101 Dalmations that led Disney to its salad days is releasing this week on digital HD and Blu-ray as well as through the Disney Movies Anywhere on-demand service, along with its other Diamon Edition of the 1961 classic.
Walt Disney Studios was in a funk in 1959 after its expensive, lavishly animated fairy tale Sleeping Beauty didn’t awaken at the box office.
“Sleeping Beauty had been a pet project of Walt Disney, who had mandated that the film should look like a moving tapestry. It was heavily art-directed. The animation was so pristine and precise that it didn’t carry the emotion people expected from a Disney film,” said animator-director Frank Gladstone.
Extras include the new documentary Lucky Dog, featuring interviews with animators and talent involved in the film, and the new short The Further Adventures of Thunderbolt. Norman was involved in the writing and story boarding on the short.
Veteran animator Floyd Norman, a young artist at Disney at the time, said the studio had serious concerns that animation might not be viable financially. “101 Dalmatians was the film that really kept animation alive at Walt Disney Studios. We truly needed a hit, we needed to come back strong,” added Norman.
Based on Dodie Smith’s book The Hundred and One Dalmatians, the box office hit revolves around Roger and his wife, Anita, and their Dalmatian dogs Pongo and Perdita. The family is looking forward to the birth of Perdita’s puppies. And so is Anita’s old girlfriend, Cruella De Vil, a villainous creature who secretly wants the puppies to make coats of spotted fur.
The charming, vibrant 101 Dalmatians was just the shot in the arm the studio needed. “We had moved from a European fairly tale to a more contemporary story with a totally different sensibility. It was fresh, it was bright,” said Norman.
Dalmatians also used new Xerox technology. Animators still drew on paper, the same as they had on Sleeping Beauty, but the arrival of Xerox meant that those drawings could be photocopied onto sheets of acetate, saving time and money.
“With Xerox, drawings could also be replicated. We could take one puppy and duplicate that copy using the photocopy process, and make multiple puppies,” ended Norman.