The OeuvReport - Walt Disney Animation Studios | 1955 - Lady and the Tramp
She's from the leash and license set... he's footloose and collar free!
Hello, and long time no see from The OeuvReport!
Apologies for this incredibly long delay, but we’ll be getting back to more regularly scheduled posts in this project starting now.
1955 is a busy year for Disney and Co.
This movie, Lady and the Tramp marks the first animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios to use wide-screen CinemaScope technology.
Disneyland also opened this year, and in just a couple of months reached the one-millionth guest. Walt also introduces the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to American TV audiences.
Now that I’ve set the stage for Disney’s 1955, let’s dive into Lady and the Tramp.
(‘*’ next to a name denotes the Disney Legend honor.)
Continuing Walt Disney Animation Studios’ tradition of adapting stories to film, The Lady and the Tramp finds its origin in 1937.
Joe Grant was spending some time with Walt Disney and regaling him with a story idea based on his English Springer Spaniel antics. Her name? Lady.
Joe had some rough sketches of Lady to go along with this story pitch and Walt liked the sketches so much he commissioned Grant to start development for a feature titled Lady. It is mostly about Joe’s new baby and how Lady interacted with the baby, and his observation that LAdy was being pushed aside in favor of the baby.
Throughout the late 30s and early 40s, Joe and many others worked on the story of Lady with many iterations, but none ended up impressing Walt. He felt the character of Lady was too sweet, with no conflict and not enough action. The major conflict was Lady vs. the cats and everything took place inside of the house.
The first storyboard was created in 1943, and Walt couldn’t abide it. Lady was a charmer and he was on record saying “charm alone does not a story make.”
Then of course WWII interferes, like with many of the movies they were developing at that time.
This was also the first story for a narrative feature not based on a fairytale or book that everyone already knew. Joe Grant also left the studio during the war, due to ongoing creative differences with Walt. Things weren’t looking great for Lady.
Enter Ward Greene.
Ward Greene was a writer, editor, journalist, playwright, and general manager for King Features Syndicate. This company is responsible for the creation of Blondie, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, and Popeye, among others. He wrote a short story called Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog which was published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1945. Now in 1945, this was not the Cosmo we know and love today. It was actually a literary magazine with nearly a million subscribers.
The short story is about Happy Dan, a dog of the streets, informing the reader of his life hopping from home to home, taking on different monikers from each family. But he’s noncommittal to these families and just uses them for food and treats.
Walt read Greene’s short story in 1945 and though Lady should fall in love with a cynical dog similar to Happy Dan, so he immediately buys the rights.
There is one more factor that plays into what would become Lady and the Tramp.
Marceline, Missouri.
The place of Walt’s childhood memories, and a location he never could forget. This is also the place that inspired Main Street in the theme parks. Lady and the Tramp’s world is one that is just about to change but still retains its Middle-America idyllic magic realism that forms Walt’s nostalgia.
Also, there were a lot of trains. Walt LOVES trains. This is genuinely the only reason Tramp lives at a train station; Walt has a deep fascination with them.
Back to Ward and Walt.
Walt was bothered by the that the story was from scratch and ended up commissioning Ward to write a Lady and the Tramp novelization. This ended up being the main inspiration for the movie and Joe Grant was given no credit in the final film.
Eventually, the narrative behind Lady and the Tramp’s genesis changed to a fabricated story of Walt giving his wife a puppy in a hatbox, further removing Joe Grant’s contribution.
Something to note with this story is that there is a lot more adult subtext in the film for a family animated film. Lady has babies, the dog pound kills the dogs (though this is heavily implied and not directly shown; the seriousness is deflected by the decision to animate that moment with just shadows), and Trusty was originally supposed to die (though that was deemed too dark).
By the mid-1950s, Walt Disney Animation Studios had really refined their process and animated nearly anything they could dream of with incredible beauty. Their big push was to really observe the behavior of different dog breeds and bring them fully to life in this movie.
Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl were paired together to tackle Tramp. Frank ended up being an indispensable help with this movie, as he had gotten good at live-action filming and knew exactly how to best observe the dog subjects with his camera.
Frank also is the reason we have the iconic spaghetti scene. He had pitched this to Walt, who gave him the order to not pursue that idea. Frank, wanting to prove Walt is not always right, worked on this scene on his own time, doing the full animation solo. Obviously, Walt had to concede that he was wrong.
Ollie Johnston had gotten so good at his animation, that many of the other animators felt it was more than just research, he was somehow channeling the animals. Wolfgang Reitherman did the action sequence of the dogs chasing Tramp through the back always. It was also his idea to cut away to the shadows of those dogs to show the action and violence without it being too much for children.
The soundtrack was treated like two separate forms: score and songs.
Our good friend Oliver Wallace comes back to provide the score. However, this would be the final WDAS film he did. I find this to be his best one yet. It’s very romantic and comfortable, perfectly capturing Victorian-era music.
We’ve seen a trend since the WWII package films of WDAS bringing in more and more popular figures for their music. Lady and the Tramp brought a huge name: Peggy Lee. Yes ‘Fever’ and ‘Black Coffee” singer Peggy Lee was brought on, along with her friend Sonny Burke. Burke was big in his own rights as a massively popular composer and arranger for the likes of Ella Fitzgerlad, Mel Tormé, and Frank Sinatra. Peg did so well with the songs Walt and the story team added her into the movie as the pound dame Peg.
The highlight with Peggy Lee is the Dogpound band section, with the Mellomen acting as an almost vaudevillian group.
She would sue the company in 1988 over a breach of contract, claiming that she retained rights to the transcriptions of the songs and that VHS versions of the movie were transcriptions. It wouldn’t be until 1991, that she would win this battle and be awarded $2.1 million.
