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 originally released by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Based on the German fairy tale by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest 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 on December 21, 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938. It was a critical and commercial success, and with international earnings of $8 million during its initial release briefly assumed the record of highest-grossing sound film at the time. The popularity of the film has led to it 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.

At the 11th Academy Awards, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar, and the film was nominated for Best Musical Score the year before. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry and is ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films, who also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008. An prequel TV series *The 7D*, starring the Seven Dwarfs, was aired on Disney XD.

## Plot

The film opens with a storybook opening, followed by an narration that tells of a beautiful Queen sitting by the window watching the falling snow and thinking to herself, "Would that if I had a daughter with skin as fair as that snow, with hair as black as the raven's crest and lips as red as cherry wine." Soon the Queen gave birth to a daughter who was the very essence of her wish, and she and the King named the princess Snow White. After the Queen died, the King became lonely, and after many years, he took a new Queen from the far-off land of Shi-tan so that Snow White would have a mother in her life.

The kingdom is celebrating the marriage of the King and his new queen. She has brought with her from Shi-tan her lady-in-waiting Luna, and her personal huntsman. When Snow White makes her entrance, the Queen notices that the King loves her very much. She then lies to the King that they must arrange for the safety of the rest of her subjects back to her homeland in order instead of sharing the first dance with him. In her chambers, the Queen summons her magic mirror and she asks: "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?". The Mirror is reluctant to answer, but after much persuasion, it says that Snow White has far outshone the Queen's beauty. She then summons Luna before her to take Snow White to the ramshackle village far beyond the Kingdom and see to it that the girl is dressed in rags and forced to do heavy work and backbreaking labor until her beauty is destroyed. Luna agrees to do so and takes Snow White, who is oblivious to the scheme. Time passes in the village, where hard labor has done everything but destroy Snow White's beauty. She makes friends with the women of the village and tells them of her wish to find true love. Just then, a traveling prince from the neighboring Kingdom of Heart hears Snow White singing, and he falls in love instantly. But the startled princess flees to her house where she watches him from afar.

Back at the castle, the Queen finds out Snow White remains more beautiful than her. The Queen decides to summon her huntsman, and she instructs him to go to the village and tell Snow White he has come to take her home to her father, and to take her into a secluded glade in the forest and kill her and bring back her heart as proof that the deed had been done. The huntsman, not wanting to die, reluctantly agrees to do so. But the huntsman cannot bring himself to kill the princess and tells Snow White of the Queen's jealousy, and to run into the forest and to never return to the castle. After her flight through the forest, Snow White encounters forest animals who take her to a cottage deep in the forest. When she discovers what a mess the cottage is, she decides to clean it in hopes of winning favor with the owners. In the diamond mines, the owners of the cottage are preparing to return home. They are seven dwarfs named Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy and Dopey. Upon seeing that someone is in their house, they think it is a monster, so they go up to their bedroom to kill it. But when they see that it is a beautiful girl, they find she is no harm to them, except Grumpy (as he says). Snow White wakes up and sees them, and she tells them about herself and of her stepmother. The dwarfs agree to let Snow White stay if she keeps the house for them while they work in the mines.

The prince returns to the village. Learning about what happened to Snow White, he and the huntsman go to tell the King. Meanwhile, the Queen finds out Snow White is still alive, so she decides to take matters into her own hands. She goes deep into the dungeons and concocts a magic potion. She drinks the potion and then transforms into her true appearance, an ugly old hag. She then decides to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple, of which Snow White would have to take one bite and she would fall into the Sleeping Death. The Queen prepares the poisoned apple and, dismissing the possibility that Snow White may be revived by 'love's first kiss' (the only cure for the Sleeping Death), gleefully proclaims that Snow White will appear dead and be 'buried alive'. She leaves the castle and makes her way to the dwarfs' cottage, kicking the skeleton of a long-deceased prisoner on the way out.

In the King's chambers, the King becomes very worried, but the prince and the huntsman tell him of the Queen's jealousy and her plans for Snow White. The King orders Luna to be brought before him, and he decides to throw her in the dungeon to rot there for the rest of her days. The prince then races to find Snow White before the Queen does. Back at the cottage, unaware of the Queen's plot, Snow White and the dwarfs dance and tell stories, and Snow White tells them of her wish for the prince to find her, before sending them up to bed; however, the dwarfs decide to sleep downstairs, allowing Snow White to sleep in their beds, where she, looking towards the window, says thankful prayers about her and the dwarfs' protection, and wishes for Grumpy to like her more.

