She is scary, cold, imperious, vain, insecure, and murderous. The Evil Queen is so wicked that she doesn’t even have a full name called out (it’s Grimhilde). Still, we all know her and what she’s capable of. Especially Snow White, her stepdaughter. She was named famous by the Brothers Grimm, and Eternal by the Disney classic.

While some claim her beautiful self was inspired by Greta Garbo or most likely, Joan Crawford, her nationality (with her hinted accent) was supposed to be German, and therefore some claim inspired by Uta von Ballenstedt. Uta who? Uta von Ballenstedt, Countess of Meissen, lived more than a thousand years ago in Germany, at the Castle of Naumburg. Poor real Uta may not have been evil, only very beautiful. Her image is what hints at what Disney may have imagined as a Queen for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

She was, like many women at that time, forced into marriage, in this case, to Count Ekkehard II of Meissen, a member of the German dynasty known as the House of Ascania. They were childless and left all their wealth to the church to help with the construction of a chapel. Her image, amongst 10 other nobles, was carved in limestone and placed in the cathedral. It’s that image, at least the wardrobe, they say inspired the character.

She died in 1046 and became famous with photographs, in the 1920s, taken by Walter Hege, that made Uta like a national idol, an icon, considered the most beautiful woman of the German Middle Ages.

As far as people know of her, she was not evil, but she was picked by Nazis as the prototype of the Aryan woman, which didn’t help her. Some say only Queen Nefertiti challenges her position of fairest of them all.

In the Disney movie, she was almost the opposite of standard beauty, but thanks to Disney himself, she became a mixture of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, in the words of its creator. For him, the fashionable high collar made her sinister and mature, a contrast to what she later chooses to become. So much so that clearly “the Witch’s ugliness symbolizes the evil disguised by the Queen’s beauty.”, on the production notes.

Besides Uta, actress Helen Gahagan, in the 1935 movie She may also have inspired the cartoonists, as well as the character Princess Kriemhild from 1924’s Die Nibelungen. European divas such as Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were also said to have inspired the Evil Queen’s face, but it’s clear that that crown belongs to Joan Crawford. Her voice was dubbed by Lucille La Verne, whose looks were used for the Witch version.

The legend goes that although Snow White was the heroine, the Evil Queen had the preference of the animators due to her complexity as a woman, including her sexiness and commitment to being the most beautiful of them all, which eventually leads to her demise.

Her clothes were dark to highlight her negativity, as well the Peacock Throne confirms her vanity. The colors were specially made to look like satin and velvet, elegant and perfect.

Grimhilde is so complex that opened a door to new evil stepmothers and witches, but none combine her will, charm, and menace, making Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs a classic also because of her.

---

Search

Search