Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is a 1943 Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Bob Clampett.

[3][citation needed] 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).

However, Schlesinger refused, and the black band Clampett had hired, Eddie Beals and His Orchestra, only recorded the music for the final kiss sequence.

[3] Coal Black opens in front of a fireplace with a red-tinted silhouette of a large woman holding a young child in her lap.

She eats the phone in frustration, as the assassins immediately arrive in a panel truck that advertises, "We rub out anybody for $1.00; Midgets: 1/2-price; Japs: free".

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 sendup of the World War II slogan, "Keep 'Em Flying".

Four worms escape the apple as the queen injects it with poison, one carrying a sign that says "Refoogees", and one other thinks it smells like Limburger.

The queen disguises herself as an old peddler woman as she arrives at the Sebben Dwarfs' camp, reveals a Jimmy Durante reference, and gives So White the poisoned apple (who immediately forced her to eat it).

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 normal-sized mallet.

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.

"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.

"[6] In April 1943, the NAACP protested the caricatures which appeared in Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, and called on Warner to withdraw it.

[7][8][9] Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is one of the "Censored Eleven": 11 Schlesinger/Warner Bros. cartoons produced at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood animation based on its unflattering and stereotypical use of blackface.

Because it was produced in America during World War II, there is also anti-Japanese sentiment: the firm "Murder Inc." advertises that it does not charge to kill "Japs".

"[10] Clampett would revisit black jazz culture again in another 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon, Tin Pan Alley Cats, which features a feline caricature of Fats Waller in a repurposing of the wacky fantasy world from Porky in Wackyland (during the opening sequence, the "Fats" cat is distracted by what appears to be So White).

Bob Clampett claimed in the cartoon's defense that;[citation needed] 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.

[citation needed] Jerry Beck's 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, placed Coal Black at number 21, based upon votes from over 1,000 members of the American animation industry.

[citation needed] On April 24, 2010, Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, along with seven other titles from the Censored Eleven, was screened at the first annual Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Film Festival as part of a special presentation hosted by film historian Donald Bogle; the eight shorts shown were restored for that release.