When Walt Disney Bet It All on a Princess (and Won)

Imagine we’re back in the mid-1930s. Although 2D animation has evolved significantly in the last two decades, it has remained a children’s novelty.

Nobody believes that two-dimensional cartoons can work for feature films. But one man decided to go against the grain. The creator of Mickey Mouse knows the potential of animation.

Flash forward. We know it was even harder and more tedious to animate back then, yet this man believed he was an innovation away from turning the tables forever.

Thus, 35-year-old studio chief Walt Disney embarked on a roller-coaster ride to turn Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the first feature-length animated movie in color ever made in American cinema.

Behind the Scenes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

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Disney’s vision behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was bold and unthinkable then.

According to film historian JB Kaufman, Disney wanted “a film that was not only animated but could be put out into the commercial movie marketplace and compete with the live-action features that the major studios were making” (via Variety).

Unlike others in the business, Disney had few options outside animation, as he wasn’t trained in camera and other technical aspects of filmmaking.

Therefore, to compete in feature film production with the other big names in the business, he would have to either shift to live-action (which meant starting from scratch) or do something revolutionary in animation. So Walt Disney, the lifelong artist, doubled down on his traditional art to save the day.

Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney archives, told Variety in 2023, “People said, ‘Nobody will sit through an hour-and-90-minute cartoon. Their eyes will start bleeding.’”

Disney was smart enough to realize the partial truth about people’s speculations about watching black-and-white two-dimensional characters on screen for an entire movie. Unlike most others, he saw it as an opportunity for innovation.

To him, the solution was quite simple. He needed to introduce the third dimension in his frames. For a man who thrived on exploration and experimentation, was never satisfied with his work, and resented the limits of his own imagination, this was like a call from the universe.

Disney built a setup from scratch in his machine shop—the “multiplane camera.”

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By manipulating four layers of animation within a single frame, this setup gave the illusion of three dimensions in two dimensions.

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The team tested it by making a stunning short, The Old Mill, which won an Oscar for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons in 1938. The setup worked better than even Disney had imagined!

Here's a clearer view of it, in real life:

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Next, Disney wanted Snow White in color. In 1932, when Technicolor released its brand-new three-color process, Disney was hell-bent on securing it for Walt Disney Studios’ Silly Symphonies.

Coloring animations using this technology were three times more expensive than black-and-white renditions. Roy Disney, Walt’s elder brother and the co-founder of Walt Disney Studios, vehemently opposed the idea.

On paper, that investment didn’t guarantee adequate returns and, therefore, didn’t make sense.

But eventually, the expensive vision paid off in leaps and bounds. For several years to come, Walt Disney Studios held a monopoly over making these full-color cartoons.

Disney’s first feature film, Snow White, used the same technology to bring Snow White's world to color.

Even with the solutions at hand now, the journey was long, and Snow White spent several years in pre-production. Reportedly, Snow White’s animation didn’t start until 1936.

Disney hired and trained animators, ensuring he had an army specializing in animation, illustration, and painting. The team began animating, taking inspiration for movement, framing, and mise-en-scene from live-action movies.

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The multiplane camera was a 12-foot-tall apparatus that required four to eight people to operate, depending on the complexity of the shot. The process was painstakingly slow, as any three-dimensional camera movement, like a pan or a dolly, meant precision of one hundredth of an inch.

At the same time, the eight 500-watt bulbs (needed to light each layer of animation) cranked up the heat to broiling temperatures, making the entire process even more arduous.

Making Snow White was strikingly expensive, costing about a hundred dollars per foot of film produced. This untested project was Disney’s biggest gamble: a bet of almost 40% of a year’s total profits on one film.

The initial money was quickly burned through, after which Walt not only sold his car and mortgaged his house, but also took out a mortgage on his life insurance to keep the project running.

Walt’s army of artists worked relentlessly, day and night, finally wrapping up the principal photography for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on Dec. 1, 1937, barely a week before its first sneak preview.

It’s surreal how Disney inspired so many to enjoy even an agonizing process.

Overall, it took three years and an investment of nearly $1.5 million, involving 750 artists contributing to the thousands of paintings that make up Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Snow White Redefined American Animation Forever

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, 1937, followed by its U.S. general release on Feb 4, 1938.

The premiere at Carthay Circle was a full house, with prominent film industry personalities in attendance. Overnight, Disney’s Snow White had skyrocketed to fame: the reviews were striking and Disney landed on the cover of Time Magazine for his innovation.

Grossing $66 million at the box office, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs briefly remained the highest-grossing sound picture ever, until Gone with the Wind was released two years later.

The film also received an Oscar nomination for its musical score in 1938, but did not win. Nevertheless, at the 1939 Oscars, Walt Disney was honored with a special award as an acknowledgement of the innovation and creativity behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and its cultural impact.

Shirley Temple presented the Oscar to Disney, which consisted of one regular-sized statue with seven other tiny ones.

Sometimes, all it takes to win is trusting your gut when the world judges you. Do you believe in fairy tales? You might as well, because Disney bet his last dime on a princess and proved that fairy tales do come true!

Almost 80 years later, the same princess remains one of Walt Disney Company's most significant productions.