Today in History: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" premieres

Despite my age, some of the finer produced cartoons still appeal to me and likely always will. Like anyone with parents that didn't hate them, I saw this movie when I was young along with all of the other Disney classics. Snow White is a bit more special for a very important reason: It was the first full-length animated feature film in history.

The year was 1937

source

Today it seems we are subjected to cartoons and cartoon movies all the time and we are. However, it was quite rare back in the 30's and since everything had to be hand drawn it was an extremely time consuming procedure. There were 750 artists involved in the making of the film and over 2 million drawings were made.

source

These artists weren't working for free and when the timeline became dramatically delayed the overall production budget doubled, then doubled again. The film became so expensive that Walt Disney had to mortgage his own house to pay for it.**

There are a couple of scenes in the film that are pretty creepy, even by today's standards. When she gets lost in the wood had a very panicky feel to it and the soundtrack adds to the horror.

source

Because of this fear-factor, the film received what would now be considered an "R" rating in the U.K. Rumor has it that many of the seats in the Carthay Circle Theatre had to be reupholstered because so many of the children in attendance wet their pants during the movie.

This was the first film ever to have a soundtrack be released alongside it. I know that seems so common today, but Snow White was the first film to ever do that.

source

Everyone doubted Walt Disney in pretty much anything that he would do and deciding to work on a full-length cartoon made him the laughing stock of tinsel-town. Others involved in the entertainment industry were mocking him as his film went wildly over budget from $250k to $1.5 million (this was a lot of money at the time.)

However, upon its release it wowed audiences all over the world and ended up making $8 million initially, which at the time was the highest grossing film ever. It was re-released multiple times in 1944,1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1983, 1987 and 1993 and people turned up in droves every time. If we adjust the box office take for inflation and combine all of these releases Snow White has made $1.2 BILLION at the box office. If we factored in all the merchandising and home video sales over the years this very well could be the biggest money maker of all time.

I wonder what the entertainment industry would be like today if Walt Disney hadn't been the visionary that he was. He took chances against all odds when no one would back him on his silly projects for children. Turns out he was correct about nearly everything that he ever did and became extremely wealthy in the process.

Full-length "cartoons" are commonplace now and routinely make much more money at the cinemas than most other films but there was one film that started it all and it happened today, 82 year ago.