Walt Disney had planned to make a feature-length animation as early as 1934. The profitability of his shorts was limited, as returns were governed by their running time (Steamboat Willie, for instance, ran just seven minutes) and he wanted the room to create stories with more complexity and deeper characters. He initially described the idea as a ‘Feature Symphony’, a musical extension of his Silly Symphony series.

What it became was Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, the first entirely cel-animated feature film in history. It was a huge gamble by Walt – a clean break from his existing characters and a massive leap for the studio in terms of both ambition and technical practicalities. Quite simply, no-one had ever done this before, and the team invented how to make animated feature films as it went along.

The studio’s staff grew to over a thousand, and production lasted three years. At the end of it, nobody was sure what the reaction would be (Walt’s wife Lillian expected that “No one's ever gonna pay a dime to see a dwarf picture”). In the event it was a terrific success, becoming the biggest grossing film of all time with a $6.5 million haul, earning Walt an honorary Oscar (one large statuette and seven smaller ones) and laying the foundation for the future of the company. It has since been named the greatest American animation by the AFI, and earned over $130 million in re-releases.