Is it true that Walt Disney has mortgaged his home to make ‘snow white’?

In the year 1937, Walt Disney He made history with the release of the first animation in the feature film format: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It takes about four years to finalize, the production was attended by approximately 300 artists, being considered by many to be crazy.

During the documentary “Disney’s first feature film: the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, from Disney+, Ward Kimballan animator involved in Snow White, comments that “the movie tycoons warned that Hollywood only via short films [de animação] six or seven minutes. No one would be an hour and a half watching. “

Although many people discredit the bet, DisneyHe remained convinced that a long -term colorful animation would please and thrill the audience. For this, he decided to use the technology of “technicolor”, which helped in color processing, giving more intense and alive images.

“Walt moved on. He did not share this pessimism. He believed that [a animação] It had a good story, not just laughs, but also emotion and tragedy, it would do well, ”added Ward Kimball.

In addition, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was also one of the first to use the Rotoscope technique, which seeks to help animators create more realistic and fluid designs by shooting real actors.

However, create the first feature film animation in history, using a series of innovative techniques and technologies, did not come out at all cheap. At the time, the film cost almost $ 1.5 million, an extremely high value for the 1930s.

With this, intended to make your great project of this right, Walt Disney He decided to make a risky decision: mortgage his own home, that is, use his warranty property to finance the film. Thus, if the animation of this wrong, the filmmaker and his wife, Lilianthey would have lost where they lived.

Even with the pressure to make the project work, and the strong questions through the press and the people around it, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” made its long -awaited debut with a luxury ceremony at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, California.

Second Kimballthe film was an immediate success, with all those present at the session falling in crying during the climax: “Everyone started to cry. I couldn’t overcome my astonishment. The critics had labeling the movie as a caricature, but the audience cried in mass.”