'Snow White' billboard offered at auction

DALLAS -- A large, colorful billboard from the 1937 release of the animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is up for auction.

Heritage Auctions said the rare billboard is expected to sell for at least $10,000 on Saturday in Dallas. The 20-by-9-foot billboard was printed in England to promote the Disney film there. It features three scenes, the main one showing a rosy-cheeked Snow White in front of a castle in her classic outfit with a bright yellow skirt, surrounded by the dwarfs and other characters from the film.

"It's delightful; it really is," said Grey Smith, the auction house's director of movie posters.

The billboard, which has been in a private collection for more than a decade, comprises 12 panels. The auction house says all but one of the panels is original -- one missing panel was re-created from an image in a rare press book for the film.

Smith said the billboard likely was preserved because just one panel was missing. He noted similar billboards would have been pasted up and then destroyed.

A detailed view of the 20-foot wide by 9-feet high large colorful billboard of the 1937 release of the animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" Monday in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

"It was a very clean, clean poster, other than the missing panel. There were no chunks, pieces out of the border, etc. You could tell the poster was unused, never been put up," he said.

Smith said after re-creating the missing bottom left panel, which features two bunnies, the auction house had the entire poster backed with archival linen.

The private collector offering up the billboard had purchased it from a Parisian movie poster dealer who had said the billboard came from a Frenchwoman who stored it in her attic, Smith said. Where the billboard was before that remains a mystery, he said.