Thank goodness for Derann bringing this very funny cartoon to super 8. What a first rate job they did with the quality too. Great sound, pin sharp image and fantastic vivid colours. I know this one was a controversial cartoon at the time but for me, its darn funny. So as this is a rare and controversial piece of film i thought i would share with you the write up from wiki. I will add that the images i have taken do not do it any justice as far as the colours go.
As a super 8 release for viewing in ones own private home i added it to our collection many many years ago for the tiny sum of a fiver. If every 8mm print i had looked like this i would be very happy,
Overview
In this version of the story, all of the characters are black, and speak all of their dialogue in rhyme. The story is set during World War II in the United States, and the original tale's fairy tale wholesomeness is replaced in this film by a hot jazz mentality and sexual overtones. Several scenes unique to Disney's film version of Snow White, such as the wishing-well sequence, the forest full of staring eyes, and the awakening kiss, are directly parodied in this film. The film was intended to have been named So White and de Sebben Dwarfs, which producer Leon Schlesinger thought was too close to the original film's actual title, and had changed to Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs
Clampett intended Coal Black as both a parody of Snow White and a dedication to the all-black jazz musical films popular in the early 1940s (like Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather). In fact, the idea to produce Coal Black came to Clampett after he saw Duke Ellington's 1941 musical revue Jump for Joy, and Ellington and the cast suggested Clampett make a black musical cartoon.
The Clampett unit made a couple of field trips to Club Alabam, a black club in the Los Angeles area, to gain a feel for the music and the dancing, and Clampett cast popular radio actors as the voices of his three main characters. The main character, So White, is voiced by Vivian Dandridge, sister of actress Dorothy Dandridge. Danny Webb, voices the Wicked Queen. Leo Watson is the voice of "Prince Chawmin'". The other characters, including the Sebben Dwarfs, are voiced by veteran Warner Bros. voice artist Mel Blanc.
Originally, Clampett wanted an all-black band to score the cartoon, the same way Max and Dave Fleischer had Cab Calloway and His Orchestra score the Betty Boop cartoons Minnie the Moocher, The Old Man of the Mountain, and their own version of Snow White. However, Schlesinger refused, and the black band Clampett had hired, Eddie Beals and His Orchestra, only recorded the music for the final kiss sequence. The rest of the film was scored, as was standard for Warner Bros. cartoons, by Carl W. Stalling.
Synopsis
Coal Black opens in front of a fireplace with a red-tinted silhouette of a large woman holding a young child in her lap. The little black girl asks her "mammy" to tell her the story of "So White an' de Sebben Dwarfs". "Mammy" begins:
Well, once there was a mean ol' queen. And she lived in a gorgeous castle. And was that ole' gal rich! She was just as rich as she was mean! She had everythang!
The rich, Wicked Queen then appears, depicted as a "food hoarder", with a large repository of items that were on ration during World War II: rubber, sugar, gin ("Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin" brand) and more. After stuffing her face with candies (from a box marked "Chattanooga Chew-Chews"), she asks her magic mirror to "send her a prince 'bout six feet tall", (1.8 metres) but when Prince Chawmin' arrives in his flashy car, he declares "that mean ol' queen sho' is a fright / but her gal So White is dyn-a-mite!" Finding So White hard at work doing the laundry, the prince takes her hand and the two swing out into a wild jitterbug. The queen sees this and hires "Murder, Incorporated" to "black-out So White." The assassins arrive in a panel truck that advertises, "We rub out anybody for $1.00; Midgets: 1/2-price; Japs: free".
The assassins kidnap the girl, but after several unseen "favors" which make the would-be assassins very happy, set her free in the woods unharmed. Just before they drive off, the assassins are seen covered with So White's lipstick, an innuendo as to exactly how she earned her freedom. Wandering through the woods by herself, So White runs into the Sebben Dwarfs, seven diminutive army men in uniform who sing "We're in the Army Now," with two dwarfs singing "it takes us cats ... to catch them rats" at the end, and So White declares in a 1940s swing-style singing voice, "I'm wacky over khaki now!" They immediately recruit her as their squad cook, and she spends her days "fryin' up eggs an' pork chops too" (to the tune of "Five O'Clock Whistle") for the hungry soldiers, as a sign which hangs from her outdoor antique stove reads, "Keep 'em frying," as a send-up of the World War II slogan, "Keep 'Em Flying."
Meanwhile, the queen has learned that So White is still alive, and pumps an apple full of poison to give to the girl and kill her. Several worms escape the apple as the queen injects it with poison, one carrying a sign that says "Refoogies". The queen disguises herself as an old peddler woman, and arrives at the Sebben Dwarfs' camp and gives So White the poisoned apple. One of the seven dwarfs (modelled on the "Dopey" dwarf in Disney's film) alerts the others that the queen has caused So White to "kick the bucket," and the entire squad hops into its vehicles (a Jeep, a "Beep," and, for "Dopey," a "Peep"). As the queen makes her escape over the hills, the dwarfs load a cannon with both a war shell and "Dopey." The shell sails over to the queen, stops in front of her in mid-air, opens, and "Dopey" appears, knocking the crone out with a mallet.
Even though the queen has been defeated, So White is still dead to the world. The dwarfs note, in spoken rhyme:
She's outta this world! She's stiff as wood!
She's got it bad, and that ain't good!
There's only one thing that'll remedy this
and dat's Prince Chawmin' and his Dynamite Kiss!
Upon the dwarfs' invoking his name, the prince jumps into the scene in a spotlight and promises to "give her a kiss / and it won't be a dud / I'll bring her to life with my special 'Rosebud'", a nod to Citizen Kane. Wiping his lip and leaning over the girl in preparation, Prince Chawmin' proceeds to give So White a succession of highly aerobic kisses, practically swallowing the girl's face whole in trying to awaken her, but without any luck. Prince Chawmin' keeps frantically kissing So White (his efforts underscored by a solo from Eddie Beale's trumpet player), and the efforts literally take the life out of him as he first turns blue in the face, before turning into a withered old, pale-faced man, shrugging his shoulders in defeat. The "Dopey" dwarf then saunters over to So White, and, to the tune of "You're in the Army Now," lays a kiss on the girl so dynamic that not only does So White wake up, but her eyes become large as saucers and her pigtails fly straight up into the air (depicted in Rod Scribner's typically extreme animation style) as she jumps into the air.
The worn-out and aged Prince asks "Dopey," "Man, what you got that makes So White think you so hot?!" "Dopey" replies, with the only non-rhyming line in the cartoon, "well, dat is a military secret," and lays another kiss on So White, which sends her pigtails sailing into the air again and causes the red ribbons on them to turn into twin American flags, to several notes of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", and immediately after the kiss, So White and "Dopey" both show an obvious "afterglow" in their eyes and their smile. The film then fades to the standard Merrie Melodies "That's all, Folks!" end title text, superimposed over a shot of the little girl and her "mammy" from the opening scene.
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (working title: So White and de Sebben Dwarfs) is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on January 16, 1943 by Warner Bros. and The Vitaphone Corporation.
The film is an all-black parody of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White, known to its audience from the popular 1937 Walt Disney animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The stylistic portrayal of the characters is an example of "darky" iconography, which was widely accepted in American society at the time. As such, it is one of the most controversial cartoons in the classic Warner Brothers library, being one of the Censored Eleven. The cartoon has been rarely seen on television, and has never been officially released on home video.

