Original subtitles

[train whistle blowing]

[pensive music]

- When Walt Disney first left Kansas City

for Hollywood in 1923,

he was leaving behind failure.

He had tried to have his own

animation studio and went bankrupt. [laughs]

[train whistle blowing]

- So, in that moment of desperation,

he boards a train for California

with all of $40, a single suitcase,

and a one way ticket.

[dramatic music]

- Walt is so poor that he can barely afford food,

and, yet, he believes in his future success so much

that he buys himself a first-class ticket.

- [Attendant] Now arriving, Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, next and last stop.

Los Angeles.

- You in the movie business?

I'm in film myself.

I'm headed to Hollywood.

- That's swell, kid.

You shoot that?

- Shot it and animated it.

It's a cartoon short.

I have a feeling it's gonna be a real hit.

- [Attendant] Next and last stop, Los Angeles.

- [Narrator] Walt Disney will use cartoons

to launch a revolutionary technology.

- I want the next Disney cartoon

to be in Technicolor.

- [Narrator] And then attempt something even greater.

- There has to be a way you can push the camera in.

- How? - I don't know,

but we're gonna figure it out.

- [Adam] So many different kinds of technology

were invented to support a full-length animated feature.

- [Don] The multiplane camera, storyboards, Technicolor,

it all comes together to make Snow White.

- [Narrator] But the story behind

the world's first animated feature

is anything but a fairytale.

- If they cut us off, neither of us

will be selling anything in this town.

[suspenseful music]

- They were just hemorrhaging money.

- People started to call it Disney's Folly.

- [Narrator] This is how a magic combination

of passion, brilliance, and technology

creates a new billion dollar business.

- Snow White.

- When you look around the world now,

we're surrounded by animated features.

This was the first one.

This was the creation of

a thing that impacts media forever.

[dramatic music]

- But when Walt was traveling

from Kansas City to Hollywood in 1923...

- A little advice.

If you're serious about making movies in this town,

drop the cartoons.

- So, the best way to motivate Walt

is to tell him that what he's trying to do is impossible.

"You're telling me animation can't be anything.

I'll show you what animation is capable of."

[dramatic music]

- [Announcer] By 1932,

nearly one man out of four was unemployed.

Working men spent their days on park benches

and the government set up public soup kitchens.

- The United States has suffered

three years of the Great Depression,

each year worse than the previous one.

- There were 9,000 banks that collapsed.

There were farms that foreclosed.

Over two million Americans lost their homes.

It was a time of broken dreams and shattered lives.

- There's not a town of any size

that escapes the Great Depression.

It impacts virtually every aspect of American life,

except for, perhaps, the motion picture industry.

[upbeat music]

- And the reason for that is because

films are fairly inexpensive and it is a meaningful escape.

You can get into the world of fantasy

and forget about all your problems for a little bit.

- [Narrator] By 1932, around 60 million Americans,

roughly half the national population,

crowd into theaters across the country every week.

[film projector clicking]

And now, going to the movies is a better deal than ever.

- Movie theaters are starting to do double features.

You buy one ticket

and you're gonna watch two films back to back.

- And if there's gonna be two main features,

where does that leave the animated short?

- [Narrator] Seven minute cartoon shorts

have been a staple of pre-show entertainment

since the 1920s.

Now, they face the chopping block.

- All these animation studios are panicking.

The short is their only product.

[birds chirping] [pensive music]

- [Narrator] And Walt Disney,

now at the peak of the animation world,

thanks to Mickey Mouse, has perhaps the most to lose.

- Walt Disney finds himself in a very

interesting position in the early 1930s.

Mickey Mouse is one of the biggest stars in the world,

but he knows the clock is ticking.

- So Walt has to figure out a way to create animation

that can compete in the age of the double feature,

and he realizes, "I need to create something so unique,

so visually captivating, so unmissable,

they wouldn't dream of cutting it."

- Mr. Kalmus.

- Mr. Disney.

Mr. Disney.

- Call me Walt.

- [Narrator] Walt and his older brother Roy

have run the Disney Studio together

for nearly a decade.

