Biography | Walt Disney — The Theatre on San Vicente That Took the First Feature

People treat Snow White as if Hollywood had always believed a feature-length cartoon could hold a night. On 21 December 1937 the film opened at the Carthay Circle Theatre, 6316 San Vicente Boulevard. Dwight Gibbs had designed the Spanish Colonial Revival house in 1926 for the developer J. Harvey McCarthy. The auditorium was a circle set inside a square. The tower faced the street. This was Disney's first feature-length cartoon. It was not the first animated feature ever made. Lotte Reiniger's silhouette film The Adventures of Prince Achmed had already played in 1926. What was new here was an American studio betting a full evening, in Technicolor, on drawn figures. RKO distributed the picture. The house was sold out. Searchlights and radio microphones stood on San Vicente. Hollywood names filled the seats. The event was treated as a studio premiere, not a cartoon matinee. The general American release followed on 4 February 1938. The theatre lasted until 1969. NAFI demolished it and put offices on the lot. A visitor now finds low office buildings and, across San Vicente at McCarthy Vista, Carthay Circle Park. Replicas of the tower stand inside Disney parks. They are souvenirs. The premiere happened on this corner. Photo: Los Angeles Times photographic archive, 13 September 1937, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The still shows the same house three months earlier, at the premiere of The Life of Emile Zola. Portrait: Boy Scouts of America, 1946, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.