User:The no erz/sandbox2

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 being 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.

Cast and characters

 * Rod Taylor as Pongo &mdash; One of the film's Dalmatian protagonists. He is Roger's pet, Perdita's mate and the father of 15 of the 99 puppies.
 * Lisa Daniels and Cate Bauer as Perdita &mdash; Anita's Dalmatian pet, Pongo's mate and the mother of 15 of the 99 puppies. Lisa Daniels voiced Perdita for the first two thirds of the film but married and moved to New York, leaving her voice work as Perdita incomplete. Cate Bauer voiced the character for the remainder of the film.
 * Betty Lou Gerson as Cruella De Vil &mdash; The film's primary antagonist who has Pongo and Perdita's puppies kidnapped with the intention of making fur coats out of them.
 * Ben Wright as Roger Radcliffe &mdash; Pongo's owner and Anita's husband. He works as a songwriter. Roger's singing voice was provided by Bill Lee.
 * Lisa Davis as Anita Radcliffe &mdash; Perdita's owner and Roger's wife.
 * Martha Wentworth as Nanny &mdash; The Radcliffes' maid.
 * Frederick Worlock and J. Pat O'Malley as Horace and Jasper, respectively &mdash; Cruella's henchmen who are hired to kidnap and make fur coats out of Dalmatian puppies.
 * Thurl Ravenscroft, J. Pat O'Malley and David Frankham as Captain, Colonel and Sgt. Tibbs, respectively &mdash; A horse, dog and cat who aid Pongo and Perdita in finding the puppies.

Development
thumb|160px|right|[[Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians]] Dodie Smith published her children's book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1956. The story was inspired by an incident with a friend who commented that Smith's Dalmatians would make attractive fur coats. The following year, Walt Disney learned of the book and, intrigued by its premise, purchased the rights to adapt the story into an animated feature film.

Disney and Smith kept in touch through a letter correspondence that lasted during and beyond the film's production. In one of her earlier letters, Smith stated that when she was writing her book, she had hoped Disney would adapt it into a film and even visualized the characters and plot as if they were animated. Before production on Dalmatians was complete, Disney proposed that Smith come up with another story for the studio. Despite the letter correspondence continuing until well after Dalmatians was released, another collaboration between the two never materialized.

At the time of the film's production, Disney was pre-occupatied with the expansion of his company; accordingly, not as much of his attention could be devoted to One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Thus, following the completion of Sleeping Beauty in February 1958, pre-production on Dalmatians was assigned to Bill Peet, an artist and story writer who began working for Disney in 1937 and contributed to films such as Dumbo, Cinderella and Peter Pan. Peet scripted and storyboarded the entire film himself &mdash; a task typically assigned to a whole crew.

Peet's interpretation of Damatians was received warmly by Smith, who said that the script, which changed the story's structure and further defined the characters' personalities, improved on her book. She did, however, express sadness over the exclusions and re-naming of some of the characters. Many of the Disney animators were excited to begin work on the film because they felt that Peet's infusion of contemporary thematic elements into the narrative represented a change from the types of films they had done before.

Animation
One Hundred and One Dalmatians marked a departure for Disney's animation department from traditional methods. Prior to Dalmatians, animators' sketches were traced over and colored manually, frame by frame, onto celluloids, clear plastic sheets that were laid over backgrounds and presented in the final version of the film. However, this method was costly and time-consuming, and after Sleeping Beauty failed financially, Disney's animation department was forced to look for a more economic approach.

Ub Iwerks, a friend of Disney's, began investigating Xerography, a photocopying technique that makes use of electrostatic printing and photography to reproduce images. Iwerks correctly believed that the process could be applied to copying images from animators' sketches directly on to clear celluloids, eliminating the need for others to do so; this new method resulted in the closure of the studio's ink and paint department after Sleeping Beauty, the climactic scene of which had been produced using the technique. Xerography was further tested in a short called Goliath II, prior to being used on Dalmatians.

Three hundred artists worked for three years with over 1,000 shades of color to produce the film's 113,760 frames on a budget of $4 million.

Serveral famous animators from the group known as Disney's Nine Old Men animated characters and directed sequences for the film. Wolfgang Reitherman directed "The Twilight Bark" and chose to include several characters from Lady and the Tramp in the sequence, including Jock and Lady. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were responsible for the design and animation of the dogs. An entire unit was responsible for animating the 6,469,952 spots on the dogs in the film; Pongo was drawn with 72, Perdita with 68 and each puppy with 32. Milt Kahl designed Roger and Anita, who was based on the character's voice actress Lisa Davis.

thumb|160px|right|[[Marc Davis' design for the film's primary antagonist Cruella De Vil]]

Cruella De Vil was designed and entirely animated by Marc Davis, whose animating career came to an end after production on Dalmatians was complete. Many of Cruella's characteristics, poses and mannerisms were developed by Bill Peet in the storyboarding stages but the character's black and white hair was the idea of author Dodie Smith's. Davis modeled Cruella's movements after those of Mary Wickes, who portrayed the character in live-action reference footage. The character's trademark cigarette holder was modeled after Davis' own. Despite positive reception to the character, Davis did admit in his later years that he wondered if he designed Cruella too extravagently.