As the dwarfs leave to the mine in the morning, Snow White kisses each dwarf on the forehead, though Grumpy initially resists. He warns her not to let any strangers into the house. After the dwarfs have left the cottage, the Queen goes to Snow White and offers her the poisoned apple, which Snow White is about to accept until the forest animals, sensing danger from vultures, try to attack her. This causes Snow White to take pity on the old woman and takes her into the cottage. The animals then rush to the mine and try to tell the dwarfs of the danger. The dwarfs eventually realize what is happening, thanks to Sleepy, and, led by Grumpy, hurry back to the cottage with the animals. The Queen persuades Snow White to take a bite from the apple by telling her that it is a 'wishing apple', which will make any wish of hers come true; after biting the fruit, the princess falls into the Sleeping Death, as the Queen cackles in triumph. The dwarfs arrive and chase the Queen, eventually cornering her up a cliff, where she attempts to crush them with a boulder, but is sent over the cliff by a bolt of lightning, crushed by the boulder herself, and eventually devoured (off-screen) by the vultures that were following her.

The dwarfs and animals mourn a seemingly dead Snow White, and place her into a glass coffin in a peaceful glade in the forest. The Prince arrives and kisses Snow White, which breaks the spell. Awakened, she bids farewell to the dwarfs and animals, and rides into the sunset with the Prince to live happily ever after.

## Production

Development on *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* began in early 1934, and in June 1934, Walt Disney announced the production of his first feature, to be released under Walt Disney Productions, to *The New York Times*. One evening that same year, Disney acted out the entire story of *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* to his staff, announcing that the film would be produced as a feature-length film.

Before *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, the Disney studio had been primarily involved in the production of animated short subjects in the *Looney Tunes*, *Merrie Melodies* and *Silly Symphonies* series. Disney hoped to expand his studio's prestige and revenues by moving into features, and estimated that *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* could be produced for a budget of US$250,000; this was ten times the budget of an average *Silly Symphony*.

*Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* was to be the first full-length cel animated feature in motion picture history, and as such Walt Disney had to fight to get the film produced. His brother and financer Roy Disney and business partner Leon Schlesinger attempted to talk him out of it, and the Hollywood movie industry referred to the film derisively as "Disney's Folly" while it was in production. He had to mortgage his house to help finance the film's production, which eventually ran up a total cost of $1,488,422.74, a massive sum for a feature film in 1937.

### Story development

On August 9, 1934, twenty-one pages of notes—entitled "Snow White suggestions"—were compiled by staff writer Richard Creedon, suggesting the principal characters, as well as situations and 'gags' for the story. As Disney had stated at the very beginning of the project, the main attraction of the story for him was the Seven Dwarfs, and their possibilities for "screwiness" and "gags"; the three story meetings held in October and attended by Disney, Creedon, Larry Morey, Albert Hurter, Ted Sears and Pinto Colvig were dominated by such subjects. At this point, Disney felt that the story should begin with Snow White's discovery of the Cottage of the Seven Dwarfs. Walt Disney had suggested from the beginning that each of the dwarfs, whose names and personalities are not stated in the original fairy tale, could have individual personalities. The dwarfs names were chosen from a pool of about fifty potentials, including Jumpy, Deafy, Dizzey, Hickey, Wheezy, Baldy, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Swift, Lazy, Puffy, Stuffy, Tubby, Shorty, and Burpy. The seven finalists were chosen through a process of elimination. The leader of the dwarfs, required to be pompous, self-important and bumbling, was named Doc; others were named for their distinguishing character traits. At the end of the October story meetings, however, only Doc, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy and Happy of the final seven were named; at this point, Sneezy and Dopey were replaced by 'Jumpy' and an unnamed seventh dwarf.