Now, Walt seeks out a radical new technology

that almost every major studio in Hollywood has rejected.

- As you know, it has been impossible to make movies

that capture the full color spectrum until now.

We call it Technicolor.

- You're telling me this camera can capture the entire rainbow?

- Every color, bright as real life.

[dramatic music]

- How does it work?

- The world of film in the 1930s

was mostly a black and white world.

This was due to technological limitations.

Film could only pick up

whether something was light or dark.

So light colors turned to white.

Dark colors turned to black.

- In the early 1930s, the Technicolor company

comes up with three-strip Technicolor.

The light is broken into red, green, and blue.

Each of these is recorded on a separate piece of film,

and if you can get three primary colors,

you can match any color that the human eye can see.

- But Technicolor costs too much money.

- So at this point, all the big studios

are sticking with black and white.

- Walt, a word?

[tense music]

We can't afford this.

This camera will triple our lab costs, and for what?

Nobody's gonna pay us even a penny more for a color cartoon.

- There might not have been a bigger difference

between brothers when it comes to Walt and Roy.

Roy had an acumen for money.

- And to Roy, the sensible thinker,

the idea of rocking the boat and taking

a massive risk in a different direction,

just wasn't a sound business sense.

But Walt was the dreamer.

[dramatic music]

- Mr. Kalmus,

I want the next Disney cartoon to be in Technicolor.

[Mr. Kalmus chuckles]

Show me how it works again.

[tense music]

- Walt was relentless.

Once he had that vision in his head,

there was no stopping him.

He was a train, he was a train with no brakes.

- So they were working on a short film

called Flowers and Trees next,

and they were midway through in black and white

when Walt asked them to redo it in color.

- He's just gonna throw it out and start over.

And everybody's worried, like,

"Oh, my god, how much is this gonna cost?"

- [Narrator] But before the short

can be filmed in three-strip Technicolor,

it needs to be painted in color.

- The animators draw the character on paper.

Then that's given to the ink and paint department.

- And the inkers would take each drawing

and trace it with ink on a sheet of celluloid,

and they would pass that to the painters

to paint the celluloid sheets.

- The ink and paint department was filled with women,

because the thought was that they had the ability

to do the intricate detail work in coloring

in the animation cells.

- Hazel Sewell was Walt Disney's sister-in-law,

and she takes over ink and paint,

becoming one of the first women

to oversee a major department in Hollywood.

Now, Hazel and her team had to figure out

how they were gonna apply all this color

for the Technicolor process.

- But they only have black, white,

and gray paint to work with.

- So Hazel had to go down to the local hardware store

and find color paints off the shelf,

formulated for painting furniture or the side of a barn.

- But they'll find out they couldn't just use that,

because it's too streaky,

and it takes too long to dry,

and it cracks very easily.

- Hazel, how we making out?

Tried everything?

- Nothing's working.

[gentle music]

Roy wants me to talk you out of this.

- [scoffs] I know he does.

If we can't find the color paint to do the job,

I guess we'll just have to make some ourselves.

- All right, Walt,

but if we pull this off, we're expecting a raise.

[inspiring music]

- So Walt experiments with this Technicolor technology.

They are forging into new territory here.

- So it is women chemists mixing together these paints

in order to make them function in terms of an animated film.

Really, coming up with a whole

rainbow of colors that never existed before.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] On July 30, 1932,

Americans are finally able to see a motion picture

in full color for the first time in history.

[gentle orchestral music]

- Flowers and Trees is not just the first full color cartoon,

it's the first full color film, period.

We are seven years before The Wizard of Oz.

I mean, suddenly everybody's waking up

to the fact that color is where it's at.

- Technicolor changed the game.

I would've loved to actually be there

at that time to see and hear people's reactions

as they're coming out of the movie theater.

Like, their minds had to have been blown.

- So Flowers and Trees is a big hit,

but Walt is not really satisfied with that,

because in a film industry dominated by big studios,

cartoon shorts are still kind of seen as second tier.

- Short films are the appetizer

before the main attraction, if you will.

They weren't the meal itself.

