Find on this page the lobby cards used to promote the film during its successive releases in the USA.
1937
These nine original American 11″ X 14″ lobby cards were used for the original 1938 release of the film in the USA, and possibly from the original 1937 premiere engagement at the Carthay Circle Theater. The drawings are from Gustaf Tenggren and Tom Wood. Interestingly, one of them, called “Christmas Eve in the dwarfs’ cottage”, is not a scene from the film.
Four rare larger 13″ X 15″ jumbo lobby cards were sent to premiere theaters to promote the film. They were made by the dye-transfer photographic process which yielded a richly colored print on heavyweight paper. The prints measure 15″ x 13″ with an image area of 10″ x 8″.
Finally, the 8″ X 10″ blue “souvenir colofoto” introducing the title characters was offered in the campaign books given to theater owners. RKO invited them to use the reverse side for publicity: “Use this space for your ad or program. Sell the other half to one of your local merchants.” A minimum of 500 cards could be purchased for $3.50, with a sliding-scale price of $5.00 per thousand copies if they ordered at least 11,000 cards.
1940
As soon as the summer 1940, Snow White is rereleased in American theaters as part of a package called The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits. The four other hits besides Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are three shorts: Ferdinand the Bull, The Practical Pig, The Ugly Duckling, and Donald’s Lucky Day. After a generic card, there are three Snow White cards and one additional card for each short.
1944
A set of eight 11″ × 14″ lobby cards was produced for the 1944 re-release of Snow White by RKO Radio Pictures. The tagline “See it again” reflects the film’s history: aside from the 1940 package program, this marked its first true reissue.
The imagery places a clear emphasis on the dwarfs, who appear in every card. Snow White is the only other character featured, and even then, only discreetly. Notably, at least three cards revisit the scene in which Grumpy lectures the others, with two of them presenting nearly identical artwork.
1952
In 1952, a set of eight 11″ × 14″ lobby cards was produced to promote the new re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through RKO. This time, the set did not include a title card as in previous editions. Dopey appears along the border of every card, while Snow White once again takes center stage in most of the illustrations.
With the exception of two cards, these are photographic reproductions of cel set-ups created specifically for the occasion, closely inspired by the original Tom Wood drawings previously used for earlier lobby cards, books, and other promotional material. Rather than true color photographs, however, they were produced using the Color-Glos process, in which black-and-white photographic prints were hand-tinted with color. This explains, for example, why Snow White’s dress appears blue.
1958
The set of eight 11″ × 14″ lobby cards supplied to theater owners in 1958, in a white envelope proudly advertising them as “full-color,” reflected the film’s first reissue under the Buena Vista banner. It also illustrated the decreasing cost of color photography and printing processes: for the first time, it became economically viable to reproduce cel set-ups photographically with a high degree of accuracy and in their true colors, without relying on hand-tinting processes such as Color-Glos. The resulting images gave the illusion of genuine frames from the film itself, even though every scene had actually been created specifically for promotional purposes.
The selected scenes also offered a broader range of characters than previous sets. In addition to the title characters, the Queen, the Witch, and the Prince were now prominently featured.
1967
The 11″ × 14″ lobby cards produced for Buena Vista’s 1967 reissue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were visually almost identical to the previous set. The main change was the replacement of the image showing the Prince leaning over Snow White’s glass coffin with a new scene of Snow White sweeping the cottage. A title card featuring the artwork from the 1967 poster was also added, bringing the complete set to nine cards.
