January 25 - 101 Dalmatians

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1961, Walt Disney Productions released its 17th animated feature, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. When Walt read the book of the same name by Dodie Smith in 1957, he immediately bought the rights to it. He turned the book over to Bill Peet, a prominent member of the Story Department, to turn it into a script. Dalmatians thus became the first Disney animated movie to be written entirely by one person. And, unlike Mary Poppins, released a few years later, when Bill showed Dodie the revisions he'd made to her story and the concept drawings for the characters, she loved them and was enthusiastic about seeing the finished product.

One of the main obstacles to making Dalmatians was the rising costs of producing animation in general. The studio's 16th film, Sleeping Beauty, was only moderately successful in financial terms and Walt had actually held discussions with his team during its production about closing down the Animation Department entirely, lamenting over the expense. Luckily, an old friend of the company stepped forward to save the day: Ub Iwerks. Ub had been toiling away since his return to Disney in 1940, working on all sorts of special effects projects. One of the processes he developed was a way to use Xerox's technology to transfer an animator's drawings onto the acetate cels actually used for filming, eliminating the need for hand inking. Xerography, as it is called, had first been used to create the forest of thorns in Sleeping Beauty. When Ken Anderson, Dalmatians' art director, asked Walt about more extensive use of the process, Walt reportedly said "you can fool around all you want." So he did.

Image copyright Disney

The problem with Xerography was not that it could basically only handle transferring black lines, but that those lines were kind of rough. The early version of the process just didn't have the smoothness of traditional hand inking. To combat this, Ken helped create an art style for the picture that resembled more of the funny pages in the newspaper than an oil painting. He even had the background artwork done using Xerography, so the style was consistent throughout the entire movie. Walt initially hated the look of the film, but eventually came around to it. Why? Perhaps because it's estimated that by using this process, Dalmatians would end up costing about half what it would have using hand inked cels. So while the Ink and Paint Department may have lost a significant amount of work, the Animation Department as a whole was saved from oblivion.

Image copyright Disney

One Hundred and One Dalmatians was well received when it was released. Several critics hailed it as the best feature since the original, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, although that, in my opinion, was going a bit too far. They might not have been so rapturous about it if they hadn't been turned off by the angular look of Sleeping Beauty two years earlier. Most modern critics tend to give it a rating somewhere in the B+ range, which is exactly where I would put it. I can't really say if I enjoyed the live action version in the Nineties more or not. They're both entertaining, mainly because of the unabashed evilness of Cruella de Ville. Your final tidbit of Dalmatian information: the television commercial for Kanine Krunchies that the young pups go gaga for is sung by Lucille Bliss, who also voiced Anastasia for Cinderella. Now you'll never be able to think of Dalmatian cereal again without also hearing Sing Sweet Nightingale sung really off key. You're welcome.