Disney really wants to be the main event,

and he wants animation to really be elevated

to the level of the main attraction.

- Walt thought of that man on the train.

- If you're serious about making movies in this town,

drop the cartoons.

- [Jim] Walt never forgot that man for looking down on him

because he was in animation.

[pensive music]

- It motivated him.

He wanted to make animation great.

He wanted to make it an art form.

- Walt Disney could've continued making those shorts.

They were still bringing money in,

still hugely popular,

but he realizes if he is ever going to get

the respect that he believes he deserves,

he has to do something big,

something unprecedented,

and dangerous, and risky.

This could be groundbreaking,

or it could be the end of Walt Disney.

- [Narrator] After revolutionizing cinema

with color, Walt Disney embarks on an even bolder idea:

the first animated feature film.

But the stories Walt wants to put on the silver screen

have lost popularity in Hollywood.

- At that time, Paramount released an all-star

live action version of Alice In Wonderland,

but it was a giant flop. [laughs]

- Lewis Carroll's written this beautiful fantastical tale,

but the limitations of the technology of the time

make it look super duper creepy.

- And the film bombed.

This seemed to turn Hollywood against stories of fantasy.

- But Walt Disney realizes that the problem

is not telling fantasy tales.

It's trying to tell a fantastical tale

using live action.

- And I think Disney figured out,

watching what Paramount was doing,

that the venue for this type of fantasy should be animation.

- And he saw the potential in animated feature films,

and that they can hold up against live action films.

- [Narrator] Walt believes animated features are the future

if he can find the right story.

- Walt is a poorly educated,

not very worldly individual.

I mean, he did go to France after World War I,

but that's pretty much it.

Yet, he drew on his rich imaginative life

as the source of all of his work.

[ethereal music]

- Walt was a teenager

delivering issues of the Kansas City Star,

and one weekend, there was a free screening

of the movie Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs,

a silent film, just for paper boys.

And Walt was mesmerized,

and he just never forgot that feeling of wonder and comfort.

That stayed with him forever.

[ethereal music]

- Americans love fairytales.

If you went to the typical middle-class household

to the bookshelf, you would find Grimm's fairytales.

Many of them in the public domain.

And so Walt is gonna turn to fairytales as a way

to make that transition into animated feature film.

- Snow White just felt right.

It was this wonderful fantasy world

with these fantasy characters,

with magic and intrigue.

And what better way to tell that story

than presenting it in full color as a feature length film?

[tense music]

- Walt said, "We're not out to make a great film.

We're out to make the greatest film."

His goals were that lofty and that high.

- But in the 1930s, the idea of making

a feature length animated film is insane.

It was unprecedented as an idea.

[suspenseful music]

- People didn't think that a feature length cartoon

would go anywhere, would make any money.

- People thought, it's gonna be boring,

or get this, it's going to be bad for you.

There were worries that people would feel nauseated

from looking at an hour and a half of cartoon characters.

- Not even Walt Disney

understands how this is gonna happen.

There are so many challenges:

manpower, technology, marketing.

This is a mountain that's never been climbed before.

- [Narrator] Walt hands his best artists

the project's first critical task:

designing his leading lady.

[pensive music]

- Walt hired Grim Natwick,

famous for having designed Betty Boop, a very big star.

And so when the Disney artists were trying to figure out

what Snow White was going to look like,

Grim Natwick offered some designs.

- This is too Betty Boop.

Her head's gigantic.

We're not making a cartoon here.

This is a feature film.

You got to have believable characters

that audiences will take seriously.

Our princess needs to look like a real girl.

- [Adam] He is asking more from the medium

than the medium can actually provide.

- Walt realized that to do an animated feature,

the first thing you're gonna have to do

is more realistic characters,

and you're gonna have to do more dramatic characters.

It can't just be comedy.

It has to have some sentimental moments.

People thought like, "Well, Disney can make people laugh,

"=but can they make people cry?"

- He does a short film called The Goddess of Spring.

- So, The Goddess of Spring short

was an attempt by Walt to solve the puzzle

for realistic human characters.

- And it doesn't seem to work.