Along with a focus on the characterizations and comedic possibilities of the dwarfs, Creedon's eighteen-page outline of the story written from the October meetings, featured a continuous flow of gags as well as the Queen's attempt to kill Snow White with a poisoned comb, an element taken from the Grimms' original story. After persuading Snow White to use the comb, the disguised Queen would have escaped alive, but the dwarfs would have arrived in time to remove it. After the failure of the comb, the Queen was to have the Prince captured and taken to her dungeon, where she would have come to him (story sketches show this event with the Queen in her Witch form) and used magic to bring the dungeon's skeletons to life, making them dance for him and identifying one skeleton as "Prince Oswald", an example of the more humorous atmosphere of this original story treatment. It is written in story notes that the Queen has such magical power only in her own domain, the castle. With the Prince refusing to marry her, the Queen leaves him to his death (one sketch shows the Prince trapped in a subterranean chamber filling with water) as she makes her way to the dwarfs' cottage with the poisoned apple. The forest animals were to help the Prince escape the Queen's minions and find his horse. The Prince was to ride to the cottage to save Snow White but took the wrong road (despite warnings from the forest animals and his horse, whom he, unlike Snow White, could not understand). He, therefore, would not have arrived in time to save her from the Queen but would have been able to save her with love's first kiss. This plot was not used in the final film, though many sketches of the scene in the dungeon were made by Ferdinand Hovarth.

Other examples of the more comical nature of the story at this point include suggestions for a "fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied" Queen. The Prince was also more of a clown, and was to serenade Snow White in a more comical fashion. Walt Disney encouraged all staff at the studio to contribute to the story, offering five dollars for every 'gag'; such gags included the dwarfs' noses popping over the foot of the bed when they first meet Snow White.

Disney became concerned that such a comical approach would lessen the plausibility of the characters and, sensing that more time was needed for the development of the Queen, advised in an outline circulated on November 6 that attention be paid exclusively to "scenes in which only Snow White, the Dwarfs, and the bird and animal appear". The names and personalities of the dwarfs, however, were still "open to change". A meeting of November 16 resulted in another outline entitled 'Dwarfs Discover Snow White', which introduced the character of Dopey, who would ultimately prove to be the most successful and popular of the dwarf characterisations. For the rest of 1934 Disney further developed the story by himself, finding a dilemma in the characterization of the Queen, who he felt could no longer be "fat" and "batty", but a "stately beautiful type", a possibility already brought up in previous story meetings. Disney did not focus on the project again until the autumn of 1935. It is thought that he may have doubted his, and his studio's ability, and that his trip to Europe that summer restored his confidence. At this point, Disney and his writers focused on the scenes in which Snow White and the dwarfs are introduced to the audience and each other. He laid out the likely assignments for everyone working on the film in a memorandum of November 25, 1935, and had decided on the personalities of the individual dwarfs.

It had first been thought that the dwarfs would be the main focus of the story, and many sequences were written for the seven characters. However, at a certain point, it was decided that the main thrust of the story was provided by the relationship between the Queen and Snow White. For this reason, several sequences featuring the dwarfs were cut from the film. The first, which was animated in its entirety before being cut, showed Doc and Grumpy arguing about whether Snow White should stay with them. Another, also completely animated, would have shown the dwarfs eating soup noisily and messily; Snow White unsuccessfully attempts to teach them how to eat 'like gentlemen'. A partially animated sequence involved the dwarfs holding a "lodge meeting" in which they try to think of a thanks gift for Snow White; this was to be followed by the elaborate 'bed building sequence', in which the dwarfs and the forest animals construct and carve a bed for the princess. This also was cut, as it was thought to slow down the movement of the story. The soup-eating and bed-building sequences were animated by Ward Kimball, who was sufficiently discouraged by their removal to consider leaving the studio, however Disney persuaded him to stay by promoting him to supervising animator of Jiminy Cricket in his next feature *Pinocchio* (1940).

### Animation

The primary authority on the design of the film was concept artist Albert Hurter. All designs used in the film, from characters' appearances to the look of the rocks in the background, had to meet Hurter's approval before being finalized. Two other concept artists — Ferdinand Hovarth and Gustaf Tenggren — also contributed to the visual style of *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*. Hovarth developed a number of dark concepts for the film, although many other designs he developed were ultimately rejected by the Disney team as less easily translated into animation than Hurter's. Tenggren was used as a color stylist and to determine the staging and atmosphere of many of the scenes in the film, as his style borrowed from the likes of Arthur Rackham and John Bauer and thus possessed the European illustration quality that Walt Disney sought. He also designed the posters for the film and illustrated the press book. However, Hovarth didn't receive a credit for the film. Other artists to work on the film included Joe Grant, whose most significant contribution was the design for the Queen's Witch form.

