TURKISH PREMIERE OF SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

The above ad, published in the daily Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet on December 16th, 1938, announces the upcoming Turkish premier of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) on December 21st in two Turkish cinemas, Taksim and Sümer. The ad promotes Pamuk Prenses ve 7 Cüce as "the greatest movie of the world currently being screened in 60,000 cinemas."

One interesting information we learn from this ad is that the prints imported to Turkey were dubbed in French and hence apparently came to Turkey via France.

Taksim and Sümer were located in central Istanbul with a walking distance from each other, the former on the main city square and the latter on the main boulevard leading from there. I have not yet been able to establish how many weeks Pamuk Prenses ve 7 Cüce played in these cinemas, but on January 11th, 1939, it began to be screened in the Ferah cinema in the Şehzadebaşı district of the 'old city' region of Istanbul. On February 1st, it was released in the Tayyare cinema in İzmir. In Novenber, it re-appeared in Istanbul, this time in the Akın cinema in the central Pangaltı district. There were further screenings in Istanbul in 1940 and 1941.

Prior to the theatrical debut, Disney's Snow White had appeared in print in Turkey initially as a serialization of the US Sunday newspaper strips in the Turkish children's weekly magazine Yavrutürk in late 1938 and as Turkish editions of a series of illustrated story books published in early 1939.