Lucille La Verne: The Backstory on Snow White’s Wicked Queen

The name Lucille La Verne (Lucille La Verne MItchum, 1872-1945) may sound well suited to burlesque, but she was the very essence of “legit”. La Verne’s best remembered role today is the Wicked Queen/Stepmother/Old Hag in Walt Disney’sSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). That’s already a magical film, but knowing something of La Verne’s past adds additional luster.

Originally from Nashville, La Verne got her start as a child with local and regional stock companies, before landing on Broadway in the last years of the 19th century. Her many Broadway credits include an adaptation of Mark Twain’sPudd’n-head Wilson (1895), William Gillette’sClarice (1906), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1907) and Seven Days (1909-1910) by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. In 1913 she starred in Ann Boyd, a play she had scripted herself. In 1923 she starred in Sun-Up, which was made into a 1925 film with her in the lead. In 1928 she produced, directed and starred in a revival of the play. The following year she produced, directed and starred in Hot Water (1929). Black Widow (1936) was her last stage appearance. La Verne was renowned for her range and versatility in character roles, including blackface parts, a practice we neither approve of or condone though it was accepted at the time.

Sweet Kelly Bellairs (1916) with Mae Marsh was La Verne’s first prominent role in a major film. In 1917, she was in Polly of the Circus, also with Marsh. For D.W. Griffith, she appeared in Orphans of the Storm (1921), The White Rose (1923), America (1924) and Abraham Lincoln (1930). Zaza (1923), directed by Allan Dwan was another of her major silent films. In the sound era, her parts tended to be small, but she was in many notable ones including Little Caesar (1931), An American Tragedy (1931), Union Depot (1932), Wheeler and Woolsey’s Kentucky Kernels (1934), The Mighty Barnum (1934, in which she played Joice Heth), and A Tale of Two Cities (1935). By these years she was mostly playing old mothers and old crones, which made her natural casting for Snow White, which was her last film. Her final dramatic moment was literally this:

To learn more about show biz history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on silent era film please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.