into a talking mirror, which was adding insult to injury. Pete used to sometimes go around speculating who was the prettiest girl around, we all did, but Pete liked to especially.

REP But the worst miscarriage of justice has occurred to Lawrence Harris who Walt Disney portrayed as the often forgotten Bashful.

LAURENCE Yeah, Bashful. That was never my nick-name. This was probably the most challenging part of our script. I am a homosexual. My nickname was and still is gay-ee. The script told of my struggle to be accepted as a gay dwarf in 30s Britain. It was very daring, but making some strong points about people’s prejudices. But no Walt Disney ran scared of my story and changed me to this ridiculous shy old man. I am not shy or ashamed. I’m gay. I’m proud. I am Gay-ee, not Bashful.

POSSIBLY ANGER OVER THE INTRODUCTION OF THE SNOW WHITE CHARACTER. ABLE-BODIED WOMAN… NOT ASHAMED TO BE DWARVES, THIS WAS A STORY OF DWARVES AND THEIR LIVES… NEIL ONCE WENT OUT WITH A NON-DWARF WOMAN CALLED SANDRA WHITE, BUT SHE ATE SOME POISONED APPLES AND DIED. IT WAS VERY HARD FOR THE AMBULANCE TO GET THROUGH THE FOREST IN TIME… THIS JUST A TINY INCIDENT IN THE FILM, TO MAKE IT THE WHOLE THING AND THEN TACK ON A HOLLYWOOD, HAPPY ENDING IS UNFORGIVEABLE.

POSSIBLY ONE OF THEM WAS IN A BAND AND ALL THE SONGS WERE RIPPED OFF TOO. AN IRONIC SATIRE ON THE FUTILITY OF THE NINE TO FIVE EXISTENCE.