I wonder what would happen if this was put out today Tom. in light of what has been happening over the week or so ????. oh the snowflakes wining and winging. and probably Derann getting bricks through the windows and much more probably. Its a cartoon and a parody, its more like the blacksploition films of the seventies, did anyone campaign against them for
exploiting blacks or showing most of them in a bad light ? , perhaps I missed them if there was, but I quite enjoyed the films, and with out them, the status now of black men and women in films is god like. What is that they say "no publicity is bad publicity " ............

Tom,

Thanks for this excellent and detailed review. I have this cartoon on 16mm, I think it is on AGFA and still has nice color. I know Derann issued at least some of the other cartoons that have been after-the-fact designated as part of "The Censored Eleven". I have "Clean Pastures" on Super 8, and a B&W dupe of "All This and Rabbit Stew" on 16mm.

Bob Clampett, who I believe directed this cartoon, had this to say about how Coal Black came about---interesting background for those who may think this was just a racist effort:

In 1942, during the height of anti-Japanese sentiment during World War II, I was approached in Hollywood by the cast of an all-black musical off-broadway production called Jump For Joy while they were doing some special performances in Los Angeles. They asked me why there weren't any Warner's cartoons with black characters and I didn't have any good answer for that question. So we sat down together and came up with a parody of Disney's Snow White and Coal Black was the result. They did all the voices for that cartoon, even though Mel Blanc's contract with Warners gave him sole voice credit for all Warners cartoons by then. There was nothing racist or disrespectful toward blacks intended in that film at all, nor in Tin Pan Alley Cats which is just a parody of jazz piano great Fats Waller, who was always hamming into the camera during his musical films. Everybody, including blacks, had a good time when these cartoons first came out. All the controversy about these two cartoons has developed in later years merely because of changing attitudes toward black civil rights that have happened since then.

Paul,

You are spot-on. You mentioned the "blaxsploitation" films of the 1970's...I had heard that those were created primarily to provide entertainment to theaters and drive-ins that were located in areas with high populations of black families. In other words, to provide relevant and enjoyable films to people. I have a few trailers in 16mm (faded) of these, and I think former NFL football player Jim Brown was in a number of them and he portrayed almost a "Dirty Harry" or "Death Wish" type of character in some of these.