Why Disney Once Sued The Oscars Over Snow White

Conan O'Brien has been tapped as the host of the 97th Academy Awards, and while O'Brien is a consummate performer and comedian and he's hosted other awards shows like the Emmys, this will be his first go-round at the Oscars. Naturally, with almost 100 past ceremonies, many of them being broadcast on network television and seen by millions across the world, there are plenty of preferences audiences may have about what he should do while on stage. Should he do a riff a la Billy Crystal and insert himself into the scenes of some of this year's big contenders? Should he playfully mock the people in the audience in the hopes of roasting them just spicily enough? Or perhaps he'll do a musical number? 

O'Brien may not be seen as a singer first, but he has performed songs live, such as when he showed up in a live performance celebrating "The Simpsons" at the Hollywood Bowl, where he played the charming con artist Lyle Lanley and sang "The Monorail Song" from the iconic episode "Marge vs. the Monorail." (Fans of his work already know that O'Brien wrote that episode during his early-'90s tenure on the animated series.) But while Conan can sing, there is at least one specific past performance he'll want to steer clear of. Since ABC airs the Oscars and Disney owns ABC, the bad blood is long since gone, but one very notable musical performance at the Oscars once led Disney to sue the Academy Awards itself — and it was all because of their very first animated feature film.

To flatly describe what occurred at the 1989 Oscars is going to sound insane, but here goes: Rob Lowe and an actress dressed as Snow White as seen in the 1937 animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" performed a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Proud Mary," featuring lyrics specific to the character Snow White. If you have somehow managed to avoid ever hearing about or seeing this performance, or if you simply cannot accept the possibility that the previous sentence is even remotely accurate, you should consider yourself lucky, at least until you watch the 11-minute opening sequence featuring the misbegotten musical number as well as a bevy of cameos of Old Hollywood glamour. If ever you hear people grouse about how the Oscars feel overlong and they're overloaded with extended musical sequences, they may well be haunted by the image of Lowe and Snow White (as played by actress Eileen Bowman) singing this riff on "Proud Mary," which feels profoundly head-scratching even when you're not thinking of the films up for Oscars in 1989, like "A Fish Called Wanda" and "Rain Man."

As bewildering as it may be to watch this sequence in the mid-2020s, it should be noted that the ceremony, produced by Allan Carr of "Grease," was widely seen as an embarrassment, to the point where some of the industry's biggest stars, including Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, signed an open letter deriding the event for its failed attempt at glitz and pageantry. But that wasn't bad enough, because the Walt Disney Company quickly sued the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the improper use of Snow White. And honestly, it's awfully hard to blame Disney for that reaction. If it had occurred during the era in which Disney aired the Oscars, the matter would be different, because you'd assume that the company had approved such usage. (It would still be mawkish and aggressively embarrassing, of course.) But Disney was looking for nothing less than a swift and immediate apology, and that's exactly what they received from then-president of the Academy Richard Kahn within a week, leading the House of Mouse to drop the lawsuit as quickly as they'd levied it.

These days, it's hard for people to come together when it comes to culture. But few people look back on the events of the 1989 Oscars with fondness. Carr's career essentially ended after that evening, and Bowman reportedly had to sign a gag order for years to not talk publicly about the event. It's one thing for people like past Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel to playfully mock Will Smith's infamous slap; even if the Academy or ABC wanted that to go away, everyone saw and heard it. But because the Lowe/White performance, and really the entire 1989 Oscars opening number, happened before the rise of the Internet, it became much easier for the players involved to wish it away from ever having happened.

Lowe, for his part, has taken the jibes with good humor (in no small part because he turned his career around pretty drastically both during the 1990s and via work in TV shows like "The West Wing"). But this event was a cautionary tale for all involved. It's not easy to know in advance how an audience is going to respond to a big, expensive, splashy thing like this extended musical sequence; there may well be an alternate universe where audiences went nuts for it, and Disney had to suffer the indignity of watching Snow White belt out a poorly written riff on a great '60s-era rock song without getting to fight back. But we live in this universe, where the image of Snow White doing so was indeed a low point, and where Disney suing felt like the only morally apt action to take.

So for now, we can only wonder if Conan O'Brien will get himself into some musical shenanigans of his own on Hollywood's biggest night. It's understandable why he might want to, but he'll have to tread carefully. We can guess that he might trot out a few big-name guest stars to indulge in his goofy antics, too, and since the show is airing both on ABC and streaming live on Hulu, there may be a dig or two at Disney. But let's just hope we don't see any actual Disney princesses joining him to sing a duet on stage.