We have human forms in this cartoon

that come off a little weird.

Walt realizes, we need to up our game.

[suspenseful music]

- Snow White has to look like a real person.

It can't just look like some character.

So the first thing he had to do was plus up his animators,

and so he sent them all back to school.

- He brought art instructors over

from Chouinard Art Institute to retrain his artists.

- They're gonna bring in actors and actresses

and actually act out Snow White.

- And you can see the nuances

of how Snow White moves or gestures.

All of that was from an actress,

and that was one of the ways

that Walt drew people into his characters.

Their reactions were so real.

- And it became this integral part

of how to solve the puzzle for realistic animation.

- This was truly revolutionary,

and Walt did it first.

- At that time there were no art schools

that were teaching animation,

because animation wasn't at all

considered to be art, with a capital A.

- Walt begins the very first

animation training programs ever to achieve

what he's aiming for with feature length animation.

- [Adam] Nothing like this had ever been done,

so it's an extremely labor intensive,

time consuming, and very expensive process.

- [Narrator] The ambitious animated feature

consumes more and more resources.

- He had to throw everything he had at it,

and they were just hemorrhaging money.

- The only thing that was bringing money in

were the shorts,

but Mickey Mouse ain't the only game in town anymore.

- Everybody's getting into the animation game.

Because of the success of Mickey and Flowers and Trees,

Warner Brothers starts their studios.

- I'll sh-show you,

you f-four-legged, p-piece of hamburger!

- The Warner characters had come on very strong.

- They created edgier characters, like Porky Pig,

that could be a little bit more satirical

or get into more mischief.

- You're j-j-just a crook!

- They're the ones starting to get the attention,

and starting to edge Mickey away from his position

as king of the hill of the cartoon world.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, with Waltz's focus

increasingly consumed by his animated feature,

Roy is tasked with finding the means

to cover the project's growing costs.

- Remember, we were still

in the middle of the Great Depression.

There wasn't a lot of loose cash to be thrown around.

Walt needed his brother Roy as his business partner.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] Roy estimates Snow White will cost $250,000,

nearly 12 times the budget for a standard cartoon short.

- Roy believed in his brother's vision,

but knew it was risky

and knew it was up to him to get the money.

[tense music]

- They will end up finding

a lifeline in the form of Bank of America.

Or maybe, to put a finer point on it,

Bank of America's going to agree to hear them out.

[tense music]

- Stop it, Walt, you're making me nervous.

- I should be at the studio, Roy,

not waiting to grovel for some bankers.

- Follow my lead.

Let me do most of the talking.

For God's sakes, don't mention the art classes.

- Gentlemen, thanks for waiting.

We're ready for you now.

- Remember, we don't have to do this.

We can just walk away.

We've never asked for this much before.

We'll have to mortgage everything,

including the mouse.

Are you sure you wanna take this step?

- If they take this bank loan right now,

they risk losing their studio.

They risk losing all of the characters that they've created.

This is the point of no return.

- Walt was putting everything on the line

with this one production.

- Come on, Roy, they're waiting.

[intense music]

- Walt Disney gets an idea in his head

and he's not going to stop until he sees

that through to fruition, regardless of cost.

Walt believes, "I'll get the film in on time.

I'll get the film in on or under budget."

[suspenseful music]

And none of that happens.

- [Reporter] In the world's film capital

is the studio that stands as a monument

to the great genius of Walt Disney.

He has built an enterprise

that employs 700 skilled

and highly-specialized artistic workers.

- [Narrator] The Disney Studio is undergoing

explosive growth, thanks to an enormous bank loan

that has Walt up to his neck in debt.

Now, Walt's epic hiring spree has made his feature

the largest collaborative art project in history.

- He basically takes his studio

and turns it into an incubator

for the best talent.

It's kind of like Silicon Valley ahead of its time,

and he pushes these artists to make something

that the world's never seen before.

- [Narrator] Walt's insistence on innovation

creates a new challenge for which his army of artists

has already been working on a solution.

[birds chirping] [pensive music]

- There's no way to rehearse an animated feature

to find out if it all holds together.

