Industry insiders called it Disney's Folly, and Walt Disney's own wife and brother begged him to abandon it before it bankrupted the studio. This episode explores the stubborn vision behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the 1937 film that became the highest-grossing animated film in history when adjusted for inflation. We start with the hard ceiling of the Silly Symphonies shorts, the abandoned feature ideas like Alice in Wonderland, Rip Van Winkle, Babes in Toyland, and Bambi, the 1916 silent Snow White that Disney saw as a Kansas City newsboy, and the night in 1934 when he locked his animators on a soundstage and acted out the entire story for three hours.

We then follow the creative pivots that made the film work: scrapping the goofy comedic Queen for a cold, menacing villain, cutting fully animated sequences like the soup-eating scen ...