1938. The era at that time was known as the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Russian people were welcoming a new post world war reconstruction that spanned all phases of life including cinema. The film was released just a few days after the Soviet Union witnessed the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 that launched in October 1957. Cold War release In 1959, the film was dubbed into English and released by Universal Pictures with the voices of Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk as Gerda and Kai. The film was introduced by a six-minute live-action Christmas prologue featuring TV personality Art Linkletter, as well as a two-minute montage. In the prologue, Linkletter recited the following rhyme just before the film began: "One snowflake two/three snowflakes four/And now you'll see 'The Snow Queen'/if you add a million more." The American version also contained an entirely rewritten musical score and had three new songs in English, two of which replaced the Russian songs (the other one was in the montage). Hollywood Russian composer Joseph Gershenson composed the score for the 1959 film. A U.S. theatrical release of a film from the Soviet Union was a revolutionary moment in the history of the Cold War due to the geopolitical tension between the countries. At this time, the United States was committed to sustaining the Cold War. Under president Eisenhower, the New Look policy advised by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called for resistance to cultural influences from Russia. The visit by Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the American National Exhibition on 24 July 1959 was supposed to lower Cold War tensions by opening cultural exchanges across the two nations, though their discussion at the exhibition became known as the Kitchen Debate. During this cultural rapprochement, leaders were aware of secret U-2 incursions into USSR airspace. Despite the Domino Theory The Snow Queen raised the iron curtain, by becoming the first purchase of a Soviet film by any major American company. M.J.P. Enterprises sold the rights of the movie to Universal for a reported fee of $30,000. It became Universal Pictures' first theatrical animated feature film. On 7 June 1959, The New York Times reported Universal's plan for a major release across Canada and the U.S. for an English dub of the film with an added prologue. In June 1959, The Hollywood Reporter noted that, in order to allow