It's not like live action.

So they need a system to review this work

before you're gonna actually animate these scenes.

- So they come up with an alternative,

which ends up really becoming an industry standard,

and that's called storyboarding.

- In order to make this film the way he wants it,

Walt Disney has to create technology that doesn't exist

and try new techniques that have never been used before.

That's kind of crazy,

but no matter what it takes,

he wants to see his vision through.

- Storyboarding allows Walt Disney to visualize

any sequence, shot by shot.

It's really groundbreaking.

- The major blockbusters of today all rely on storyboards,

and it's hard to believe that storyboards

were used for the first time ever by Walt Disney.

- Can we give the forest more depth?

It's so flat, it looks like a drawing.

- It is a drawing.

- That's fine for an eight minute short, not a feature.

[pensive music]

There has to be a way you can push the camera in.

- Walt has it in his mind that Snow White

is going to rival live action filmmaking.

He wants to get effects, like a camera push-in,

that you would get with live action.

- But you couldn't do that in 2D animation at the time,

because the thing that live action gets

that's hard to do in animation is depth.

- There has to be a way to envelop the audience

in this world to feel the trees around you.

- How?

- I don't know.

But we're gonna figure it out.

- Walt really wants to depict

a three dimensional world in cartoons,

and so he has to literally create

the technology to do that.

[determinant music]

- Instead of a background being painted on one single plane,

you had multiple glass panels,

so that you could get an effective background,

mid-ground, and foreground all layered with depth.

- But what about when you travel forward?

How do we go inside a storybook?

Was the question Walt wanted to answer.

- If you're walking down a country road at night,

the moon stays at the same place in the sky.

Well, when you're animating on a 2D surface,

as you move the camera closer to the image,

the moon gets bigger.

It's not working the way that our eyes see naturally.

- Well, any progress?

It's better.

I like the depth we're getting.

But what about the movement?

If we wanna grab people's attention,

we have to move through the space.

- We tried it.

The minute you move in with the camera,

the effect is ruined.

Take a look.

[gentle music]

- The closer you get to the object you're zooming into,

the bigger everything else appears,

the bigger the moon appears, and it just kind of looks

like you're zooming into a painting.

- What if the camera doesn't move?

What if the camera stays stationary?

Why don't we move the cell layers like this?

[pensive music]

- That looks pretty good,

but we'd have to shoot it frame by frame.

- This could cost a lot of money.

- The only thing I want you worrying about

is how to crack this.

[tense music]

Let Roy worry about the money.

- You got it, Walt.

- Walt Disney pushes the boundaries

of art and technology,

because Snow White had to look completely different

than anything anybody had ever seen before.

In order to do that, they had to create

an entirely new camera apparatus,

a whole new technology.

- [Narrator] But as Walt moves film innovation forward,

production drags on with no end in sight.

[suspenseful music]

- If you were doing a live action film,

it'd take you maybe from story idea

to final edit and premiere, maybe about six months.

Animation is a very different process.

Live action is like a sprint.

Animation is more like a marathon.

- Three years into the production,

they barely had a single scene animated,

and in a third of that time,

they literally built the Empire State building.

You could've built three Empire State buildings

in the amount of time it took to get to this point

of Snow White's animation.

[pensive music]

- Roy ends up having to increase the budget several times over,

and so many of the trade papers in Hollywood

would eventually call it Walt Disney's Folly.

- What's your point, Roy?

- That we've been throwing money at Snow White

for three years and have nothing to show for it.

The whole town is talking about us.

- Let them talk.

I don't care.

You shouldn't either.

If you can't handle the pressure,

maybe you should go back to selling vacuum cleaners.

- It is not just me you need to worry about.

I imagine the bank has seen this too.

If they cut us off,

neither of us be will be selling anything in this town.

- The fact of the matter was,

Disney wasn't making a lot of money.

Bank of America was keeping him afloat.

[tense music]

- He's making a movie that has to break box office records

in order to justify these expenses.

He is digging a hole he may never crawl out of.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] Although he risks losing everything,

Walt Disney pours a fortune into an innovative camera

unlike anything the world has ever seen,

that will take animation to the next dimension.