The voice talent for this movie was treated like a repertory stage theatre. Basically, there were a lot of accents that needed to be done.
Returning we have Verna Felton as the horrible Aunt Sarah (seriously, she’s the absolute worst) and Bill Thompson doing the absolute most with Scottish, British, Irish, Italian, and English accents for multiple characters.
New to the Disney were Barbara Luddy and Larry Roberts as Lady and Tramp, respectively. Barbara was in her 50s at the time and Larry in his 20s; Walt had said animation was the only way that relationship would ever be believable. Larry wouldn’t do much else after this, but Barbara remained with Disney and performed in one of my favorite WDAS movies: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as Kanga.
I also want to point out the small role of Beaver by Stan Freberg. It’s a fun voice trick that Jimmy McDonald, the sound effect guy who would go on to voice Mickey Mouse after Walt stopped, gave Freberg. He physically handed him a little whistle to hold lightly against his lips, and that’s how the Beaver got his voice. I love this little story.
What I was most impressed by in this movie was how beautiful the backgrounds were in CinemaScope, as this was the studio’s first foray into a larger film format.
By the time Lady and the Tramp was actually in full production swing, TV had entered the cultural zeitgeist with a fury. I Love Lucy aired in 1951 and helped prove TV was a force to be reckoned with. In an effort to compete, film companies began experimenting with formats you couldn’t get at home, so people would still want to go to the theater.
While not a long-lasting process, due to some technical issues and Panavision’s more successful widescreen format, CinemaScope is gorgeous and adds a lot to WDAS’ meticulously painted backgrounds.
The man we have to thank for these beautiful backgrounds is Claude Coats. Claude was THE background guy, from Snow White to Lady and the Tramp. He would have continued to make films, but Walt wanted this elite artist on something a little more important to him at the time: Disneyland. He would help bring the iconic looks of The Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, among many others.
His concept for Lady and the Tramp was a highly detailed Victorian world, trying to capture the same essence Norman Rockwell did: a dreamlike, fantastical America found only in those paintings.
My beloved Mary Blair had some concept art from when this movie was in early development in the 30s. There’s not much left of her work present in the film, but I do think her color choices shine through.
Assisting Claude was sketch artist Eyvind Earle, who would lead Sleeping Beauty’s background design. It was his idea that Lady and the Tramp should be shot at a lower angle, from the world of the dogs. With that idea, he and Claude worked on how to define a world more horizontally than vertically.
Claude built 3D models of the house and other sets, as well as little character models so he could help visualize how smaller creatures would look in a 2D space. This was to help with how odd the angles would be shooting from a lower perspective.
I mentioned CinemaScope earlier, but that wasn’t always the plan. The movie and animation cells were originally made for a traditional format. It was a tough and expensive job for the background team, as it was mostly on them to fill in the gaps to broaden the frame. They ended up employing the use of trees and buildings mostly, it is a neat thing to spot once you know!
The big issue with CinemaScope in general was twofold: 1) The camera apertures weren’t great and caused a lot of stretching of close-ups in live-action movies and 2) it was a pricier widescreen effect than many of the other competitors of the time.
Actually, there was another issue facing CinemaScope and other widescreen formats at this time. Not all theaters were equipped with CinemaScope equipment, so WDAS had to fully produce two versions: the CinemaScope one and a flatscreen version.
Needless to say, this was very costly which is why WDAS switched to Super Technirama 70 for Sleeping Beauty.
Lady and the Tramp opened on June 22, 1955, to mixed reviews. Some thought the animation was not served by the CinemaScope and that it leaned on too much sentimentality. Others disagreed, saying it was a treat for the eyes, with the music also garnering a lot of praise.
Despite these mixed reviews, its box office performance was impressive, earning the most since Snow White: $6.5 million. That being said it did not garner many accolades for the studio.
Over time, it is hailed as one of the classics from WDAS and the spaghetti scene has become a beloved American classic movie scene.
For me, this movie is a little too saccharin and wants us to see an America that has only existed in the minds of people not wanting to face the realities of America. There’s a little too much “Wasn’t America so nice?” I will acknowledge the visual beauty of the movie and the richness of the music. It’s a technically impressive film, but the story is just not for me. There’s also the casual racism of the Siamese cats’ voiced by, yes, Peggy Lee. It’s to be expected of movies made during this time, but always something worth pointing out.
I put this as more of a miss of this time, comparatively to Cinderella and the forthcoming Sleeping Beauty. This was one I did not watch much growing up, the VHS growing dust quicker than many of the other Black Diamond editions I had. Personally, I think I’ll leave this one be, I have no desire to revisit, it despite being a technically well-made movie.
If you’re looking to own this one, the Signature Edition and Diamond Edition are essentially the same, but the Diamond Edition is a little harder to get and goes for a pricier amount.
I want to say thank you so much for the amount of patience you have had as I got this one out. It took 5 months, but rest assured I’m making time to do these more frequently. It looks like it’ll be every couple of weeks, instead of weekly.
I hope you enjoyed this look at Lady and the Tramp. If you have any thoughts on it, I’d love to hear them in the comments.
The next movie to examine? Sleeping Beauty; I was favorable towards as a kid and the last time I watched really dug.
Thanks for reading! Til next time!
- Colton
I think your note about the CinemaScope makes this especially intriguing.
I also LOVE the whole Peggy Lee thing. My friend Walt (not Disney) and I developed a whole comedy bit about her being wasted during "He's a Tramp" and passing out off camera at the end of it.
I think this deep dive makes me love it even more. I'd never considered consciously that it was shot from the POV of the dogs and it makes me want to watch it again. Glad to have the OeuvReport back!