The Making of 101 Dalmatians
Plot
Pongo and Perdita are the happiest Dalmatians, they’ve just gotten together and already the parents to 15 healthy puppies. However terror strikes when there puppies are kidnapped and it is believed that the evil Cruella Di Vil was behind it, she was the one who wanted to turn those puppies into a fur coat. Can Pongo and Perdita rescue the puppies in time? Watch the film to find out!
Directors: Clyde Geronimi and Hamilton Luske
Writers: Dodie Smith wrote the original story, but Bill Peet wrote the story of the film
Original Story
Dodie got inspiration for the story of 101 Dalmatians because her Dalmatians had puppies, a friend commented that a beautiful coat could have been made out of their fur, and there spiked the inspiration for one of the most iconic villains, Cruella De Vil.
Just like in the film, Dodie’s Dalmatian had 15 puppies, one sadly died but was brought back to life by her husband.
Dodie has said that when she was writing the story she hoped that Walt Disney would want to turn her book into an animated feature. Luckily, she got her wish.
Cast
Rod Taylor voiced Pongo.
Cate Bauer voiced Anita.
The live action reference model for Anita was Helene Stanley, who also modelled for Cinderella and Aurora, which is why these characters look similar.
Ben Wright voiced Roger, however Roger’s singing voice comes from Bill Lee.
Lisa Davis and Cate Bauer both voiced Perdita. Initially it was Lisa who voiced Anita, but when she got married and moved to Ney York she hadn’t recorded all of her lines so Cate Bauer was hired to record the rest of them.
Lisa has revealed that while she recorded her lines, she was observed by the animators and all her little personality traits, like the way she holds her head, and her hand gestures made it into film without her realising she was doing it.
Lisa originally auditioned for Cruella, but she knew she wasn’t the right actress for the part so instead, she asked to audition for Perdita and got the role.
Betty Lou Gerson voiced Cruella De Vil.
The look of Cruella De Vil was inspired by actress Tallulah Bankhead. In the book Cruella is calm and sinister, whereas in the film, Cruella is designed to be very eccentric, over the top and loud. Animator Marc Davis also gained inspiration from actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, because of her love of fur coats.
Another inspiration for the character of Cruella came from Mary Wickes who was the live action model. Mary would later go on to voice Lavern the Gargoyle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Martha Wentworth voiced Nanny, Queenie the cow and Lucy the Goose.
The look of Nanny is based on actress Barbara Luddy, she was the voice of Lady from Lady and the Tramp and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty.
David Frankham voiced Sgt. Tibbs.
Frederick Worlock voiced Horace.
J.Pat O’Malley voiced Colonel and Jasper.
Tom Conway voiced the Quizmaster on the TV and Collie.
Clarence Nash, whose most well known for voicing Donald Duck, provided the barks for the ducks in this film.
Development
Prior to this film appearance, Sleeping Beauty was released which was an expensive feature. It cost $6 million to make and although it was a hit when it first came out and it received positive reviews, the hype of the film died down and the film never made back the money, at least not in the initial run. This left the Disney company in a bit of debt. In fact Walt seriously considered shutting down the animation department all together and focusing on TV and his theme park, Disneyland. Walt did still love animation and wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, he also knew he had a talented group of animators and storytellers, je just needed the right story. That story was Dodie Smiths book “101 Dalmatians” published in 1956. Walt read the book, a year later and knew he needed to turn this into an animated feature so he set to securing the film rights of the book.
Walt asked Bill Peet to story board the film. This was very unusual because normally around 15 people will story board a film, but for this film Bill Peet did all the work. This meant that the story didn’t go through endless rewrites, however this still meant a lot of work for Bill, as he had to draw each shot of each scene himself.
Bill kept Dodie up to date with all the changes he was making, and even sent over some pictures of what the characters would look like. Dodie liked everything that she was sent and has even been heard saying that she thinks Disney made improvements on her characters and story.
Hand drawn animation was the standard way to produce animated films, it was used on all of Walt’s films, up until 101 Dalmatians. For this film they changed to using the Xerox method. This method meant that the animators would draw the scene as normal, then a copier machine would take a picture of the drawing and transport the image to a plate which was submerged in toner and copied to a clear cell which was inked. This process was cheaper, quicker and easier. One way it was cheaper was because it meant that they didn’t need as many ink and painters. In fact the ink and department went from 500 workers to just under 100. It was the end of an era at the Disney animation studio.
One of the downsides of Xeroxing was that it caused the film’s style to be very rough, lots of black lines everywhere. Some animators really liked this because it meant that what they were drawing was shown on screen, however some animators weren’t very tidy with their drawings, like Milt Kahl would be furious to find that someone had changed (improved) his drawings to make them useable for the finished picture.
Walt was not a fan on this style, he was a traditionalist. He much preferred the look of hand drawn animation, and I have to say, I agree with Walt, it doesn’t look as inviting as Cinderella. However the style was here to stay.
All of the cars in the films were made out of cardboard with black pen drawn on the edges and corners, it was filmed, then the footage was put through the Xerox copier and this created film cells with were coloured and that is what you see in the film. They even put little springs on the cars to make it look like the motor is running. In the scene where Cruella crashes her car into the snow, this was actually sand during filming.
Music
Mel Leven the musician for the film wrote a different version of the song “Cruella De Vil” but as he was driving over to the studio to perform the song to Walt, he became inspired by the blues and changed the song to what we know today.
Mel also wrote two other songs for the films. The first titled “Don’t Buy a Parrot from a Sailor” which was going to be sung between Horace and Jasper. The other song was “March of the One Hundred and One”, this would have been sung by the dogs after they escape from Cruella.
The Sherman Brother wrote a song for the film titled “One Hundred and One” but it wasn’t included. If it was it would have been the first time a Sherman song would have been included. Luckily the Sherman Brothers didn’t let this effect there working relationship with Disney because they would go on to write songs for films like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Disney attractions like It’s a Small World and much more.
Lucile Bliss, the voice of Anastasia from Cinderella, sang the Kanine Krunchies catchy theme song.
Easter Eggs
Lucky has a horse shoe shape on his back, because it is seen as a lucky symbol. You can see it most prominently when he is trying to watch TV.
In the Twilight Bark scene you can see Peg, Jock, Bull, Tramp and Lady from Lady and the Tramp.
One thing to notice is that the girl puppies wear blue collars like Perdita, and the boy puppies red collars like Pongo.
When Cruella is on the telephone, there is a tiny face that changes to reflects how Cruella is feeling.
Response
This film was released on 25th January 1961, it premiered at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and it was the highest grossing movie in the US of that year.
One scene that wasn’t received very well was the scene in which the puppies receive substance from the cows because they didn’t think it was appropriate for children.
Overall this film was very successful, it received many successful reviews, including one from TIME.
More Dalmatians
Back in 2003 a direct to video sequel to the original film came out titled “101 Dalmatians: Patch’s London Adventure”. There is also 2 live action films titled “101 Dalmatians” which was released in 1996 and the second was released in 2000 and was titled “102 Dalmatians”.
There is another Dalmatian film rumoured to be coming which will star Emma Stone as Cruella De Vil. It will show the back story to Cruella.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the Making of 101 Dalmatians, come back on Monday 11th March for a blog reviewing Captain Marvel.
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