Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was America's first feature-length animated film, as well as the first in the Disney Animated Canon. It was also the first one in English, and the first
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was America's first feature-length animated film, as well as the first in the Disney Animated Canon. It was also the first one in English, and the first in Technicolor. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions, premiered on December 21, 1937, and was originally released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 4, 1938. It is an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, in which an evil queen attempts to have her stepdaughter, Snow White, murdered in jealousy of her beauty. But she escapes and is given shelter by seven dwarfs in their cottage in a forest.
The film is generally considered to be Walt Disney's most significant achievement, his first-ever animated feature. It was the first major animated feature made in the United States, the most successful one released in 1938, and, adjusted for inflation, is the tenth highest-grossing film of all time. This historical moment in motion picture history changed the medium of animation. Before 1937, short cartoons took up the majority of American animation.
The film was adapted by Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears, and Webb Smith and was supervised by David Hand, and directed by William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen. It is particularly memorable for songs like "Heigh-Ho" and "Someday My Prince Will Come", several frightening and intense sequences, and a style influenced by European storybook illustrations.