101 Dalmatians

Stored in UCLA’s Special Collections, this still is taken from Walt Disney Productions’ One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). The still is black and white, even though the original film was produced in color. The woman, Cruella De Vil, has ordered two henchmen, Horace and Jasper, to dognap dalmatian puppies all across London to make a fur coat. The puppies, Cruella, and the henchmen are shown in this snapshot watching television in Cruella’s abandoned family estate, with the intention to skin the puppies in the near future.

Beloved by all, Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton S. Luske, Clyde Geronimi and premiered on January 25th, 1961. Featuring cute puppies, malicious villains, and a touching love story, the movie was extremely successful, grossing around $41.8 million dollars at the box office within its first 24 days of release (Stevenson, 1). Effectively pulling Disney out of its dire financial situation, the success of the film can be greatly attributed to Ken Anderson and Bill Peet, who were in charge of production design and story development respectively. The animation showcased Disney’s progressive and innovative culture - developing new techniques and experimenting with less conventional character design despite its poor economic situation.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians revolutionized animation by using the new technique, Xerox photography, which greatly simplified the animation process by allowing animators to surpass traditional hand-drawn methods of design (Finch, 306). The technique allowed for more focus on other, more important parts of production such as story and character development, which defined a turning point in Disney’s stylistic approaches to animation. Characters were no longer portrayed exactly how they were seen, but rather how they were interpreted by the artist.

The animators of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, along with other Walt Disney Productions’ animators used specific design techniques to provide each character with unique personality. There are many aspects of the character design in the film that separate the “good guys” from the “bad guys.” The “good guys”—Roger and Anita—wear calm and pleasant colors, such as yellow and light blue, while the “bad guys”—Cruella De Vil and the robbers, Horace and Jasper—wear bleak or severe colors, such as brown, dark green, black, and red. Cruella has unnatural half-black-half-white hair and Horace and Jasper both have very dark, unkempt hair. The darkness of their hair and clothing correlates to the darkness of their personality and behavior towards the innocent Dalmatians. The animators drew the robbers’ hair as messy and their skin as dark-toned to emphasize their literal dirtiness and their dirty and sleazy attitudes. In contrast, Roger, Anita, and the maid all have light-toned, neatly combed hair and fair skin. While the loving owners of the Dalmatians have rounded off faces and proportional bodies, the notable villains in the film have very sharp facial features and extremities. Cruella De Vil’s fingers, feet, chin, cheeks, and nose are all drawn to a point, emitting a harsh and scary demeanor. Horace has disproportionately long and skinny legs, while Jasper is stout and short. The robbers are portrayed as dumb and clumsy in their actions, and this juxtaposition in the duo’s physical appearance only adds to their sense of ineptness and repulsiveness.

In the picture provided by Special Collections, some of the puppies are looking up at Cruella De Vil in fear of her petrifying presence. She is shown with an ugly scowl on her face in the picture as well as throughout the film. Earlier in the plot, the terrified Perdita hides as the vicious Cruella knocks on the door. Physical appearance is the first thing that people see when a character enters a scene and immediately affects the way the viewer will interpret said character’s actions. Thus, character design in animated motion pictures sets the tone for the developing plot. Disney animators have developed and perfected cartoon characterization since some of Walt Disney Productions’ first animated cartoons such as Steamboat Willie (1928) and Plane Crazy (1929).

While Warner Brothers had the verbally brash Bugs Bunny, Disney had the Chaplinesque Mickey Mouse. While the content of Warner Brothers cartoons was comprised of witty limericks and unambiguous gags, Disney cartoons were made up of humorous ballads and developed comic sequences. In the environment of a Warner Brothers cartoon, the inanimate backdrop is “waiting to be controlled and manipulated at the character’s whim” whereas the background of a Disney cartoon has a “will of its own” (Wagstaff, 7). The character-driven plot of a typical Looney Tunes cartoon establishes a clear distinction of who is the hero and who is the villain, thus making more room to for writers to create situations that will make audiences cheer for the hero; for example, the gag where Wile E. Coyote ill-intentionally paints a tunnel road onto the side of a rock and unintentionally creates a new universe for The Road Runner—our hero—to escape gets paid off in a quick laugh. Disney cartoons, on the other hand, incorporate “the mid-American psyche in tune with dreams and nightmares” with objects that “swell and breathe with animated life” to create a holistic, thrilling experience (Wagstaff, 11). The objects consciously challenge the character’s intentions. As seen with Mickey Mouse’s many attempts to empty a pail of water, the water refuses to be thrown out and stays in the bucket. When Mickey looks at the bucket, the water vigorously splashes him in the face. This elaborately designed humor is integrated into the plot to extend the magical nature of the Disney environment. While Warner Brothers speaks to the wisecracker, Disney relates more to the audiences of fantasy.

The people of the counterculture were influenced by One Hundred and One Dalmatians and absorbed the film’s values of social resistance and anti-capitalism. The character Roger (not shown in the Special Collections picture) has no desire for money unless it were to be obtained by his love and passion for musical composition. But there’s another side to the story: the antagonist of the film, Cruella de Vil, who is the epitome of anti-capitalism, portrays materialism as unfavorable by the association of her evil character and materialistic behaviors. The Special Collections picture proves this by displaying her attempts to kidnap the Dalmatians; Cruella, standing in a gaudy fur coat, is glaring at her henchmen, wanting them to capture the puppies for more fur coats. The picture, therefore, is central to the notion of a resistance to greed. Money-fixations and materialism only incite villainous behavior such as that of making puppies into coats. On the other hand, Roger is delightful and respectable because he is not money-obsessed and values a pursuit of what he loves more. The movie viewer—more specifically, a kid of the ’60s—observes such aspects subconsciously. Disney plants a distaste for materialism into the viewer’s head. Disney films, similar to this one, have been factors in creating social resistance, shaping the counterculture, and changing the U.S.

101 Dalmatians Stolen by Horace and Jasper Badun. Walt Disney Productions, 1938-198x. Image courtesy of UCLA Special Collections

Works cited

1. Brode, Douglas. From Walt to Woodstock. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Print.
2. Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms and Beyond. Burbank: Walt Disney Productions, 1973. Print. (pg. 301-306)
3. Stevenson, Richard W. "Disney’s Re-released ‘101 Dalmatians’ a Surprise Hit at the Box Office." Tribunedigital-baltimoresun. New York Times News Service, 06 Aug 1991. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
4. Wagstaff. "Warner Brothers vs. Disney | The House Next Door | Slant Magazine." Slant Magazine. Slant Magazine, 30 June 2006. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Cite this article

Rice Z., Andrew G., Stephanie H., Celynne H.. "101 Dalmatians." Los Angeles: The City and the Library. Colleen Jauretche, Editor. Fall 2015. /article/2015-09-01-dalmations