WHAT’S THE STORY?
Described by Disney itself as the defining moment in the corporation’s history, the world premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs took place 80 years ago today on 21 December, 1937.
Until then, animator and producer Walt Disney had produced cartoons which had flourished in the silent era and then had become really successful as sound and colour were added. His most famous character was Mickey Mouse, originally called Mortimer Mouse until his wife objected and Mickey was born instead. These cartoons were often shown as ‘B’ pictures or shorts in theatres as support to the main feature. Walt Disney longed to make a full-length animated film so that it would be the main feature – and Snow White’s immediate success vindicated his reasoning.
From that premiere day onwards, the Walt Disney studio never looked back. Distributed by RKO pictures, Snow White went on to break global box office records and was the highest grossing film of all time, but only for a short while until it was beaten by Gone With The Wind in 1939.
Disney’s Snow White made $8.5m worldwide at the box office — equivalent to perhaps $3-400m today, and of course with re-releases, videos and DVDs, Snow White has made many times its cost since 1937.
The use of “dwarfs” in the title is correct. Dwarves was an invention of JRR Tolkien.
WAS IT REALLY THAT BIG FOR DISNEY?
It was certainly Walt Disney’s biggest gamble. He was looking at bankruptcy if the film did not succeed.
The film was made at the colossal cost for those days of $1.4 million, and had taken three years, 750 artists and almost two million individual paintings to create.
The problem was always going to be how to market the movie. Unlike many modern animated films, Snow White had no human stars attached, but Shirley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Milton Berle, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, George Burns and many more big Hollywood stars attended the premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre, where 50,000 people gathered just so they could say they had attended the event.
For in a brilliant series of publicity coups, Disney engineered a real campaign of anticipation that included refusing to reveal the names of the actors who voiced Snow White and the rest of the cast, even though most of those actors were big names on American radio. Disney would not allow their names to be divulged as he felt it would detract from the audience’s acceptance of the voice as part of the character. Lucille La Verne, who voiced the part of the Wicked Queen was probably the best known, while Harry Stockwell, the father of actors Dean and Guy, voiced the Prince before becoming a major Broadway star.
The adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale was no saccharine version – there were many tales of adults fainting and kids screaming at the particularly dark moments, which the Disney publicity machine pounced on.
The story came good in the end, of course, and so did Disney.
WASN’T HE A NOT VERY NICE MAN?
Born in Chicago in 1901, Walter Elias Disney was a remarkable combination of entrepreneur, animator and producer. Sensing the need for cartoon shorts in cinemas, he moved to California and set up a studio with his brother Roy. He had a warm image in public, but was actually a shy and insecure man who chain-smoked – he died of lung cancer in 1966.
His reputation has varied over the years. A hard taskmaster who embraced and promoted the American dream, he did not suffer fools gladly. There have been accusations of anti-Semitism, sexism and racism against him, and his overtly racist film Song of the South is now banned, but it is more likely a case that he was product of his time and culture. His early employment practices, however, would be banned today — his was the only cartoon studio to suffer an animators’ strike.
Nevertheless he has some sort of film genius – he won more Oscars than any other individual with 22 won from 59 nominations.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER SNOW WHITE?
ALREDY famous for Mickey Mouse, the company to this day is known as The Mouse throughout the entertainment industry, and you famously do not mess with the Mouse.
Yet it was really Snow White that was transformational. It enabled Disney to build his giant studio in Burbank in Los Angeles and the hits rolled out. Then the company moved into television and theme parks and bought up other studios and talents to make live action films — he made Rob Roy and Greyfriars Bobby in Scotland — while continuing to develop animated and family-oriented live-action films such as The Love Bug series.
HOW DID DISNEY BECOME SO BIG?
AFTER Disney’s death, the studio hit a bad patch but it was revitalised under Disney’s nephew Roy who ousted the board and brought in Michael Eisner who led Disney back to the top in the 1990s with films like A Little Mermaid and Aladdin and the Lion King. Diversification into more theme parks was a massive success and while the film output declined in the 2000s, the move into theatrical productions and later the advent of computerised movies such as the Scottish-based Brave and the Oscar-winning Frozen proved that the Mouse still had it.
Now Disney is the world’s second largest entertainment group after Comcast and will be the biggest once it competes its merger with Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. Opponents of the deal are not expecting President Donald Trump to hamper the merger — even he knows you don’t mess with the Mouse.
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