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 nimated feature about Pongo, a clever dalmatian who
arranges to get married to the female of his choice, Perdita, and
to round things out gets his master, Roger Radcliff, wed to
Perdita's pretty mistress, Anita. Soon Perdita produces 15 puppies,
which the evil Cruella De Vil arranges to have kidnapped in her
quest to make a fabulous Dalmatian fur coat, also gathering many
other puppies in order to accomplish her aim. Helped by the
Twilight Bark, whereby dogs throughout the city and the countryside
pass along the word of the missing puppies by barking, Pongo and
Perdita go into action and locate 99 stolen puppies in Cruella's
sinister-looking home, Hell Hall. Pongo, Perdita, and the puppies
manage to escape and, through various ruses, elude the pursuing
Cruella. Cruella and her henchmen, Horace and Jasper Badun, get
their just desserts. Roger and Anita adopt the puppies, and with
their new family of 101 dalmatians and Nanny to look after them,
plan to build a "Dalmatian Plantation" and live happily ever
after. |
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The first feature to solely use the Xerox® process for
transferring the animators' drawings to cels. Prior to this, each
one of the animators' drawings had to be hand-traced in ink onto a
cel. The new process sped up production greatly, especially in a
film that had so many dogs, and spotted ones at that. It would have
been horribly time-consuming to hand-ink each of the cels. The
famous "Twilight Bark," used to rescue the puppies, was later
adopted as the name for the newsletter for Disney Feature
Animation. Note the spelling of "dalmatians." This word is probably
the most-misspelled Disney word, with most people misspelling it
"dalmations." Dalmatia, however, is a place, so people, and dogs,
from there are dalmatians. |
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Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde
Geronimi. Based on the book by Dodie Smith. The songs "Cruella De
Ville [sic]," "Dalmatian Plantation," and "Kanine Krunchies
Commercial" were written by Mel Leven. Costing $4 million, the film
did phenomenal business on its original release, and in its
subsequent reissues in 1969, 1979, 1985 and 1991. Released on video
in 1992. 79 min. Starring: the voices of Rod Taylor (Pongo), Betty
Lou Gerson (Cruella De Vil), Lisa Davis (Anita), Ben Wright
(Roger), and Cate Bauer (Perdita). |
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In 1996, a live-action version of "101 Dalmatians" appeared,
directed by Stephen Herek. Released on November 27, 1996, it
starred Glenn Close (Cruella), Jeff Daniels (Roger), Joely
Richardson (Anita), Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams (Jasper and
Horace), and Joan Plowright (Nanny). Filmed on seven sound stages
at Shepperton Studios in England, as well as at selected locations
in and around London. A major task was finding and training over
200 dalmatian puppies. Their welfare was of top concern to the
filmmakers. |
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