Ramping Up For "Snow White"

Walter D. talks about talks about how Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs developed:



In point of fact, Show wasn't the first stab at a feature. The studio fiddled around with a hybrid feature based on Alice in Wonderland, with Mary Pickford playing Alice. There were color tests done but that's as far, apparently, as the movie went. (At the time, United Artists was releasing Disney shorts, and Pickfor was one of the owners of UA.)

Snow White had an intense schedule. When Disney says all departments were working on the film, he means it. Hours were long and the work unremitting. rtists worked uncompensated overtime (imagine that!) ... and management made promises about profit-sharing ... which evaporated after the picture was completed and released.

The residual unhappiness over the long hours on Disney's first feature with no reward at the end was one of the things that fueled the Disney strike in 1941. Walt might have nursed grudges, but so did his staff.