Thursday, April 12, 2012

Walt Disney's Horror Movie

In 1934, when Walt Disney called for a meeting among his artists, a rumor had spread that he was going to shut the studio down and they would all be left unemployed during the great depression. Instead he personally told them in his own spellbinding way the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which he intended to make into his first feature length film. It was a risk unlike any other he had taken before. The film would cost a million and a half dollars at a time Disney was spending anywhere from ten to thirty thousand on his short cartoons. Doubts came from his wife Lillian and his brother and business partner Roy, who were sure they would be in debt for most of the rest of the lives. Also nervous was Walt's backer Bank of America, who at one point interrupted the production by cutting off his credit. Then there were the heads of the other studios like MGM, Universal and Warner Brothers. They would gather for their weekly poker games at the Hillcrest Country Club and speculate that Walt, who they called "the Mickey Mouse Man", would never succeed, no one would sit still for an hour and a half to watch a cartoon. And the press referred to Snow White as "Disney's Folly".

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