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One Hundred and One Dalmatians
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One Hundred and One Dalmatians (often abbreviated as 101 Dalmatians) is the seventeenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon.
It was made and produced by Walt Disney, and it was originally released to theaters on January 25, 1961 by Buena Vista Distribution. It is based on the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.
The film features Rod Taylor as the voice of Pongo, the first of the Dalmatians, and Betty Lou Gerson as the voice of the villainous Cruella de Vil.
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Encyclopedia
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (often abbreviated as 101 Dalmatians) is the seventeenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon.
It was made and produced by Walt Disney, and it was originally released to theaters on January 25, 1961 by Buena Vista Distribution. It is based on the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.
The film features Rod Taylor as the voice of Pongo, the first of the Dalmatians, and Betty Lou Gerson as the voice of the villainous Cruella de Vil. The plot centers on the fate of the kidnapped puppies of Pongo and Perdita.
Plot
Pongo the Dalmatian lives in a London bachelor flat with his owner Roger Radcliffe, a songwriter. Bored with bachelor life, Pongo decides to find a wife for Roger and a mate for himself. While watching various female dog-human pairs out the window, he spots the perfect couple, a woman named Anita and her female Dalmatian, Perdita. He quickly gets Roger out of the house and drags him through the park to arrange a meeting. Pongo accidentally causes both Roger and Anita to fall into a pond, but it works out well as the couple falls in love. Both the human couple and the dog couple marry.
Later, Perdita gives birth to 15 puppies. One almost dies, but Roger is able to revive it by rubbing it vigorously in a towel. That same night, they are visited by Cruella De Vil, an wealthy former schoolmate of Anita's. She offers to buy the entire litter of puppies for a large sum, but Roger says they are not selling any of the puppies. Weeks later, she hires Jasper and Horace Badun to steal all of the puppies. When Scotland Yard is unable to prove she stole them or find the puppies, Pongo and Perdita use the "Twilight Bark", normally a canine gossip line, to ask for help from the other dogs in England.
Colonel, an old Sheepdog, and Sergeant Tibbs, a tabby cat, find the puppies in a place called Hell Hall, along with lots of other Dalmatian puppies who Cruella had purchased from various dog stores. Tibbs learns the puppies are going to be made into dog-skin fur coats and the Colonel quickly sends word back to London. Pongo and Perdita quickly make their way from London to retrieve their puppies. They arrive just as Horace and Jasper are about to kill the puppies. While the adult dogs attack the two men, Colonel and Tibbs guide them from the house.
After a happy reunion with their own puppies, the Pongos realize there are 84 other puppies with them. Horrified at Cruella's plans, they decide to adopt all of the puppies, certain their pets would never reject them. The dogs begin making their way back to London, aided by other animals along the way, with Cruella and the Baduns chasing behind them. In one town, they cover themselves with soot so they appear to be Labrador Retrievers, then pile inside a moving van going back to London. As the van is leaving, melting snow clears off the soot and Cruella spots them. She follows the van in her car and rams it, but the Baduns, trying to cut off the van from above, end up colliding with her, knocking both vehicles into a deep ravine. Cruella yells in frustration as the van drives away.
Back in London, Roger and Anita are attempting to celebrate Christmas and Roger's first big hit, a song about Cruella, but they miss their friends. Suddenly barking is heard outside and after their nanny opens the door, the house is filled with dog. After wiping away more of the soot, the couple is delighted to realize their companions have returned home. They decide to use the money from the song to buy a large house in the country so they can keep all 101 Dalmatians.
Production
The production of the film signaled a change in the graphic style of Disney's animation. This occurred with the introduction of xerography which eased graphic reproduction requirements, but at the price of being unable to deviate from a scratchy outline style because of the new (and time and money saving) technology's limitations. Since the line would not have fit the "round" Disney drawing style used until then (with the exception of Sleeping Beauty), a more graphic, angular style was chosen for this and subsequent films. Rotoscoping, a technique formerly used for tracing live action human characters into animated drawings, became less important.
Another reason for its look was that the animators were used to producing sketchy drawings, as the clean-up was done in the process of transferring the drawings to the cels. With the hand inkers gone, the animation remained as the animators drew it. Later it became common to do clean-up on paper before the animation was copied, and with time and experience, the process improved.
Disney cut its animation department after the failure of the very expensive Sleeping Beauty, resulting in a reduction of staff from over 500 to less than 100. Walt Disney, who at this point had started to direct his attention more towards television and his Disneyland amusement park and less on his animated features, disliked this development. The "sketchy" graphic style would remain the norm at Disney for years until the technology improved prior to the release of The Rescuers. In later animated features the Xeroxed lines could be printed in different colors. Unlike previous Walt Disney animated features, One Hundred and One Dalmatians features only three songs, with just one, "Cruella De Vil", playing a big part in the film. Even this song isn't sung in one setting (a scene between Cruella and Anita splits it into two parts). The other two songs are "Kanine Krunchies Jingle" (sung by Lucille Bliss, who voiced Anastasia in Disney's 1950 film Cinderella), and "Dalmatian Plantation" in which only two lines are sung at the film's closure.
To achieve the spotted Dalmatians, the animators used to think of the spot pattern as a constellation. Once they had one "anchor spot", the next was placed in relation to that one spot, and so on and so on until the full pattern was achieved. All total, 101 Dalmatians featured 6,469,952 spots, with Pongo sporting 72 spots, Perdita 68, and each puppy having 32.
Voice cast
Release
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was first released to theaters on January 25, 1961. After its initial theatrical run, it was re-released to theaters four more times: January 1969, June 1979, December 1985, and July 1991.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was released on VHS on April 10, 1992 as part of the Walt Disney Classics video series. It was re-released on March 9, 1999 as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection video series. On December 19, 1999, it received its first DVD release as part of Disney's Limited Issue series. A 2-disc Platinum Edition DVD was released on March 4, 2008.
Reception
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was the tenth highest grossing film of 1961, accruing $6,400,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals during its first year of release, and one of the studio's most popular films of the decade. The film was re-issued to theaters in 1969, 1979, 1985, and 1991. The 1991 reissue was the twentieth highest earning film of the year for domestic earnings. It has earned $215,880,014 in worldwide box office earnings during its lengthy history, and currently holds a 97% "fresh" rating from critics and users on Rotten Tomatoes.
Sequels and spin-offs
In the years since the original release of the movie, Disney has taken the property in various directions. The most widely known, as well as the earliest of these endeavors was the live-action remake, 101 Dalmatians. Starring Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil, none of the animals talked in this 1996 edition. This version's success in theaters led to 102 Dalmatians, released on November 22, 2000.
After the first live-action version of the movie, a cartoon called 101 Dalmatians: The Series was launched. The designs of the characters were stylized further, to allow for economic animation, and appeal to the contemporary trends.
Most recently, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure, the official sequel to the original animated film, was released straight-to-VHS/DVD on January 21, 2003.
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