Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures, based on the 1812 German fairy tale "Snow White" by the Brothers Grimm. The film was supervised by David Hand and a team of five sequence directors: Perce Pearce, William Cottrell, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, and Ben Sharpsteen. It is the first animated feature film produced in the United States and the first cel animated feature film.
Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on December 21, 1937, and went into general release in the United States on February 4, 1938. Despite initial doubts from the film industry, it was a critical and commercial success, with international earnings of more than $8 million during its initial release against a $1.5 million production cost, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1938, and briefly holding the record of the highest-grossing sound film of all time. It was also the highest-grossing animated film for 55 years. 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 is still the highest-grossing animated film with an adjusted gross of $. 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.
Snow White was a landmark release in the early animation industry, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, credited with ushering in the golden age of animation. Disney's take on the fairy tale has had a significant cultural impact, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, a Broadway musical, and a 2025 live-action film remake. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it as one of the inaugural 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.
Plot
Having lost both of her parents at a young age, Snow White is a princess living with her wicked and cold-hearted stepmother, the Queen. Fearing that Snow White's beauty will outshine her own, the Queen forces her to work as a scullery maid and asks her Magic Mirror daily "who is the fairest one of all." For years, the mirror always answers that the Queen is, pleasing her.
One day, Snow White meets and falls in love with a prince who overhears her singing. That same day, the Magic Mirror deems Snow White as the fairest. The Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest, kill her, and bring back her heart in a jeweled box as proof. The Huntsman cannot bring himself to kill Snow White and warns her of the Queen's intentions. At his urging, Snow White flees deep into the forest.
Lost and frightened, Snow White is befriended by woodland animals, who lead her to a hidden woodland cottage. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children. With the animals' help, she proceeds to clean the place and cook a meal. Snow White soon learns that the cottage is the home of seven dwarfs named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey, who work in a nearby mine. Returning home, they are alarmed to find their cottage clean and suspect that an intruder has invaded their home. Snow White introduces herself and explains her predicament, and the dwarfs agree to let her stay for her protection. Snow White does the cooking and washing for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels during the day, and at night, they all sing, play music, and dance.
Back at the castle, the Magic Mirror reveals that Snow White is still living, and with the dwarfs. Enraged that the Huntsman gave her a pig's heart, the Queen uses a potion to disguise herself as an old peddler and then creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into Sleeping Death. She learns the curse can be broken by "love's first kiss," but is certain Snow White will be buried alive before this can happen. The Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away to work. The animals see through the disguise but are unable to warn Snow White; they rush off to find the dwarfs. The Queen fools Snow White into biting into the apple, and she falls into a death-like slumber.
The dwarfs return with the animals as the Queen leaves the cottage and give chase, trapping her on a cliff. She tries to roll a boulder onto them, but lightning strikes the cliff before she can do so, causing her to fall to her death. In their cottage, the dwarfs find Snow White asleep from the poison. Unwilling to bury her, they instead place her in a glass chamber in the forest. Together with the animals, they keep watch over her.
The following spring, the prince learns of Snow White's eternal sleep and visits the glass chamber. Saddened by her apparent death, he kisses her, breaking the spell and awakening her. The dwarfs and animals rejoice as the prince takes Snow White to his castle.
Voice cast
Adriana Caselotti as Snow White, a sweet and innocent young princess who is forced to hide from her stepmother in the cottage of the seven dwarfs. Lucille La Verne as the Queen, Snow White's jealous and wicked stepmother who is obsessed with being "the fairest one of all". La Verne also voiced the Witch, the Queen's peddler disguise that she uses to trick Snow White. Roy Atwell as Doc, the pompous yet good-hearted leader of the seven dwarfs, who is prone to using malapropisms when he speaks. Pinto Colvig as Grumpy, the most stubborn and easily irritated of the dwarfs, who initially dislikes Snow White but grows to care for her as the film progresses. Colvig also voiced Sleepy, the perpetually drowsy and most relaxed of the dwarfs. Otis Harlan as Happy, the perennially cheerful and most optimistic of the dwarfs. Scotty Mattraw as Bashful, the most sentimental and shyest of the dwarfs. Billy Gilbert as Sneezy, a dwarf who suffers from hay fever. Eddie Collins as Dopey, the clumsiest and most childlike of the dwarfs, who communicates through sounds and pantomime instead of speaking. Harry Stockwell as the Prince, a romantic young man who falls in love with Snow White and later saves her with a true love's first kiss. Moroni Olsen as the Magic Mirror, a mystical object containing the Queen's familiar demon, from whom she learns that Snow White has become the "fairest one of all". Stuart Buchanan as the Huntsman, the Queen's reluctant servant, whom she orders to kill Snow White.
