Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

DECEMBER 1937...PREMIER OF THE MOVIE "SNOW WHITE and the SEVEN DWARFS"

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures.

At the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Academy Honorary Award for Walt Disney "as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field".

Based on the 1812 German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length traditionally animated feature film and the first 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 premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 21, 1937.

It was a critical and commercial success and, with international earnings of more than $8 million during its initial release, (compared to its $1.5 million budget), it briefly held the record of highest-grossing sound film at the time. The popularity of the film has led to its being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, it is one of the top-ten performers at the North American box office and the highest-grossing animated film. Worldwide, its inflation-adjusted earnings top the animation list.

Snow White was nominated for Best Musical Score at the Academy Awards in 1938, and the next year, producer Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar for the film. This award was unique, consisting of one normal-sized, plus seven miniature Oscar statuettes. They were presented to Disney by Shirley Temple.

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute ranked it among the 100 greatest American films, and also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008. Disney's take on the fairy tale has had a significant cultural effect, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, and a Broadway musical.

Original theatrical run

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937. The film received a standing ovation at its completion from an audience that included Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton. Six days later, Walt Disney and the seven dwarfs appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Three weeks later, it opened at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City and a theater in Miami in January 1938 in which the strong box office sales encouraged RKO Radio Pictures to place the film into general release on February 4. It became a major box-office success, earning rentals of $4.2 million in the United States and Canada during its initial release, becoming the most successful sound film of all time, in which it displaced Al Jolson's The Singing Fool (1928). Snow White would soon be displaced from this position by Gone with the Wind in 1939.

Snow White proved equally popular with foreign audiences. In September 1938, Variety reported that the film was having a remarkably long box-office run at theaters in Sydney, Australia. In that city, it noted, "Walt Disney's 'Snow White' (RKO) experienced no difficulty at hitting 11 weeks, with more ahead."[40] Variety reported as well that Snow White was having even longer runs in other cities overseas, such as in London, where the film had generated greater box-office receipts than during its exclusive New York screenings at Radio City Music Hall:

'Snow White' (RKO) is in its 27th week at the New Gallery, London, and will continue to be shown through the regular London release dates, Sept. 19 for North London, and Sept. 26 for South London. There is a likelihood that the New Gallery first-run will run until Christmas. Picture reported to have exceeded $500,000, passing Radio City's five-week mark, which just fell short of the $500,000 mark.

According to RKO, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had earned $7,846,000 in international box office receipts by the end of its original theatrical run. This earned RKO a profit of $380,000.

Re-releases

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was first re-released in 1944, to raise revenue for the Disney studio during the World War II period. This re-release set a tradition of re-releasing Disney animated features every few years, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was re-released to theaters in 1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1983, 1987 and 1993. Coinciding with the 50th-anniversary release in 1987, Disney released an authorized novelization of the story, written by children's author Suzanne Weyn.

In 1993, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the first film to be entirely scanned to digital files, manipulated, and recorded back to film. The restoration project was carried out entirely at 4K resolution and 10-bit color depth using the Cineon system (10 bits each of red, green and blue—30 in total) to digitally remove dirt and scratches.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has had a lifetime gross of $418 million across its original release and several reissues.[2] Adjusted for inflation, and incorporating subsequent releases, the film still registers one of the top-10 American film moneymakers of all time.

Critical reaction

The film was a tremendous critical success, with many reviewers hailing it as a genuine work of art, recommended for both children and adults. Although film histories often state that the animation of the human characters was criticized, more recent scholarship found that contemporary reviewers praised the realistic style of the human animation, with several stating that audiences had forgotten that they are watching animated humans rather than real ones. Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times felt that "Mr. Disney and his technical crew have outdone themselves. The picture more than matches expectations. It is a classic, as importantly cinematically as The Birth of a Nation or the birth of Mickey Mouse. Nothing quite like it has been done before; and already we have gone impolite enough to clamor for an encore." Variety observed that "[so] perfect is the illusion, so tender the romance and fantasy, so emotional are certain portions when the acting of the characters strikes a depth comparable to the sincerity of human players, that the film approaches real greatness.". Harrison's Reports wrote Snow White was "entertainment that should be enjoyed by every one. Intelligent adults will marvel at the mechanical ingenuity that went into the making of it; and it is something to marvel at, for at times the characters seem lifelike. That is brought about by the expert synchronization of the action with the music and the dialogue."

At the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Academy Honorary Award for Walt Disney "as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field". Disney received a full-size Oscar statuette and seven miniature ones, presented to him by 10-year-old child actress Shirley Temple.

The film was also nominated for Best Musical Score. "Some Day My Prince Will Come" has become a jazz standard that has been performed by numerous artists, including Buddy Rich, Lee Wiley, Oscar Peterson, Frank Churchill, and Oliver Jones; it was also the title for albums by Miles Davis, by Wynton Kelly, and Alexis Cole.