“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) Poster Courtesy Disney / The Hollywood Archive
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]eigh-Ho, Heigh Ho, to the Disney vaults we go. 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the animated musical fantasy film, produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures is, according to The Hollywood Reporter, about to become the latest in Disney’s arsenal of classics to get a live-action treatment. The original Disney version was based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm and was also the first full-length cel animated feature film.
This latest film adds to the list of live-action updates of animated features joining Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King among them. The film will feature new songs by La La Land songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote the adaptation of The Girl on the Train, is in negotiations to write the script for the film.
Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre, one of the most famous movie palaces of Hollywood’s Golden Age, on December 21, 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938. The film was a tremendous critical success, with many reviewers hailing it as a genuine work of art, recommended for both children and adults. Today it ranks at number 10Â at the box office for all-time adjusted domestic gross earnings. The popularity of the film has led to it being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1990s.
At the 11th Academy Awards, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar, and the film was nominated for Best Musical Score the year before. Disney received one full-size Oscar statuette and seven miniature ones, presented to him by 10-year-old child actress Shirley Temple.
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry 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.
Recent versions of the Snow White story include Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman and Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror, both of which were released in 2012.