- Since this new camera used many planes,

we called it the multi-plane camera.

- The camera points down

and you have different layers of backgrounds painted on glass.

You have people calculating how much

to move each of those panes of glass,

creating the illusion that you're traveling

into a storybook page with the illusion of depth.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Walt's colossal new camera

is about 12 feet high

and requires a dedicated team of operators.

- The multiplane camera is like going from Atari to Xbox.

You're creating a three dimensional view way before CGI.

That's how insane this idea is.

It's huge.

- So we are pulled into the frightening

areas of the forest when Snow White gets lost.

We feel the depth of her fear

through the depth of the camera

and the darkness of the palette.

It's almost otherworldly.

[dramatic piano music]

- [Narrator] But before any of these

extraordinary scenes can be completed,

the studio must account for using Walt's new camera

which costs tens of thousands of dollars

to film even a single sequence.

[tense music]

- Walt Disney was definitely a perfectionist.

He always wanted bigger and better,

and cost be damned.

- There you are.

- You've gotta see what this camera could do, Roy.

It's worth its weight in gold.

- Well, Bank of America just called.

They wanna know when they can see the movie.

- We'll save them front row seats at the premier.

- No, Walt, they wanna see it now.

They're coming to the studio this week.

[Roy sighs]

[tense music]

- In September 1937,

the Disneys basically ran out of money.

So when Roy went to the Bank of America

and said, "We need more money,"

they said, "Okay, at this point,

we have to see what you're working on."

- Walt Disney is really on the brink of financial collapse,

so it's a very critical moment.

- Walt was a nervous wreck showing this

unfinished film to an audience of one,

Joe Rosenberg, their banker.

- It's not really animated,

it's pencil drawings, there's no sound.

It's rough.

- There are whole sequences

where Walt is still providing narration,

and saying, "Well, this is what's going to go in here."

- But they absolutely need him to believe in this project,

if there's going to be a project.

[suspenseful music]

- Joe Rosenberg, he is watching it,

apparently, just stone faced.

Not a laugh, nothing.

- Rosenberg never says a word.

Can you imagine?

This guy is the money.

This guy is the bank,

and he seems to have hated it.

And so Walt thinks they have blown it.

Their studio is kaput.

[dramatic music]

- Mr. Rosenberg, it's just a pencil test.

The finished film will be world's better, please.

[tense music]

- That film is going to make a hat full of money.

- You won't regret this, Mr. Rosenberg.

Just one more year.

- Have the film ready by Christmas.

No more delays.

[tense music]

- That gives us about three months.

How much is left to animate?

- Nearly all of it.

[Roy sighs]

[tense music]

- 125, check.

- [Narrator] The entire workforce at the Disney Studio

races around the clock to complete Snow White

by a looming, pre-Christmas deadline.

- It was all hands on deck to make this thing.

These animators are working literally 24/7.

I mean, like, I can't even imagine what

the energy must have been like in that space.

[dramatic music]

- The studio was risking it all.

They knew they had to just pull

everything together to make this happen,

or everyone, including Walt, would be out of a job.

- We broke a background.

- What?

- I dropped it loading it into the multiplane.

It shattered all over the floor.

- Dammit, we don't have time for this.

- Sorry, Hazel. - [Hazel] Which one?

- [Worker] A foreground plane for the castle.

- We'll make a new one as fast as we can.

[tense music]

Go shoot another scene until I finish this.

- Yes, ma'am.

- [Narrator] With the completion of Snow White

coming down to the wire,

Walt makes an impossible decision.

- Disney makes the risky choice

to pull everyone from the shorts

to get Snow White finished.

- Remember, all of the Looney Tune characters,

like Porky Pig, are now gobbling up market share.

The only thing that was profitable at Disney Studios

at the time, were the Mickey Mouse shorts,

and he decides to shut it down.

He is gonna put everybody on Snow White.

- That's how desperate he is to get this thing done on time.

- [Narrator] As the film nears completion,

Walt holds a rough screening for his staff

and learns what his own artists really think.