The use of Xerography required animators to begin drawing more neatly and precisely; they were encouraged to avoid showing their constructions and errors because the images on paper would be transferred directly onto the celluloids that would appear in the film. Many of the animators' assistants were called upon to fix drawings for neatness but some errors are still visible in the final cut.

Ken Anderson, an animator who won Disney's praise for the backgrounds he developed for the Silly Symphonies, was the film's production designer. Anderson came up with a contemporary, angular and slightly abstract style for the background that he wanted to unify with the animation by using Xerography. Anderson's initial background drawings were revised by Ernie Nordli. They were then Xeroxed over color sylist Walt Peregoy's abstract colorings of background objects and landscapes such that background colors were not always confined to the lines of the objects they were a part of. Having multiple layers ensured that the quality of the final backgrounds matched that of the animation. Disney, however, was not initially pleased. He preferred the cleaner backgrounds of his earlier films such as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, but, eventually, accepted Anderson's work.

The idea to use the Xerox machines for the copying of drawings onto celluloids was expanded upon when it came to animating the vehicles. Cardboard models of Cruella's car, Jasper and Horace's van and the van the Dalmatians hide in at the end of the film were created and outlined with black lines. Each model was propped up on wooden wheels that were hidden beneath a black sheet; kite strings were attached to the tops of the models and were pulled to mobilize the vehicles. Springs were included in the models' designs to achieve a rumbling effect. The Xerox camera was then used to recreate images of the black lines and transfer them onto celluloids. In the climactic scene, a car chase, Cruella's car is shown driving up a snowy hill that was actually a model of a hill with sand substituting for snow.

Music
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was scored by George Bruns, who, in keeping with the film's contemporary feel, avoided the orchestral music used in earlier Disney films and, instead, incorporated jazz into his compositions.

Mel Leven wrote five original songs for the film, three of which were used in the final cut. Two of these three were different versions of what he originally composed. The following is a list of the musical numbers featured in the film, in the order of their presentation:


 * "Cruella De Vil" is the first song featured in the film. Before coming to the version that was used in the final cut, Leven had composed another version entitled "The Creation of Cruella De Vil." However, when driving to work one day, Leven decided that a blues melody was more appropriate for the character and rewrote it. Ben Wright, the speaking voice of Roger, recorded the song over two days in 1958. His singing was replaced with that of Bill Lee's for the final version. The version heard on the radio at the end of the film was sung by Jeanne Bruns, who recorded three different versions for the filmmakers to choose from.


 * "Kanine Krunchies" was written as a spoof of the television commercials of the late 1950s. At least nine different singers and actors sang the song in 1959 before the filmmakers decided upon Lucille Bliss' recording for use in the final version of the film.


 * "Dalmatian Plantation" is the last song featured in the film. The song was re-written several times after Leven's original version was rejected by Bill Peet, who felt that the film's ending song should have words that rhymed with a "shun" sound. The final version used in the film overlapped many of Leven's lyrics with barking noises.

The other two songs Leven wrote, as well as one written by Buddy Baker and Tom Adair, were included as bonus features in the Platinum Edition DVD release. They are presented in alphabetical order:


 * "Cheerio, Good-Bye, Toodle-oo, Hip Hip!" was a song that was written in October 1958 and was intended to be sung by the puppies as they ventured toward London, concluding with a Christmas theme in accordance with the film's ending.


 * "Don't Buy A Parrot From A Sailor" was a song Leven wrote the characters of Jasper and Horace that was proposed for use in a scene at the De Vil Mansion.


 * "March of the One Hundred and One" was written by Baker and Adair in 1959 and was supposed to replace "Cheerio, Good-Bye, Toodle-oo, Hip Hip!" in the film's climactic scene. Despite being recorded by cast members and storyboarded, the song was not included in the final version of the film.

Release
Disney hoped to have One Hundred and One Dalmatians ready for theatrical release by Christmas 1960. The film was completed on time and was released on January 25, 1961. During its initial run, Dalmatians grossed $14 million in the United States alone, making a $10 million profit for the studio. The film was re-released to theaters four more times throughout the following thirty years, the first time being on January 1, 1969. During this second run, Dalmatians made another $18 million. The third re-release, on January 1, 1979, grossed $19 million. On December 20, 1985, Dalmatians was released theatrically a fourth time and grossed another $33 million to become the twenty-seventh highest grossing film of the year. The fifth and final theatrical release, on July 12, 1991 was the twentieth highest grossing feature of 1991 and made $60.8 million to bring the film's domestic total to $144.9 million. When this number is adjusted for ticket price inflation, however, the film's cumulative domestic gross is $707.4 million, making it the eleventh highest grossing film in general and the second highest grossing animated film, after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.


 * Home video

Re-make and sequels

 * Patch's Adventure or whatever it's called
 * Animated TV series
 * Glenn Close version
 * sequel to Glenn Close version

Pop culture

 * Kingdom Hearts
 * whatever else I can find