Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. 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, 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. It was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1989 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.

Disney's take on the fairy tale has had a big cultural impact, resulting in a popular theme park attraction, a video game, and a Broadway musical.

Plot

Through a textual prologue told via a storybook, Snow White is a princess living with her stepmother, a vain and wicked queen who is assumed to have taken over the kingdom after the death of Snow White's mother and father. Fearing Snow White's beauty surpassing her own, the Queen forced her to work as a scullery maid and asked her Magic Mirror daily "who is the fairest one of all". For several years the mirror always answered that the Queen was, pleasing her.

At the film's opening, the Magic Mirror informs the Queen that Snow White is now the fairest in the land. The jealous Queen orders a reluctant huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her. She further demands that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart in a jeweled box as proof of the deed. The huntsman encounters Snow White but decides not to harm her. He tearfully begs for her forgiveness, revealing the Queen wants her dead, and urges her to flee into the woods and never come back, bringing back a pig's heart instead.

Lost and frightened, the princess is befriended by woodland creatures who lead her to a cottage deep in the woods. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children. It soon becomes apparent that the cottage belongs instead to seven adult dwarfs, 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 surmise that an intruder has invaded their home. The dwarfs find Snow White upstairs, asleep across three of their beds. Snow White awakes to find the Dwarfs at her bedside and introduces herself, and all of the dwarfs eventually welcome her into their home after they learn she can cook and clean beautifully. Snow White cooks, cleans, and keeps house for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels and at night sing, play music and dance.

Meanwhile, the Queen discovers that Snow White is still alive when the mirror again answers that Snow White is the fairest in the land. Using magic to disguise herself as an old hag, the Queen creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into the "Sleeping Death". The Evil Queen explains that Snow White would collapse into a magical sleep if she were to take even a single bite of the apple. The sleep can only be cured by the power of "love's first kiss". The Queen reasons that this is no danger to her plans, as the dwarfs would not be able to awaken Snow White, and would think she was dead, thus resulting in Snow White being buried alive. The Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away and tricks Snow White into biting into the poisoned apple. As Snow White falls asleep the Queen proclaims that she will be the fairest of the land. The vengeful dwarfs, alerted by the woodland animals who recognize her, chase the Queen up a cliff and trap her. She tries to roll a boulder over them but before she can do so, lightning strikes the cliff, causing her to fall to her death.

The dwarfs return to their cottage and find Snow White seemingly dead, being kept in a deathlike slumber by the potion. Unwilling to bury her out of sight in the ground, they instead place her in a glass coffin trimmed with gold in a clearing in the forest. Together with the woodland creatures, they keep watch over her in an "eternal vigil". After some time, a prince, who had previously met and fallen in love with Snow White, learns of her eternal sleep and visits her coffin. Saddened by her apparent death, he kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her. The dwarfs and animals all rejoice as the Prince takes Snow White to his castle, which glows in the presence of Snow White.

Reception

At the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Academy Honorary Award for Walt Disney "as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field". Disney received a full-size Oscar statuette and seven miniature ones, presented to him by 10-year-old child actress Shirley Temple. The film was also nominated for Best Musical Score. "Some Day My Prince Will Come" has become a jazz standard that has been performed by numerous artists, including Buddy Rich, Lee Wiley, Oscar Peterson, Frank Churchill, and Oliver Jones.  Albums by Miles Davis, by Wynton Kelly, and Alexis Cole.

Noted filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin praised Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a notable achievement in cinema; Eisenstein went so far as to call it the greatest film ever made. The film inspired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce its own fantasy film, The Wizard of Oz, in 1939. Another animation pioneer, Max Fleischer, decided to produce his animated feature film Gulliver's Travels in order to compete with Snow White. The 1941 parody Ball of Fire featured a nightclub singer disrupting the lives of seven scholars (and Gary Cooper) while hiding from the police. The 1943 Merrie Melodies short Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, directed by Bob Clampett, parodies Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by presenting the story with an all-black cast singing a jazz score.

Snow White's success led to Disney moving ahead with more feature-film productions. Walt Disney used much of the profits from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to finance a new $4.5 million studio in Burbank – the location on which The Walt Disney Studios is located to this day.  Within two years, the studio completed Pinocchio and Fantasia, and had begun production on features such as Dumbo, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.

American Film Institute recognition

The American Film Institute (AFI), an independent non-profit organization created in the United States by the National Endowment for the Arts, releases a variety of annual awards and film lists recognizing excellence in film making. The AFI 100 Years… series, which ran from 1998 to 2008, created categorized lists of America's best movies as selected by juries composed from among over 1,500 artists, scholars, critics and historians. A film's inclusion in one of these lists was based on the film's popularity over time, historical significance and cultural impact. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was selected by juries for inclusion on many AFI lists, including the following:
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #49
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #34
AFI's 10 Top 10 - #1 Animated film
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains: The Queen - #10 Villain
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs:
"Someday My Prince Will Come" - #19
"Whistle While You Work" - Nominated
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes: "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" - Nominated
AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated