One Hundred and One Dalmatians

The 1961 animation by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi and Wolfgang Reitherman follows a pair of dogs whose fifteen puppies are stolen for a coat. The whole look came out of a cost decision. After Sleeping Beauty stumbled, Walt Disney told the animator Eric Larson he did not think they could continue; it was too expensive. The xerography Ub Iwerks patented carried the animator’s pencil line straight onto the cel and cut out the inking department, which is what made hundreds of spotted dogs drawable. Art director Ken Anderson printed the backgrounds the same way so line and background spoke one language. Disney disliked the result. By Anderson’s account Walt hated how he had done the film and told staff they were never having one of those things again. The 79 minute picture still pulled the animation department out of the hole Sleeping Beauty had dug. Cruella’s voice is a deliberate fake: Betty Lou Gerson gave her an accent that set sail from New York and never reached England. The studio counted 6,469,952 spots in all. A good fit if you want to watch a necessity harden into a style, the black outline left visible around every character. Not for you if you expect the painted, softened surfaces of Sleeping Beauty, since the pencil mark here is deliberately kept in frame.