80 years ago - on December 21, 1937, the Los Angeles cinema "Carthay Circle Theater" welcomed the audience to the long-awaited premiere of the first full-length color cartoon Walt Disney "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
Yes, the one that forever changed the concept of animation. Who watched our moms, and today we show it to our children. And which, despite the latest computer technologies, is still considered to be the best and greatest in its genre - and that's what Sergey Eisenstein himself said!
And if you think that having reviewed this cartoon more than a hundred times and calling your loved ones, you know everything about it, then we are ready to argue and surprise with 16 interesting facts!
1. You will not believe, but Walt Disney conceived to film the tale of the Brothers Grimm at the age of 15 when he saw on the screen its lifeless version of 1916 year. This, by the way, was one of the first films he saw at all ...
2. But instead of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", we could now admire a completely different masterpiece. Before starting work, Walt Disney was seriously thinking of taking as a basis for his first full-length cartoon "Alice in Wonderland" or the operetta of Victor Herbert "Children in the country of toys."
3. The decisive factor in choosing steel is the gnomes. The great animator believed that only they could settle in their children's hearts forever. Well, while the cartoon was created, seven dwarfs were called exclusively by seven small men!
4. And now hold on to - Walt Disney took it so seriously to work on each of them that a few more teachers from the Los Angeles Art Institute hired for his animated artists.
5. Well, here's another fascinating fact - according to the first scenario of 1934, 50 (!) Names for gnomes were offered for selection. Of them, then chose Umnika, Grumbler, Funny, Modest, Sonya and Chihun. For a long time, it was simply called "the seventh", until they knew what traits of character it was to be given!
6. The image of Snow White also did not immediately become as we know it today. The first drawings of the main character completely disliked Walt Disney.
He said that on them Snow White is really similar to Betty Bup - the character of competitors from Paramount Pictures. The next proposed option reminded Disney already the Goddess of Spring from the cartoon of the same name. As a result, the animator simply asked the actors to play before him the scenes already recorded in the script, and then he decided - Snow White was ordered to draw from the dancer Marjorie Belcher, and the prince - an exact copy of Lewis Hightower!
7. To despair brought Disney and the problem with the choice of voice for the main character.
He completely rejected the majority of the listeners, including professional actresses. And at the moment when his hands were completely down, his assistant dialed the number of the familiar music teacher Guido Kazelotti. Then the daughter of the musician Adrian Kazelotti "wedged" into their conversation on the parallel phone, for which, however, she was punished. But it already was not important - the assistant, hardly having heard a voice of the 19-year-old girl, exclaimed: "Here it! It's Snow White! "
8. By the way, then the girl worked on voice over for 48 days, got $ 970 and never again could use her already popular voice on the screen - Walt Disney patented it!
9. You will not believe, but for each scene or dialogue, Walt Disney was assembling a meeting.
As a result of such collegial decisions, the author's favorite scenes were also cut out, including the one when Snow White dreams that the prince takes her out on the boat through the clouds. Well, in general, the plot of the whole story, they put in 36 hours or 83 minutes on the screen!
10. In all the short animations, Disney's studio has always used about 8-10 intermediate drawings when turning the hero from position to face. In "Snow White" the number of such drawings was 20! The main animator always drew the first, the eighth and the fifteenth, and the rest were entrusted to the artists lower in rank.
11. And how do you do it - in three years 500 animators drew for the cartoon a half million drawings?
12. Initially, the budget of the cartoon was set at $ 250 thousand, but soon the necessary amount began to grow, as a leap and turned into $ 1.4 million.
Then Walt's brother - banker and film producer Roy Disney even begged to close the project. But the animator did not give up, but simply mounted a partial version of the finished storyboards and showed it to the owner of "Bank of America" - Joseph Rosenberg, from whom not only received a loan, but also a prophetic compliment - "This thing will bring you millions!"