Snow White Celebrates Anniversary
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs turns a whopping 83 years old today!
Film Premier
The film was originally released in the Carthay Circle theater in Hollywood on December 21,1937. It was not only Walt Disney’s first full-length feature film, it was the first animated feature to be produced in English and in Technicolor.
Doing the Impossible
The film’s concept came with a lot of criticism. Would adults sit through a feature-length cartoon about dwarves? Would they take to an adaptation of a classic Grimm fairytale? The endeavor was dubbed, “Disney’s Folly” by the press.
Never one to listen to naysayers, Walt carried on, borrowing nearly $1.5 million and employing over 250 animators to create the classic.
Game Changer
The result was astounding! Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was met with a standing ovation at its first viewing and the acclaim rolled in from there.
Audiences and critics alike praised the film as a marvel of cinematic possibility. One of the first “game changers” of modern filmmaking. Walt won an honorary academy award for the film, presented to him by Shirley Temple. (Animated films didn’t exist before now so neither did an award category.) The music for the movie, the first film soundtrack, was nominated for an Oscar.
The film’s initial release grossed $8 million, an unheard of amount for any film until that time. A particularly astronomical amount during the Great Depression.
The Test of Time
The movie may be 83 years old but it’s allure didn’t fade with the times. The film has been rereleased 8 times since the original.
Guinness World Records lists it as the highest grossing box office animated film of all time (adjusting for inflation) at $1.2 billion.
The American Film Institute chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the top animated film of all time in its listing of “America’s 10 Greatest Films in 10 Classic Genres.”
Of course, the fascination lives on in the 21st century at Walt Disney World, with a major E-ticket attraction and a high-end character meal themed after the fair maiden and her seven spritely friends.
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