This building at the end of Mickey Avenue is representative of the historic Carthay Circle Theatre in Hollywood, but behind it lies Shanghai Disneyland’s best kept secret. The Christmas season of 2018 brought the first magical snowfall to Mickey Avenue, but the scene shown in this photo below harkens back to a different kind of snow from the Christmas of 1937.

RKO Pathé newsreel December 1937

“Blasé Hollywood accustomed to gala openings turns out for the most spectacular of them all, the world premiere of the million-and-a-half-dollar fantasy Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs… brings to motion pictures a new medium for a greater art. It looks like a Snow White Christmas for all.”

(Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015 & Korkis, 2012)

Snow White was a groundbreaking motion picture that culminated years of Walt Disney’s experimentation into the first ever feature length animated film (Korkis, 2012a; Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015). Before Snow White there was a general cynicism in hollywood toward belittling a cartoon motion picture as “Walt’s Folly” (Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015). It was important to Walt that the film got a big Hollywood premiere because this showed to the entire world that an animated film could be recognized at the same level as any other motion picture (Korkis, 2012). At the event Walt was reported to have said on stage,”I always dreamed that one day I would attend a gala premiere in Hollywood of one of my cartoons. Tonight you’ve made it come true.” (Korkis, 2012).

The Carthay Circle Theatre was built in 1926 and Walt specifically chose this theatre because of an existing relationship with the theatre owner Fred Miller. This theatre previously premiered the Silly Symphony short film The Skeleton Dance (now celebrating its 90th anniversary). Thanks to Walt’s positive relationship with Fred Miller and the success of The Skeleton Dance, the Carthay Circle Theatre had enough trust to take the leap and give Snow White a historic Hollywood premiere (Korkis, 2012a; Weiss, 2012).

Celebrities from all studios came out for the red carpet premiere including Charlie Chaplin, Ed Sullivan, Judy Garland, and George Burns (Korkis, 2012a; Weiss, 2012). Child star Shirley Temple stood beside the seven dwarfs that were the same size as her and two years later she would present Walt with a special Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hill, 2014a; Korkis, 2012). The event only anticipated crowds of four thousand, but over thirty thousand eager fans gathered outside of the theatre including the film’s assistant animator Marc Davis (Kurtti, 2008 & Korkis, 2012). Other stars from the Mickey Mouse cartoons were there recording in character radio interviews and Clarence Nash performed a live ventriloquy act as the voice of Donald Duck (Korkis, 2012). The premiere also was likely the first time that people could get a photograph with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and The Seven Dwarfs in their early costumes (Korkis, 2012).

(Hill, 2014)

The theatre had special displays outside to make the premiere a true attraction. Children could play among dwarf sized buildings in a 900ft. long Snow White Island diorama that thousands of cars would drive by every day (Korkis, 2012). A small exhibition of photographs, cells, and background drawings gave visitors their first look at the animation process used to make the film they were about to watch out of over 200,000 individual drawings (Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015 & Korkis, 2012).

Inside of the theatre Walt and others from his studio waited in nervous anticipation to see how the film would be received (Korkis, 2012).

Ward Kimball (Animator)

“I was at the premiere in 1937. We were worried. It was being shown at the Carthay Circle Hollywood. We didn’t know how it would go over. Walt was on pins and needles… Anyway, when Snow White is laid out on the marble bier and in come the prince and everybody in the audience is sniffing and I heard people blowing their noses. It was weird. It really got to them. I knew the picture was a winner because they laughed at the gags and cried at a silly thing of a cartoon of a girl who comes to at the prince’s first kiss.”

(Korkis, 2012)

Just getting to the premiere was already a gargantuan triumph since the last cells were painted on November 27 just 23 days before the premiere (Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015).

Robert Givens (Animator)

“The ink-and-paint gals were… some of them were loosing their eyesight. It was a hell of a thing. They were just slaves. They were doing it, but they believed in this thing so much, they were willing to drop dead on the job.”

(Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015)

Ruthie Tompson an Ink and Paint Artist recalled working twelve hour days cleaning and patching cells and Don Lusk told of animators putting in 15 hour days for the cleanup and in-betweening (Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015). Anyone else in the studio would have wanted to take a long break after the premiere, but Walt just kept moving forward (Korkis, 2012).

Woolie Reitherman (Animator)

“I ran into Walt the next morning after the premiere. Instead of talking about how he could now take a little rest, he began talking about the next animated feature, and how he wanted to get started right away. There was only one Walt Disney.”

(Korkis, 2012)

Not only did the premiere fill the 1,500 seat theatre, but a long line also formed to buy tickets for future showings (Korkis, 2012). Long lines continued outside of movie houses across America as the film became a coast-to-coast sensation (Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015). The film’s global box office success gave Walt Disney’s studio the financial capital it would need to keep moving forward on more animated films. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs quickly became the best selling motion picture of all time and this record was not broken until Gone With the Wind premiered in the Carthay Circle Theatre two years later (Korkis, 2012).

The popularity of the movie was not just limited to English speaking Americans but quickly rose to worldwide fame. In February 1938 the Spanish language release of Snow White titled Blanca Nieves y los Siete Enanos also debuted at the Carthay Circle Theatre (Korkis, 2012). As Snow White continued is global rise to fame the movie was well received in Europe where the classic fairy tale originated.

At the Cinema with P.L. Mannock “Snow White Dwarfs Them All”

“The New Gallery, in London, has been booked for 20 weeks for ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ which means that roughly 1,000,000 people are expected to see Disney’s masterpiece in that time.”

(Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015)

In England this film was well received despite the British Board of Film Censors rating that the movie was too frightening for children under the age of 16 (Kuhn, 2007). Before the wide release of the film in the United Kingdom, the movie had already moved around the world to Asia. Snow White’s Asia premiere occurred June 2, 1938 in Shanghai’s Metropol（大上海剧院）and Shanghai’s Nanking （上海南京大戏院）which is now known as the Cadillac Shanghai Concert Hall.

Like the success of The Three Little Pigs five years earlier the characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were heavily commercialized (Kuhn, 2007a; Korkis, 2012).

Eric Smoodin (Film Historian)

“There were Snow White jars and Snow White jelly and Snow White scarves. There are Snow White shows going on in department stores. So the film and the place of commerce are completely one. It’s a commercial triumph for Disney not just because of the film itself, but because of the way that the merchandise is tied to it.”

(Zwonitzer & Colt, 2015)

In China some products that were promoted in conjunction with the film’s Shanghai release included Hagelwood’s Snow White Eskimo Toffee (白雪公主北極太妃) and Jackson & Brothers Co. Snow White Powder (行遜吉白雪公主粉香).

The original Carthay Circle Theatre was demolished in 1969, but its legacy lives on with tributes in Disney theme parks (Harrison 2007a; Weiss, 2012). When Buena Vista Street was built as the entrance of Disney’s California Adventure the historic Carthay Circle Theatre became the visual landmark drawing guests into the park (Weiss, 2012). Inside of The Carthay Circle Theatre is The Carthay Circle Restaurant and Lounge. Inside of Shanghai Disneyland’s Mickey Avenue’s Carthay Circle Theatre is the park’s best kept secret an exclusive members only high end restaurant called Club 33. Very few visitors will ever enter this elite establishment that costs 100,000RMB ($14,000USD) in yearly membership dues and serves set meals costing 868RMB per person ($129USD). If you are fortunate enough to get inside Club 33 you can actually dine in the Garden View Room with a special table located inside the Carthay Circle Theatre’s famous tower.

Garden View Room Inside Club 33

Club 33 members can use the restaurant’s second floor balcony right beside the Carthay Circle Theatre tower for superb viewing of parades and fireworks. This is my favorite viewing location for the show I worked on Ignite the Dream - A Nighttime Spectacular of Magic and Light presented by China Pacific Insurance.

Imagineer Christopher Merritt who was responsible for the design of Mickey Avenue retrieved artifacts from the Disney Archives to examine the true life history of Snow White’s Asia premiere. A display case inside Club 33 has replicas of these artifacts including a RKO Radio Pictures publicity notebook from Snow White’s 1938 China release and Chinese advertisements for products marketed alongside the film’s release. This historical archive is a true hidden treasure and shows the thoughtful dedication taken by Imagineers to recognize Disney’s Chinese history in the design of Mickey Avenue.

Snow White Display Case Inside Club 33

This display case also features animation maquettes from the film and a miniature of a relief that decorates the spiral staircase as part of the “Once Upon a Time” Adventure. This is one of Shanghai Disneyland’s two Snow White attractions and is a first of its kind high tech experience that takes place inside of the Enchanted Storybook Castle. One of the new technologies in this interactive storytelling adventure is the use of electronic sensors to detect gestures as guests motion to forest animals. Another memorable technical effect is when magical illustrations appear to leap off the page of the enchanted storybook. The science behind this illusion is based on optics and basic trigonometry. The careful angling of a glass mirror and mathematical positioning of the light source can achieve magical effects as seen in the beginning and end of the attraction. In the park’s other Snow White attraction, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, powerful lasers are used to make the jewels glisten in the mine where a million diamonds shine. Shanghai Disneyland is remarkable for honoring the longstanding history of the first animated motion picture while at the same time using the latest technology to modernize the way this classic story is told for the Chinese audience.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a historic motion picture with a landmark premiere in Hollywood’s Carthay Circle Theatre. The global success of the film was brought to China in 1938 when Shanghai hosted the Asian premiere of the film and characters were celebrated with merchandising on Chinese products. Today the Carthay Circle Theatre’s iconic architecture can be found on Mickey Avenue as a tribute to the film’s Hollywood premiere, but Shanghai Disneyland’s best kept secret is the historical archive of the film’s Chinese history that can only be viewed inside of the exclusive Club 33.

References

Harrison, S. (2017, July 18).  From the Archives: Carthay Circle Theater [Electronic Version]. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 23, 2019, from https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archives-carthay-circle-theater-20170608-story.html

Hill, J. (2014). Remembering Shirley Temple and her many ties to The Walt Disney Company. Retrieved May 23, 2019, from http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2014/02/11/remembering-shirley-temple-and-her-many-ties-to-the-walt-disney-company.aspx

Kuhn, A. (2007). Snow White in 1930’s England. Retrieved May 23, 2019, from https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/5275/KUHNSnowWhite2010FINAL.pdf?sequence=2

Kurtti, J. (2008). Walt Disney’s Imagineering Legends. New York, NY: Disney Editions.

Korkis, J. (2012). The Revised Vault of Walt. Orlando, FL: Theme Park Press.

Weiss, W. (2012). The Carthay Circle Theatres (plural) at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Park. Retrieved May 23, 2019, from https://yesterland.com/carthay.html

Zwonitzer, M. (Writer), & Colt, S. (Director). (2015). Walt Disney Part One [Television series episode]. In Bellows, S. (Producer), & Prestileo, L. (Producer) The American Experience. Boston, MA:WGBH Educational Foundation

© 2020