Tagline: Walt Disney’s first full length feature production.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is the first full-length animated feature (83 minutes in length) in color and with sound, one of Disney’s greatest films, and a pioneering classic tale in film history. It was financed due in part to the success of Disney’s earlier animated short, The Three Little Pigs (1933). Although dubbed “Disney’s Folly” during the three-four year production of the musical animation, Disney realized that he had to expand and alter the format of cartoons.
It was the first commercially successful film of its kind and a technically brilliant, innovative example of Disney animation. It was also the first film to release a motion picture soundtrack album. The story was adapted from the original Brothers Grimms’ Fairy Tales, but in a bowdlerized or sanitized version, without overt sexual references or violent content. Disney’s version of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale was the second of its kind – the first was a five-minute Snow White (1933) starring Betty Boop (with an appearance by Cab Calloway).
It was the first Disney film distributed by RKO Studios (this arrangement lasted until 1953, when Disney established its own distribution company – named Buena Vista). In late 1994, Snow White was finally released on VHS home video (and laser disc) and sold 10 million copies in its first week of sale. After three weeks of availability, it sold over 17 million copies, and would soon surpass the all-time champ, Disney’s Aladdin (with 24 million copies sold since its late-1993 release). It eventually sold 50 million copies worldwide, the best-selling cassette of all time. It was the last of the early Disney animated films released for home video, following Pinocchio (1940), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Cinderella (1950). [Snow White was later released for the first time on DVD, in late 2001.]
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney animated feature film. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film’s individual sequences.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938)
Directed by: David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen
Starring: Adriana Caselotti, Lucille La Verne, Harry Stockwell, Roy Atwell, Pinto Colvig, Otis Harlan, Scotty Mattraw, Billy Gilbert, Eddie Collins, Moroni Olsen, Stuart Buchanan
Screenplay by: Ted Sears, Richard Creedon,Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris,Dorothy Ann Blank, Webb Smith
Art Direction by: Ken Anderson, Tom Codrick, Hugh Hennesy, Harold Miles, Kendall O’Connor, Charles Philippi,Hazel Sewell, Terrell Stapp,McLaren Stewart, Gustaf Tenggren, John Hubley
Music by: Frank Churchill, Paul Smith, Leigh Harline
Distributed by: RKO Radio Pictures
Release Date: February 4, 1938
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