Art Babbit, an animator who joined the Disney studio in 1932, invited seven of his colleagues (who worked in the same room as him) to come with him to an art class that he himself had set up at his home in the Hollywood Hills. Though there was no teacher, Babbit had recruited a model to pose for him and his fellow animators as they drew. These "classes" were held weekly; each week, more animators would come. After three weeks, Walt Disney called Babbit to his office and offered to provide the supplies, working space and models required if the sessions were moved to the studio. Babbit ran the sessions for a month until animator Hardie Gramatky suggested that they recruit Don Graham; the art teacher from the Chouinard Institute taught his first class at the studio on November 15, 1932, and was joined by Phil Dike a few weeks later. These classes were principally concerned with human anatomy and movement, though instruction later included action analysis, animal anatomy and acting.

hough the classes were originally described as a "brutal battle", with neither instructor nor students well-versed in the other's craft, the enthusiasm and energy of both parties made the classes stimulating and beneficial for all involved. Graham often screened Disney shorts and, along with the animators, provided critique featuring both strengths and weaknesses. For example, Graham criticised Babbit's animation of Abner the mouse in *The Country Cousin*as "taking a few of the obvious actions of a drunk without coordinating the rest of the body", while praising it for maintaining its humour without getting "dirty or mean or vulgar. The country mouse is always having a good time".

Very few of the animators at the Disney studio had had artistic training (most had been newspaper cartoonists); among these few was Grim Natwick, who had trained in Europe. The animator's success in designing and animating Betty Boop for Fleischer Studios showed an understanding of human female anatomy, and when Walt Disney hired Natwick he was given female characters to animate almost exclusively. Attempts to animate Persephone, the female lead of *The Goddess of Spring*, had proved largely unsuccessful; Natwick's animation of the heroine in *Cookie Carnival* showed greater promise, and the animator was eventually given the task of animating Snow White herself. Though live action footage of Snow White, the Prince and the Queen was shot as reference for the animators, the artists' animators disapproved of rotoscoping, considering it to hinder the production of effective caricature. None of Babbit's animation of the Queen was rotoscoped; despite Graham and Natwick's objections, however, some scenes of Snow White and the Prince were directly traced from the live-action footage.

It proved difficult to add color to Snow White's and the queen's face.. Eventually they found a red dye that worked, and which was added with a small piece of cotton wrapped around a tipple pencil on each individual cel. Helen Ogger, an employee at the ink department, was also an animator and decided to use the same system used in animation. The method was so time consuming that it was never used again on the same scale. It was also used to a smaller degree in "Pinocchio" and "The Wizard of Oz", but after Ogger left the studio in 1941 there were nobody with the same skills who could replace her.

The studio's new multiplane camera gave a three-dimensional feeling in many sequences and was also used to give a rotating effect in the scene where the Queen transforms into a witch.

### Music

The songs in *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* were composed by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey. Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline composed the incidental music score. Well-known songs from *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* include "Heigh-Ho", "Some Day My Prince Will Come", and "Whistle While You Work". Since Disney did not have its own music publishing company at the time, the publishing rights for the music and songs were administered through Bourne Co. Music Publishers, which continues to hold these rights. In later years, the studio was able to acquire back the rights to the music from many of the other films, but not *Snow White*. *Snow White* became the first American film to have a soundtrack album, released in conjunction with the feature film. Before *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, a film soundtrack recording was unheard of and of little value to a movie studio.

### Cinematic influences

At this time, Disney also encouraged his staff to see a variety of films. These ranged from the mainstream, such as MGM's *Romeo and Juliet* (1936) — to which Disney made direct reference in a story meeting pertaining to the scene in which Snow White lies in her glass coffin — to the more obscure, including European silent cinema. *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, as well as the three Disney films to follow it, were also influenced by such German expressionist films as *Nosferatu* (1922) and *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari* (1919), both of which were recommended by Disney to his staff. This influence is particularly evident in the scenes of Snow White fleeing through the forest and the Queen's transformation into the Witch. The latter scene was also inspired by *Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* (1931), to which Disney made specific reference in story meetings.

## Trivia

* The song "Some Day My Prince Will Come" became a jazz standard, and has been performed by numerous artists, including Buddy Rich, Oscar Peterson and Miles Davis.
* *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* was Disney's first animated feature, as well as the first Disney feature overall, to be preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Five other Disney films would later achieve this honor and be preserved in the following future years: *The Wizard of Oz* in 1990, *Pinocchio* in 1994, *An American Tale* in 1996, *Beauty and the Beast* in 2002 and *Bambi* in 2011.
* *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* is one of the few classic Disney movies to not have a sequel.