As you might expect, research for these articles sends you down a lot of rabbit holes. And that’s great, since one of the stated goals of the twin columns is to provide you with information that isn’t what you get from just anyone. Unfortunately, what you get a certain percentage of the time is not rabbit holes. It’s dead ends. What looked like one of the most intriguing tangents in the history of the column is one of those things. Adriana Caselotti has an “additional crew” credit as studio owner for the classic “Bambi Meets Godzilla.” The only source for further information about this is Caselotti’s own IMDb trivia, which says that Marv Newland, who made the short, was renting a room from her at the time. Which all things considered and given the sense of humour of Newland means she literally owned the studio.
Adriana Elena Loretta Caselotti was from an opera family. Her father, Guido Luigi Emanuele Caselotti, was a music teacher and vocal coach. Her mother, born Maria Josephine Orefice, was a singer in the Royal Opera Theatre of Rome. Her sister, Marie-Louise (if she had more names, they’re not on Wikipedia), was an opera singer and vocal coach, the first teacher of Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos, better known as Maria Callas. When young Adriana was seven, the family went to Italy where her mother toured with an opera company, and Adriana went to a convent school. Upon returning to the US, she ended up at Hollywood High School.
I’m hypothesizing, here, but it seems likely that her lead role in the school’s senior production of The Belle of New York drew the attention of a talent scout, and she ended up working briefly at MGM and as a chorus girl. From there, she became the voice of Snow White for Walt Disney. And that was kind of it, as far as her career went. Every once in a while, Walt would do a Thing where he wanted to preserve the illusion that characters were real—claiming he’d acquired real leprechauns for Darby O’Gill and the Little People, for example. And so it was with Caselotti.
Caselotti was the only Disney Princess out of an operatic tradition. Her vocalizing in “I’m Wishing” is opera, not Broadway. Her voice is distinct, and Walt wanted it kept that way. Jack Benny was going to hire her to be on his show, and Walt refused, saying he wanted to preserve the illusion. She did a few Disney shorts, she was the “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” in “If I Only Had a Heart,” and she sang at Martini’s in It’s a Wonderful Life. And that was pretty much it for her career in Hollywood after being an uncredited Snow White for Walt. She did some rerecording, and eventually she was brought before the camera, and that was what she got out of Disney. And a Disney Legend award, of course.
Caselotti was paid $970 for the role, the equivalent of about $20,000 today. She later sued the studio for a larger share of the profits. She lost. It’s probably legally reasonable, but it’s still frustrating. Disney almost certainly would’ve gone the way of the other animation companies like Fleischer Studios and the animation departments of Warners and MGM if Snow White hadn’t been a success. They are the conglomerate they are today in part because of the voice of Adriana Caselotti. If anything, Walt should’ve paid to keep her on retainer for the rest of her life just for that. Especially in the years when the company wasn’t broke.
