Giving distinct personalities to the seven generous miners who take in Snow White in her hour of need and naming them accordingly – Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful, Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, and Doc – was a masterstroke. Walt Disney knew the story had pathos and romance. But however technically impressive Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may have been, the efforts would have been in vain were it not for Disney’s tweaks to the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Pioneering new techniques were used to give the animation a realism that hadn’t been seen before Disney brought in specialists to help with composition and use of color animators were given lessons in capturing movement and studied life drawing. In total, the film took nearly five years to complete, and it’s thought that as many as 750 crew members worked on it. It would’ve bankrupted the studio had Disney not persuaded the Bank Of America to grant them a loan on the basis of an incomplete edit of the film.
The original budget for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was between $150,000 and $250,000 – the final cost was nearly $1.5 million. There could be no compromising on money, talent or time and this was at a time when the whole country was in the midst of a crippling depression.” But there was only one way we could do it successfully and that was to plunge ahead and go for broke: shoot the works. As he later said, “It was prophesized that nobody would sit through such a thing. Buy a special colored vinyl edition of the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs soundtrack here.ĭespite the naysayers, Walt Disney forged ahead.