 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures . Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm , it is the first full @-@ length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney animated feature film . The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank , Richard Creedon , Merrill De Maris , Otto Englander , Earl Hurd , Dick Rickard , Ted Sears and Webb Smith . David Hand was the supervising director , while William Cottrell , Wilfred Jackson , Larry Morey , Perce Pearce , and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film 's individual sequences . 