- Look at this.

A comment card from the staff screening this morning.

We showed the whole picture.

- Walt gets a note from one of the studio hands,

that says, "Walt..."

- "Stick to shorts."

- Which really hit a nerve for Walt.

Like, really, really hit a nerve.

- He's right, Roy.

It's all that rushing.

At the end of the film, the prince shimmies

when he kneels down to the glass coffin.

It's shoddy work.

- In the rush to finish the film in the last three months,

there's what's called the prince shimmy.

Near the end of the film,

when the prince comes to see Snow White,

he wobbles a little bit on the screen.

- And Walt really wanted to change that,

and said he wanted to fix it.

- Walt was never one to just be like,

"Yeah, that's good enough."

He was a problem solver.

- Okay, Walt, how much to fix it?

- Not much.

Maybe 300,000.

[dramatic music]

- Walt Disney is a perfectionist,

but his brother Roy knows they have

already leveraged every single penny they have.

And the deadline for Snow White is approaching.

- But Walt wants Snow White to be perfect.

I mean, that's the kind of odds he's playing here.

[suspenseful music]

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] The Disney Studio has weeks left

to finish the world's first animated feature.

But an imperfection has Walt considering

a drastic solution.

- Okay, Walt, how much to fix it?

- Not much.

Maybe 300,000.

- It's a huge gamble,

because Walt was staring at the possible scenario

that he's not able to finish this film,

and there's no game plan for that.

And Roy was worried about whether or not

he could pull this off.

- It's not just fixing the animation.

We have to shoot it all again and who knows what else.

[dramatic music]

This is serious stuff, Roy.

That's just one error.

Who knows how many I've missed?

I need more time and money to get it right.

- We're completely out of both.

The film gets delivered in a few weeks no matter what.

- Roy was always the voice of reason,

and usually Walt would override him,

and say, "Well, I don't care."

And this was one of the few times where Walt acquiesced.

- I'm sorry, Walt.

The prince will shimmy.

[Walt sighs]

[bright music] - [Reporter] December 21, 1937,

all of Hollywood turned out for the world premier

of Walt Disney's $1.5 million

feature length animated fairytale,

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

- Snow White had a full red carpet treatment.

It was this beautiful thing, everyone came out.

- Shirley Temple was there,

Douglas Fairbanks, Marlene Dietrich.

Roy and Lillian showed up, all dressed to the nines.

[projector clicking] [ethereal music]

- Walt, you're missing your own movie.

- Lilly, I've seen it plenty.

- It's wild when you realize how much risk

really went into Snow White.

If they fail, they lose the studio.

They lose all the characters that they've created.

This film is going to make or break,

not just Disney Studios, not just Walt Disney,

but the legacy of Disney as a whole.

[pensive music]

- I'll be damned.

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

are tearing up down there.

- Because it's beautiful, Walt.

- Walt had created such a connection,

such a sense of realness and humanity

in these characters in Snow White,

that the audience started to cry.

Walt, he had made animation real.

[dramatic music]

- And then when the film ended,

it was like a thunderous applause.

Like, people stood and cheered.

[audience cheering]

- [Narrator] Snow White earns a record setting

$8 million for the studio,

about 185 million today.

- Snow White was not just a popular cartoon.

Snow White was the number one feature film of all time.

It was just raking in millions and millions of dollars.

[camera bulb firing]

- Everyone told him that it wouldn't work.

That it was a crazy idea.

So it was incredibly vindicating for him.

[cameras flashing]

- Walt really proved there was a audience

who wanted animated feature length films

and it changed the industry forever.

- [Tom] It was the success of Snow White that created

the most lucrative part of what Hollywood is today.

The animation industry has just transcended Hollywood

and it really is born with Snow White.

- Most people have been exposed to animated features

for so long that it is hard to imagine a world without them.

It's a multi-billion dollar industry now.

But none of this would exist if Walt Disney

hadn't pushed the boundaries of the medium.

The combination of imagination, technology, talent,

and artistic inspiration that produced Snow White,

did nothing less than change filmmaking forever.

[dramatic music]

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