French postcard in the series Le Monde merveilleux de Walt Disney by Editions Kroma, Casissargues, no. 201-1. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Publicity still for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, 1937). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, 1937) was produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. It was the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney animated feature film. Walt Disney turned the German fairy tale by the Grimm brothers into a charming family film that is still holding up very well more than 80 years later. Snow White is a beautiful princess who flees her jealous stepmother and finds refuge with seven friendly dwarfs. The Disney studio spent much time and effort into developing the characters of these seven dwarfs and gave each a distinct personality, a feat which was absent in the original fairy tale. The artwork is stunning, a virtual watercolor painting come to life. The details in the animation are still amazing. The raindrops in the chase sequence really hit the rocks, and slip away. The film makers toned down the fairy tale considerably to make it more 'family friendly, but the fascinating and scary transformation of the Wicked Queen into a hideous hag at the climax was the subject of much controversy at the time. No Disney villian would ever be so frightening and enchanting at the same time. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was immediately embraced both by critics and audiences, and received a special Academy Award in 1938. The songs of the film, like the dwarfs song as they bathe "Whistle While You Work", their "Heigh Ho" and Snow White's anthem "Some Day My Prince Will Come", became evergreens. They were composed by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey. Before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, 1937) , the Disney studio had been primarily involved in the production of animated short subjects in the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Disney had hoped to expand his studio's prestige and revenues by moving into features. He had to mortgage his house to help finance the film's production, which eventually ran up a total cost of $1,488,422.74, a massive sum for a feature film in 1937. Only after the enormous success of 'Disney's folly', other film makers attempted their own full-length cartoon features. 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. 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. Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.