Disney's first feature cartoon briefly topped all sound films
Hollywood scoffed that an hour-plus cartoon would empty theatres. Walt Disney spent about $1.5 million on Snow White anyway. After a December 1937 Los Angeles premiere and a February 1938 U.S. release, the Grimm adaptation earned more than $8 million worldwide and briefly held the record as the highest-grossing sound film ever made.
Supervised by David Hand with five sequence directors, the 1937 RKO release became Hollywood's pioneering full-length cartoon and the pioneering cel-animated feature film. Disney had eyed a feature since 1933, when shorts such as the Silly Symphonies paid well but seemed too thin to grow the studio. After Three Little Pigs strengthened his resolve, he settled on the Brothers Grimm tale in spring 1934, recalling a 1916 silent he had seen as a teenager.
The plot follows a princess forced into scullery work by a jealous Queen who consults a Magic Mirror. When the mirror names Snow White fairest, a huntsman is ordered to kill her; he spares her instead. Woodland animals lead her to a cottage belonging to seven miners—Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey. The Queen later disguises herself, offers a poisoned apple, and dies chasing the dwarfs after lightning splits a cliff. A prince's kiss breaks the sleeping curse.
Adriana Caselotti voiced Snow White; Lucille La Verne played both Queen and Witch. Industry skeptics like W. C. Fields supposedly said short cartoons worked but ninety minutes would run out of gags and hurt eyes. Audiences disagreed: the film was the top earner of 1938, remained the highest-grossing animated title for fifty-five years, and entered the National Film Registry in 1989 as culturally significant. Theme-park rides, a Broadway musical, and later remakes show how thoroughly Disney's take remapped the fairy tale.
Source: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (film)
