05/15/2026
How a busy Disney and a Xerox machine made 101 Dalmatians a Doggone Classic
By the early 1960's, Walt Disney had evolved from animation pioneer, to movie studio impresario. He was experimenting in television, constructing a sprawling theme park and even designing his own city of the future. But with his interests so vast and varied, he was spending less and less personal time overseeing the films being made.
His latest feature animated effort, Sleeping Beauty, was a financial disappointment; so, when he turned his eye to Dodie Smith's 1956 novel 101 Dalmatians as the basis for his next film, he did so knowing that the budget had to be tight, and that he'd have to rely on his skilled team of storytellers, animators, and technicians in a way he never had before.
What resulted was a jazzy, stylish, mid-century masterpiece that shifted Disney animation from fairy tales and romanticism to the modern day, and changed the whole animation industry forever.
In 1960, Dodie Smith's children's novel was a bedtime favourite in Europe that hadn't quite made waves on North American shores, although these days the plot is children's story canon. The Dearly Dalmatians, Pongo and Missus (Perdita in the movie), set forth to rescue their kidnapped litter of fifteen puppies. The culprit: the nefarious aristocrat, Cruella de Vil, who aims to be Best Dressed by making them into a bespoke fur coat. By the end of the adventure, the Dearly family has adopted an additional eighty-four orphaned Dalmatians from Cruella's clutches, bringing the grand total of spotted canines to the titular one hundred and one.
Bill Peet was the story man tasked with adapting Smith's novel to the screen. He streamlined the plot, combined characters, and crafted one of Disney's most indelible villains in Cruella.
In an attempt to save money, 101 Dalmatians was the first full Disney project to utilize the then state-of-the-art Xerox machine to transfer animators' pencil drawings directly onto the plastic animation cells for painting. This process was developed by Ub Iwerks, arguably the true genius in the early days of Disney, and resulted in a look to the film that included hard, graphic lines, and often maintained additional sketchiness from the animators' pencil work. The team even used the device to take photos of outlined vehicle models so as to create the dynamic, 3D animation of the automobiles in the film. These technical quirks are what ultimately informed the rest of the film's unique design approach.
Art Director Ken Anderson spearheaded the film's exquisite contemporary look. Frames in 101 Dalmatians look to be torn directly from 1960's fashion magazines, with bold, abstract lines, caricatured buildings (and also characters themselves), and blotches of Walter Peregoy's geometric colour to tie it all together.
The movie is Jazz come to visual life, so, of course, the musical score followed in groovy suit. Although we remember Mel Evan's famous Cruella de Vil theme song, performed in the story by songwriter Roger Dearly with his Dalmatians looking on, the movie isn't a true musical. It contains less than a handful of numbers, often presented diegetically in the story, like the jingle for Kanine Krunchies playing on the TV, and instead George Burns's playful score does the heavy lifting—the musical instruments actually sing out the syllables of the film's title during the opening sequence.
While audiences loved the finished film, showering it with critical praise and financial success, it had ushered in new technological short cuts that left Walt Disney himself cold to the final result. Disney was enamoured with the romantic, smooth line work, luscious painted backgrounds, and sweeping scores of yesteryear, and 101 Dalmatians was contemporary, devoid of magic and filled with actual peril. It was not at all as cute as it seemed: in fact, it was actually pretty cool. It strained Disney's taste, and left much of the team feeling that they had disappointed him.
But change is hard, and progress requires friction. The Xerox process was employed in animation for another half century until computer technology took over in the 90's and, although the story itself is timeless, we can look back at 101 Dalmatians as an example of how, in a visual medium like film, style is often the substance, and sometimes it takes a photocopier to make something truly original.
See 101 Dalmatians at the Marie Dressler Foundation’s 2026 Vintage Film Festival as part of our “Best Dressed” lineup: Friday, October 16th at 6:40 pm!
VINTAGE FILM FESTIVAL (October 16, 17 & 18, 2026), 13 "Best Dressed Films" and Sunday lunch discussion with a Canadian costume designer of film and television.
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