There would have been no Disney, and the most beautiful cartoons, if “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” hadn’t been released on 21 December 1937. It is not a way of saying. That film changed the history of cinema by bringing together so many innovations that one would never finish telling them. The first was the very idea that the public could watch a long cartoon: until then only short films had been released (the young Walt Disney himself had made several successful ones, such as “The Three Little Pigs” which won an Oscar) and ‘there were many doubts that anyone could be passionate about a film without human beings. Walt Disney had pitched the idea in 1934.
It is said that one evening he summoned a large group of designers and that for four hours straight he tried to convince them of his idea: to make a cartoon film about a princess that her stepmother wants to kill for her beauty, forced to find refuge in the forest near seven dwarfs. It seemed to him a very powerful story, capable of holding up an 80-minute film. The second innovation was the fact of using real actors and dancers to serve as role models for the designers: Disney wanted the film to thrill, to make people laugh and cry, and it was not possible to do so if the characters moved their legs like a windmill. The third was the use of the “multi-storey room”, which had been successfully tested in a short film: it is a shooting technique that allows you to give depth to the images, in this case to the drawings; in practice it creates the effect of a third dimension.
It was so successful that for half a century it was the way to make cartoon films, the latest “The Little Mermaid”. The fourth innovation was the way to finance a very expensive business: Disney committed everything, including his home. As a startupper. If the film had been a fiasco, there would have been no Disney. In the end “Snow White required the work of 750 artists and the creation of thousands of drawings” and it cost a million and a half dollars at the time.
What happened on the evening of December 21, 1937 is history and is told in every detail in a book with an epic tone. The premiere came with great anticipation in Hollywood, the newspapers had been writing for months about this film that no one, apart from Walt Disney, had seen finished; and with a ticket ride (which cost $ 5), fueled by the fact that no one was said to have had it as a gift, not even the actors who had lent the voices to the protagonists.
The event took place at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, which at the time was one of the iconic buildings of the golden age of Hollywood: “It was a Tuesday and it was a balmy night. The screening was scheduled for 8:45, but crowds had started to gather hours earlier to enjoy the party. The audience was greeted and entertained by actors dressed as Mickey, Minnie and Scrooge. But a light drew the attention of the forest of the seven dwarfs… The NBC radio broadcast the event live, interviewing the many celebrities present while the orchestra played the music of the film sung by Adriana Caselotti and Harry Stockwell. Shirley Temple was photographed with the dwarves; Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks jr, Helen Wilson, Claudette Colbert, Gail Patrick, Hedy Lamarr, Preston Foster and even Chaplin were hooked on the atmosphere and talking on the radio. Walt Disney was also asked to say something: a speech had been prepared for him but Walt, overwhelmed by the festive atmosphere of the evening, decided to improvise, and was so happy and excited that he could not remember the names of the seven dwarfs – a detail that many newspapers will notice ”.
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