Disney. No one name holds as much power over business and the world of Animation as much as Walter Elias Disney. Whether it was making the first animated motion picture in the English world, further revolutionizing the field of animation, or making one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Disney managed to become a titan of industry and media. Nowadays, we joke about the House of Mouse and its’ lasting impact in today’s world…but without Disney, much of the animated world today…well…wouldn’t be.
101 Dalmations: Cutting costs in the silver age
After Sleeping Beauty flopped, Walt Disney Studios was in a pretty bad place. The studio was over $1 million in the red and they had to do something drastic to cut costs and stay afloat. With this in mind, they decided to cut costs by forgoing elaborate, gorgeous inked animation and went with a scratchier new way of doing things, Xeroxing. It sure wasn’t elegant or beautiful, but it did the job and cut costs enough so that they could weather the rest of the troubling times their studio got into. They tested this on an adaptation of Dodie Smith’s novel “101 Dalmations” and not only did they prove this style worked, they also made one of the most faithful adaptations Disney has ever done. It even got the author’s approval!
The Plot: Pongo, a Dalmatian, and his human, Roger, live the single life in London. Both are rather bored of it, with Roger being a jazz pianist who writes love songs despite not knowing love himself (at least according to Pongo). Pongo decides to help out Roger while also looking for a mate himself…and succeeds in finding one. After…fudging the time and a rather awkward meeting of accidentally dunking Roger and the woman, Anita, into a pond…they end up hitting things off well and eventually marry.
After moving to a bigger flat, Roger and Anita, along with Pongo and Perdita are now a bit more content with their lives. Roger and Anita have also hired a maid to help them out, named Nanny, and Pongo and Perdita are expecting puppies. Roger is in the middle of developing a catchy new song, but is having lyrical problems…at least until we meet Anita’s schoolhood friend Cruella De Ville…and then the lyrics flow. Cruella makes herself known as a socialite with a pretty good fixation on fur and is very…disturbingly fixed on Perdita’s puppies. After leaving, Perdita becomes worried that Cruella will get her puppies, after all, having lived with Anita long enough, she knows Cruella better than Pongo and Roger does.
Eventually, nature takes its’ course and Perdita became a mother to 15 puppies, with one of them being stillborn until Roger brings it back to life with CPR. Cue Cruella arriving and accusing them of being mongrels because they have no spots. This sets Roger off tranquilly and when she offers to buy the puppies under a rather logical conclusion (Cruella may be a bit unbalanced, but how on earth can two care for 2 grown Dalmations and 15 young ones on their salary in London? She does have a point for that time period), Roger firmly declines the offer. Cruella then declares that her friendship with Anita is finished and she’ll get even with them before calling them both idiots (Get used to hearing that one throughout the movie).
Time marches on and the puppies now have their spots. On a rainy day while Roger and Anita take Pongo and Perdita on a walk, we meet Horace and Jasper Badun, who monitor them before overwhelming Nanny and kidnapping the puppies. Their kidnapping makes the news, and they aren’t happy about it. The parents decide to rely on a gossip network, the Twilight Bark, to find any clues they can about where their puppies may be held. Shockingly enough, it works and spreads all the way to the countryside where we meet a horse, cat, and sheepdog who confirm that the puppies have been taken to the De Ville manor, Hell Hall.
With this news, the parents rush over to Hell Hall and prevent the Baduns from killing the puppies in the nick of time…and finding they have many…many more puppies they need to take care of now. After all, they can’t just leave them to be made into a fur coat now…can they? What follows is a trek through the frozen winter countryside while Cruella and the Baduns dog (pardon the pun) their every move. Eventually, after a madcap chase sequence where Cruella finally loses what’s left of her marbles (and gives us a nightmare face to haunt our dreams forever), the dalmations make their way home and everyone is safe.
Walt Disney didn’t care for the animation style, but he and the author agreed that the story was one of the better ones he’s done. The only point of contention between him and the author was the small credit she got in the opening sequence, which was the result of a technical error. This was also the first of a few Disney films set in (what was then) the modern era. This movie would also spawn a pretty good line of adaptations in the future. Sure, the book came first, and then came the movie. A second novel would come of this, followed by a live action film, television show, second live action movie, non canon game, direct to video sequel of the first movie (those aren’t being covered, by the way), and flash animated television show….*GASP*
Many consider this movie to be the start of the Dark Age of Animation. After Sleeping beauty flopped, many studios were not willing to spend money on lavish animation except for Disney, however, it doesn’t mark the end of the silver age in the canon (That honor goes to the Jungle Book. More on that one later). That said, Chuck Jones (Yep, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame) had some pretty good things to say on this one. He said that only Disney would make an animated film with one hundred one dalmations: “If I had tried to make One Dog Named Spot for Leon Schlesinger, he would not let me do it. Spots cost money.” That’s pretty high praise right there.
Also, much like Lady and the Tramp before, this movie made a particular dog breed popular: Dalmations, of course. And much like the last film did, many issues came about when it did become popular. No health related issues, but people didn’t quite know how much of a high maintenance breed that a Dalmation was. Lastly, eagle eyed viewers might recognize a few of the dogs from this movie from Lady and the Tramp.
Vdiffuser's Room 