15 – The Whistling Dog

Lady and the Tramp

Premiere: June 22, 1955

Budget: $4,000,000

Box Office: $36,359,037 (Original Release)

Released by: Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc.

Nominations/Awards:

• None

Running Time: 75 Minutes (1 hr, 15 min)

What a perfectly beautiful little Lady.

For such an innocuous film (I mean, let’s face it, Lady and the Tramp isn’t quite the most popular film in the cannon), this movie means a lot of firsts for Walt and his crew.

It was the first animated movie he not only made, but directly released, the first animated film to be created in CinemaScope, and the first original Disney animated movie. Not only that, but Lady and the Tramp would premiere less than a month away from Walt’s greatest creation: Disneyland.

This means that Walt is betting a whole lot in hopes of gaining everything he could ever need. As full of rhetoric as that sounds, it’s kind of true. The studio was going all in on this Disneyland thing. The media was calling it “Walt’s Folly” (now where have we heard that before?) and ABC-TV was pouring much of its cash into helping him. To know that this was an all-or-nothing gamble helps shine a light on how extraordinary the success of this film was. Because while Disneyland was an experiment gone right, so was this movie. And its effects on the rest of the cannon are palpable.

1955 was a very good year.

Miss Park Avenue herself!

There is one little caveat to the claim that this was Disney’s first original animated film. The main character, Lady, is in fact original. Joe Grant, a story man at the studio, came up with the idea of Lady in 1937, as he regarded the antics of his own English Springer Spaniel. It wasn’t until the 40s, when Walt read a short story by Ward Greene in Cosmopolitan Magazine named “Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog” (What’s more interesting, I think, is that Walt was a Cosmo reader!) that the ideas for Lady and the Tramp began to come together.

The final treatments of what would become the finished film wouldn’t be worked on in earnest until 1953, when Joe Grant had already left the studio. One of the additions during this time was Lady’s arrival in a hatbox as a Christmas present to Darling. It was inspired by Walt’s own gift of a Chow puppy to his wife Lily one Christmas morning. He presented the pet to her in a hatbox.

Like in Bambi, the animators brought in real animals to the studio to study their movements. The iconic spaghetti scene, one of the most recognized and finest scenes in film period, was almost cut by Walt on his belief that it was too silly. When animator Frank Thomas staunchly disagreed and went ahead and animated the entire scene on his own, it impressed Walt with how properly romanticized it was and he left it in.

Ol’ Reliable used to say…

Lady and the Tramp was released June 22, 1955.

It was a financial success. However, critics weren’t too fond of it initially. By now, this movie is considered a classic.

The film was released in CinemaScope, the first animated film to do so, and one of the earliest wide-screen animated movies to be released. The studio did not originally intend to do this, but the growing popularity of wide projection technology led Walt to make it in this exciting new format. The animators encountered several obstacles with all this extra space. For instance, closeups were much more difficult to achieve. In the end, they overcame these limitations. The other issue arising from this decision to use CinemaScope was that as the release date became nearer, the number of theatres that could support CinemaScope was limited. Therefore Disney released two forms: the CinemaScope original and a slightly retooled standard “Academy” ratio print.

What is a baby?

Lady, a cocker spaniel puppy, is presented to Darling for Christmas by her loving husband Jim Dear. Lady and her owners form a tight bond as she grows up, but when Darling becomes pregnant and delivers a baby boy, Lady feels left out. Meanwhile, Tramp, a dog from the other side of the tracks, meets Lady and attempts to get her to understand the benefits of a careless, free-roaming life. Later, after a mishap with Darling’s Aunt Sarah and her Siamese cats, Lady runs away. But, large, mean dogs begin to chase her and at the last moment, Tramp saves her. Lady then spends the day with Tramp. She learns of his ways and the two slowly begin to fall in love.

The next morning, as Lady tries to get back home, she gets captured by the dog catcher. Tramp manages to escape. Lady spends some time at the pound, where other dogs cheer her up. She is then let go from the pound to return home, since she has a license on her collar. That night, a menacing rat attempts to attack and harm the baby. Tramp shows up and helps save the child, ultimately to be turned over to the dog catcher by a paranoid and frantic Aunt Sarah. Lady’s neighboring dogs Trusty and Jock go after the dog catchers car to help save Tramp. Of course, Tramp is saved and fast forward several months, it’s Christmas time again and Lady and Tramp have puppies together.

Bella Notte

I’ll admit that when I was younger, I found this film to be very dull.

It is with time and maturity that I’ve grown to see this movie as a fine slice-of-life animated film.

The animation is very well done. The animators really took advantage of CinemaScope’s larger real estate and gave the film a rather grand look. The colors are vibrant, the motion is smooth and quite polished, and most importantly, the dogs move like real dogs! It looks very good.

Aside from the visuals, the music is there but not intrusive. It exists to further the plot and helps to create setting and ambiance. The key song, of course, is “Bella Notte.” It’s such a sweet song and one that encapsulates the feeling of the picture. That a mundane evening can hold so much in store if you know where to look.

Story wise, I really enjoy the slow burn of Lady and Tramp’s romance. They undergo legitimate conflict that’s not soap opera-y. My largest problem, however is that there are too many one-note characters that appear in a scene or two and then are never heard from again. The Siamese cats are the prime example. They only get the one song (“The Siamese Cat Song”) and we never see them again! Even though it’s clear that their owner, Aunt Sarah, is there for several days.

So to that end, I will focus only on the main characters.

Darling and Jim Dear are such a sweet couple. They are also a realistic and relatable couple. They undergo all the stress that comes with having a child, but also remember the “child” they already have in Lady. It was such a sweet scene when Lady goes in the baby’s nursery for the first time. She’s expecting to be kicked out, but instead Jim Dear lifts her up as Darling uncovers the sleeping baby so that Lady can get a look.

Lady’s friends Jock and Trusty are such loyal and kind friends. They may be a little judgmental and suspicious of Tramp, but when they get to know him, they immediately see the error of their judgement. The two provide some nice comic relief as well.

Then there’s Lady and Tramp. I like Lady because although it’s clear that she has feelings for Tramp, she also doesn’t really let him get away with nonsense. She’s actually a fairly strong character that while guarded, isn’t against experiencing new things. Tramp, on the other hand, is so carefree but in a slightly cynical way. A modern version of this character would have him reveal a tragic back story, perhaps one in which he is abandoned or mistreated by his owners. Not so with Tramp. It’s implied that he’s had a rough life, but it doesn’t turn into a pity party for him. Their romance builds up and is more realistic than other Disney romances, which is refreshing.

In the end, I enjoyed this film very much. This is one of the few Disney cannon movies that doesn’t feature magic at all, and aside from the talking animals, there are no major fantasy components either. It’s such a stark contrast to our last film, Peter Pan. I recommend it for the quiet, leisurely story that it is. Children may be bored with it, as the dialogue and relationships might be too complex to enjoy. But I think this film is far more interesting from an adult perspective than from a child’s. If you want a nice, slice-of-life, palette cleanser, this is it.

A Final Note

Lady and Tramp’s son Scamp became the focus for the 2001 direct-to-video sequel Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s London Adventure, but Scamp actually enjoyed quite the prolific and long career after the first film, appearing in hundreds of daily comic strips beginning in 1955, and even his own comic book running from 1958 to 1971 with a break from 1961 to 1967.

That’s it for Lady and the Tramp. Post your comments below!

Next up is Sleeping Beauty! See you next time!