Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

3/29/2025

Easton’s 300th anniversary celebration continues with a showing of the 1916 silent film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, written and produced by Winthrop Ames.

The film will be shown on Saturday, May 3rd at 7:00 pm in the Hemingway Theater at Stonehill College. There is seating for 250 people, doors open at 6:30. Tickets will be sold at the door.
The story is old, a German folk tale, and first recorded in the early 19th century. It was included in a collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. They updated their story in 1854. In the first Grimm versions, the dwarfs didn't have names, but the Winthrop Ames’s 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs gave them the names Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick, and Quee.
The tale was written as a play by Winthrop Ames under the pseudonym Jessie Braham White and produced by him under his own name. Debuting at the Little Theater in New York City on October 31, 1912, the play starred Marguerite Clark. The play was a more light-hearted version of the tale that was appropriate for children. Performances were held after school at 3:30 and later eleven o’clock shows were added on Saturdays as the play was so popular. The play was well-received, and Marguerite Clark went on to star in the 1916 silent film. A young Walt Disney saw that film.
The film has a long history. In a letter dated November 23, 1936, and addressed to Dodd Mead and Company, Winthrop Ames acknowledged his sale of the talking picture and motion picture rights of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Walt Disney Productions, Ltd. of Hollywood. Disney's film animated the story and introduced the names of the dwarfs we know today: Dopey, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy and Doc. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature film produced by Disney (1937) and has gone through many incarnations.