One Hundred and One Dalmatians

One Hundred and One Dalmatians was the highest-grossing film of 1961, with an impressive take of 60 million (which would be roughly 450 million today). I was interested to read that it followed Sleeping Beauty in the Disney canon, which was a big money-loser, and stirred talk of closing down the animation department. Ub Iwerks, though, developed a method of using Xerox photography, thus the inking process was eliminated, and Dalmatians could be made for half the cost.

If I had seen the film before yesterday, it is lost to the mists of time. I do know that our family was indirectly influenced by it. We got our first dog in 1965, when I was four, and apparently my parents got a dalmatian because I wanted a spotted dog. The popularity of dalmatians as a breed went through the roof after this film (never a good thing, as overbreeding takes place), so perhaps our dear sweet Betsy, who was more black than white, came to me as a result of this film.

Although One Hundred and One Dalmatians can't be considered top tier Disney, as would Pinocchio or Bambi or parts of Fantasia, or even the renaissance the studio experienced in the late 1980s-early '90s. But it is thoroughly charming, and the animators magically capture the cuteness of a puppy. As Charles Schulz wrote, "Happiness is a warm puppy," and this film has that in spades.

Based on book by Dodie Smith, the film is thoroughly British, set in London. A dalmatian named Pongo has a human "pet," a composer named Roger. They live in quiet bachelorhood, but Pongo is determined to get them both a mate. He spots a promising match with a lovely young girl walking a lovely young dalmatian, and through canine shenanigans we cut to the wedding. Roger's new wife is Anita, Pongo's is Perdita.

Perdy, as Pongo calls her, is soon pregnant, but cowers upon visits by Anita's school chum, Cruella da Vil. Cruella, in a bit of prescience, is depicted as evil by primarily two traits--she smokes, and she loves fur. This film may have inspired a generation of PETA members. She wants to buy the puppies to make a dalmatian-skin coat, but when Perdy has 15 puppies, Roger refuses to sell. So Cruella's loutish henchman, Jasper and Horace, dognap the puppies.

My favorite part of the film is the imagining of a primitive but effective "twilight bark," a chain of communication existing throughout the land. It reminded me of the sequence of signal fires in The Return of the King. Pongo barks out his alert, a Great Dane passes it along to a Scottish terrier, and so on, until it reaches the countryside, where a mutt called Colonel, in a parody of British World War II films, organizes a rescue. By now Cruella has acquired 99 dalmatian puppies, watched over by her doltish thugs, and when they escape, it's good versus bad as the dogs makes their way across a snowy landscape.

In this era, animated films typically did not have above-the-line voice talent. Only the sharpest trivia experts for example, know who voiced Snow White. The only star in this film was Rod Taylor as Pongo, a fairly substantial star at the time (he would appear in Hitchcock's The Birds two years later). But credit should be given to Betty Lou Gerson, who voiced Cruella da Vil.