Production Development Walt Disney conceived the idea of making his first feature-length film in 1933, when his animation studio was focusing on production of animated short films, such as the Silly Symphonies series. Although they were popular with the audience, Disney believed that the shorts did not bring enough profit for the further growth of the studio; he also saw the full-length film as a way to expand his "storytelling possibilities", allowing for elaborate plots and character development. By late March 1933, he was approached by Mary Pickford (co-founder of United Artists that was distributing Disney's works at the time) with a proposal for a feature-length animated/live-action version of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865); however, the project was soon scrapped when Paramount Pictures began production of their own film version. Disney then considered using the same concept for a film adaptation of Washington Irving's short story "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) starring Will Rogers, but it did not work out either due to Paramount, which held the rights to the story, refusing to give permission.
After the successful release of the Silly Symphony short Three Little Pigs in May 1933, Disney was strengthened in his decision to make a feature film and began introducing the idea to his staff through a "slow infiltration"sharing it with everyone individually during casual conversations. He entered into negotiations with Merian C. Cooper to produce a full-length animated version of Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland in Technicolor; the project was offered to RKO Radio Pictures, which owned the rights to the play, but RKO executives rejected it. In July 1933, Disney first revealed his plans on making a feature film to The Film Daily (although he had not yet managed to receive a response from the United Artists executives), and around the same time, he was approached with an offer for an animated version of Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods in alliance with Sidney Franklin. Disney eventually rejected the idea, feeling that his studio was not ready for the technical challenges that Bambi would have presented. Homer's poems Iliad and Odyssey, as well as Jonathan Swift's 1726 book Gulliver's Travels, were also suggested to Disney at the time.
Disney settled on the Brothers Grimm's 1812 fairy tale "Snow White" in the spring of 1934. He had been familiar with the story since he was a teenager, having seen the 1916 silent film version, which he later cited as the primary reason for choosing "Snow White" for his first feature production. Disney had originally planned to produce Snow White as a Silly Symphony short, but reconsidered, believing that the story had enough potential for a feature film adaptation. He formally announced his plans on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The New York Times in June 1934, estimating that the film could be produced for a budget of $250,000, which was roughly ten times the budget of an average Silly Symphony. The project (then known as the "Feature Symphony") was initially developed by a small unit of writers that Disney personally supervised, before it was introduced to the studio staff at large on October 30, 1934, when the basic story outline was completed. As some animators later recalled, Disney assembled them on the sound stage in the evening and acted out the entire story of Snow White for three hours, concluding with announcement of their first feature film.
Although the studio staff were excited about the project, they were unsure that the full-length cartoon would sustain an audience's attention. Ward Kimball said that they were told by Hollywood moguls (such as W. C. Fields) that "it was OK, six-seven minutes, like the shorts, but an hour and a half, no way! Big reason was that you run out of funny things to do, you had to have a laugh-a-minute. And the bright colors would hurt your eyes, everybody would get up and walk out ... Walt, of course, plugged ahead, he didn't believe that. He felt that if you had a solid story, not only laughs in it, but tragedy, it would go." Both Disney's wife Lillian and his brother Roy (who was also his business partner) attempted unsuccessfully to talk him out of it, and movie-industry insiders derisively referred to the film as "Disney's Folly" while it was in production.
Early writing