by Erika Cox
Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians was a full-length
animated film first released on January 15, 1961. The story features
Roger, a struggling songwriter, and his Dalmatian dog Pongo who fall in
love with artist Anita and her Dalmatian dog Perdita.
The happy couples (man and dog) are married and move in together,
along with their no-nonsense maid, Nanny. Before long, Perdita is
expecting puppies, and when they are born, she has an outstanding
fifteen of them. Raging from Rolly, a puppy who never stops eating, to
Lucky, the runt who almost died but was saved by Roger, the family is
overwhelmed but also overjoyed by the new dogs in their life.
The movie’s villain is Cruella DeVil, a rich social contact of
Anita’s. When the puppies are born, she visits the family in order to
purchase them—and money is not an issue. However, Roger and Anita soon
find out that Cruella is only after the puppies because she wants to
make a coat from their pelts, and they refuse to sell them to her.
Angered, Cruella sends her henchmen, Jasper and Horace, to steal the
puppies instead, and Pongo and Perdita embark on an adventure to save
their children.
When the two finally find their puppy-napped family, they also
find that Cruella has stolen a huge number of other Dalmatian puppies as
well, all for her coat production. Pongo and Perdita save them all, and
after narrowly escaping the hands of Cruella, they return to Roger and
Anita. Roger finally finds success with the hit song “Cruella DeVil” and
the two decide to keep all of the dogs—one hundred and one of them—and
start a “Dalmatian Plantation.”
Disney’s 17th animated feature, One Hundred and One Dalmatians
was the highest grossing film in 1961, and followed Disney’s 1959
animation, Sleeping Beauty. The film was originally based off of Dodie
Smith’s 1956 children’s novel of the same name.
Voices featured in the animated film include Rod Taylor as Pongo,
who is best known for his role in the 1963 Hitchcock film The Birds;
Cate Bauer as Perdita; Betty Lou Gerson, a prominent television actress,
as the wicked Cruella DeVil; and Ben Wright, who went on to work with
Disney as voices for The Jungle Book and The Little Mermaid, as Roger.
Other actors lending their voices to the film included Lisa
Daniels, Frederick Worlock, Martha Wentworth, J. Pat O’Malley, Tudor
Owen, Tom Conway, and George Pelling. Released by Buena Vista
Distribution, the film was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske,
and Wolfegang Reitherman.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was the first Disney film to
introduce the use of xerography, a process making graphic reproduction
much easier. This largely replaces the rotoscoping technique, which was
used up until that time. Xerography was also less expensive, crucial to
Disney because of major cuts made in the animation department after the
expensive Sleeping Beauty was an economic failure.
Because One Hundred and One Dalmatians was such a success, the
movie was reissued in 1969, 1979, 1985, 1991, 1992, and 1999. It was
scheduled to be re-released as a Platinum Series DVD in 2007, but that
release date was postponed until as least March 2008.
In 2003, One Hundred and One Dalmatians II: Patch’s London
Adventure was created as a sequel to the original 1961 film, and the
movie has also been made into an animated series based on this film. To
further bank on the success of this movie, 101 Dalmatians, a live-action
film starring Glenn Close as Cruella DeVil, was made in 1996. Its
sequel, 102 Dalmatians, was released in 2000.
Immediately after the movie was released, Dalmatians became very
popular, although in real life, most Dalmatians are not as
family-friendly as the ones portrayed in the movie. The breed ultimately
suffered because many were abandoned.
The movie itself makes reference to a number of fun cultural
characteristics. Cruella DeVil was said to be based off of the actress
Tallulah Bankhead, the henchmen in the movie watch the television show
“What’s my Crime?” playing on the real television show “What’s my Line?”
and in once scene the newspaper has headlines coinciding with real
events of the 1950s and 1960s.
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