One Hundred and One Dalmatians
Short description
Set in London, this animated adventure centres on a pair of dalmatians, Pongo and Perdita, whose litter of puppies is stolen on the orders of Cruella De Vil, an old schoolfriend of their owner Anita. A wealthy woman with a fixation on fur, she intends to turn the puppies into a coat, and she has hired two bumbling crooks to carry out the abduction. When the police investigation stalls, Pongo and Perdita set out to find their children themselves, and along the way the rescue grows larger than either of them expected, drawing in other animals across the city.
Directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi and Wolfgang Reitherman and produced by Walt Disney, the film was released in January 1961. It was the fifteenth and final film directed by both Luske and Geronimi in chronological order, following Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty respectively, and the first in Reitherman's directing run, which continued with The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book. The voice cast of 34 credited performers includes Rod Taylor as Pongo, Cate Bauer as Perdita, Betty Lou Gerson as Cruella De Vil and Ben Wright as Roger.
Made for about four million dollars, it took roughly 303 million dollars worldwide, a large return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.3 out of 10 from 196,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 out of 10 from 6,778 votes. A critics' rating of 8.3 out of 10 from 54 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The animators, while working on the cartoon, were the first to use xerography to reproduce drawings.
- For the first time, the storyboarding of the plot was not under the direct control of Walt Disney himself. At that time, Walt Disney was busy opening his first Disneyland.
- Cruella de Vil was the last work of animator Marc Davis at Walt Disney Studios – after the film's release, he submitted his resignation.
- The film is based on the eponymous novella by writer Dodie Smith.
- The cartoon features one scene that was filmed in reality. In the scene where Cruella's car goes off the bridge and into the ditch, the car spins its wheels and drives out of the ravine. A paper model of Cruella’s car was specially made for this scene.
- Marc Davis personally animated Cruella throughout the film. In the scene where Cruella writes a check to Anita, the unerasable pencil outlines of the image construction are visible.
- For the first time in Disney animated films, flirting between two human characters appears – specifically, Anita and Roger flirt with each other after Cruella's first visit.
- Dodie Smith, the screenwriter and author of the book that served as the literary source for the screenplay, lived with nine Dalmatians, one of whom was named Pongo. The idea for the plot came to her when a friend, seeing all her dogs together, remarked that they would make a "lovely fur coat."
- Walt Disney threatened to close the studio, abandon animation, and focus on live-action films, television programs, and, most importantly, the development of "Disneyland" if the animated film was a box office failure. The film proved to be commercially successful.
- Due to the failure of the 1958 animated film "Sleeping Beauty," production costs for "101 Dalmatians" had to be reduced. As a result, "101 Dalmatians" became the first Disney project to utilize photocopying (xerography, a technique for transferring text and images onto paper). This made the animated film visually complex and established the standard for Disney imagery (sharply defined outlines) until technology advanced and images became softer (as in the 1977 film "The Rescuers").
- Almost 100,000 liters of special paint, weighing nearly 5 tons, were used for the project. This would be enough to cover 15 football fields or paint the exterior of 135 medium-sized houses. Nearly 1,000 different shades of color were created.
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