December 6, 1937 - Pomona Preview

During the last months of production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Disney Studio was a well-oiled, yet tension-packed, animation factory. With a world premiere deadline of December 21, 1937, no one was quite sure if they would complete it on time. The final cels were only just inked & painted on November 27th and the photography finished on December 1st. Five days later, Walt would head east of downtown Los Angeles with his sequence directors and key employees along with a rough cut reel of the film. Their destination--the Fox Theater in Pomona.

The moviegoers that night had no idea they were about to become the test audience for Disney's Snow White. They'd purchased tickets for Nothing Sacred starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March. What they got instead was like nothing they'd ever seen before. And according to RKO vice president Ned Depinet who sat in the audience, the crowd did not go home disappointed

Images from the Fox Theater, 1930s.

Depinet wired the RKO New York office...

CROWDED HOUSE GAVE PICTURE EXCELLENT RECEPTION AND SPONTANEOUS APPLAUSE. AT CONCLUSION WE LISTENED TO COMMENTS OF DEPARTING PATRONS AND TALKED WITH SEVERAL. EVERYBODY RAVED BOTH YOUNG AND OLD AND I NOW HAVE A HIGHER OPINION OF THIS SHOW THAN BEFORE IF THAT IS POSSIBLE. -The Fairest One of All, J.B. Kaufman, p.230.

The test-screening was a success, but Walt and his team had a bit of a scare...

"The preview was unsettling," said Wilfred Jackson, who was one of the sequence directors. "The audience seemed to be enjoying the film, laughing, applauding. But about three quarters of the way through, one-third of them got up and walked out. Everybody else kept responding enthusiastically to 'Snow White' right to the end, but we were concerned about that third. Later we found out they were local college students who had to get back for their 10 p.m. dormitory curfew."
-Wade Sampson (Jim Korkis) via MousePlanet.
-Read a similar interview with Wilfred Jackson by David Johnson.

Now with just two weeks to go before the premiere, Disney would have his artists fix and re-shoot flaws they noticed during the screening. However, the Prince's "shimmy" was never corrected, much to Walt's chagrin.

Marge Champion - Dancer, Model, Princess

Walt Disney will always be remembered for his countless innovations in filmmaking and entertainment. Yet, when he set out to create his first feature film, he was like an explorer heading into an uncharted wilderness. Back in 1934, no one knew if an audience would sit through a full-length cartoon. Cynics said it wouldn't succeed. Walt, of course, believed it was possible, and he did everything in his power to insure that his animators believed too.

One thing was to bring movement models into the studio to give the animators a frame of reference to achieve realistic human motion (i.e., walking, dancing). Marjorie Belcher (born September 2, 1919) was hired as a teenager for $10/day to play Snow White. See the October 2009 MovieWeb interview with Marge as she talks about how Walt chose her for the part from 200-300 other girls. She came into the studio two or three times a month for a period of about two years. The animators "showed me storyboards and then they let me go free."

The modeling-action sessions were filmed under the direction of Hamilton Luske and Grim Natwick. For certain scenes, rather than using the footage as reference for original drawings, the animators utilized the the technique of rotoscopy (see earlier Fleisher Studios post). The movements on film were traced directly to paper.

Many of the animators, like Art Babbitt, were against the idea. Yet, overwhelming factors such as the massive scope of the project and the approaching December 1937 deadline left them with few alternatives. In certain scenes of the finished film, the rotoscoping is definitely noticeable. The "stiffness" of it is frowned upon by many animators, then and now. However, I personally kind of like how it looks.

Video posted by LucaItaly84

From a Marge Champion MovieWeb interview...

They traced every line and the animators chose whatever they wanted from that. They didn't use every frame of it, but it was a guide to their actions. It was much more inclusive than I had ever been told.

Marge Belcher posing as Snow White.

Images copyright Disney.

Some of the animation from Marge's footage as Snow White was reworked for the Maid Marion scenes in Disney's 1973 Robin Hood as seen (along with other clips) in the video below.

Video posted by quatuorlindsay. All clips copyright Disney.

Marge later modeled for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and was working on Fantasia (the dancing hippo sequence) when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs finally premiered in 1937. She eventually went on to become one of the great dancer/choreographers in both movies and stage. Marge and her husband Gower Champion worked together as a highly successfully dancing team during the MGM musical years.


1949 Life Magazine cover. And in 2007 with Pixar's John Lasseter at the DCA Snow White's 70th anniversary celebration.

2007 image via Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

2009 Video copyright CBS.