Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: Buena Vista Distribution
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
In London, Pongo, a Dalmatian, decides his bachelor owner, the songwriter Roger, needs a wife, and arranges a collision in the park with Anita and her Dalmatian, Perdita. Both couples marry. Perdita gives birth to fifteen puppies, and Anita's old school friend Cruella de Vil, a cigarette-waving fur fanatic, offers to buy them all. Roger refuses. Soon afterwards, Cruella's henchmen, Jasper and Horace Badun, steal the puppies. When Scotland Yard can find nothing, Pongo and Perdita use the "Twilight Bark", the dogs' chain of barking messages across the country, and learn that the puppies are at Hell Hall, Cruella's derelict mansion in Suffolk. A farm horse, a cat named Sergeant Tibbs and an old sheepdog, the Colonel, help them, and they find not fifteen puppies but ninety-nine: Cruella has been buying Dalmatians to make into a coat. Pongo and Perdita rescue them all and lead them across the snowy countryside, disguising them with soot as black Labradors to slip past Cruella. In a final chase on the road, Cruella crashes her car into the Baduns' van. The dogs reach home, and Roger and Anita decide to keep all 101 Dalmatians.
Why It Matters
- Cruella de Vil, animated by Marc Davis, is one of Disney's greatest villains: all angular limbs, cigarette smoke and manic glee, and her final car chase is pure frenzy. The film's sketchy, contemporary London, with outlines visible on every character, gave Disney a new, modern look.
- That look came from xerography: Ub Iwerks adapted the photocopying process to transfer animators' drawings directly to cels, saving money after Sleeping Beauty's losses and making it possible to animate all those spots. It was a box-office hit, the first animated feature to earn over $10 million on its first release, and it set Disney's visual style for the next twenty years.
Notes and Trivia
- Wolfgang Reitherman made his feature directing debut here; he went on to lead Disney's animated features into the 1970s.
- Roger's song "Cruella De Vil" became a standard.
- See also: Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959).