| Lady and the Tramp | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Clyde Geronimi Wilfred Jackson Hamilton Luske |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Written by | Ward Greene (novel) Erdman Penner Joe Rinaldi Ralph Wright Don DaGradi Joe Grant (concept) |
| Starring | Peggy Lee Barbara Luddy Larry Roberts Bill Thompson Bill Baucom Stan Freberg Verna Felton Alan Reed George Givot Dallas McKennon Lee Millar The Mellomen |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Distribution |
| Release date(s) | June 22, 1955 |
| Running time | 75 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $4,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $93,602,326 |
| Followed by | Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (2001) |
Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney, and originally released to theaters on June 22, 1955 by Buena Vista Distribution. The fifteenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, it was the first animated feature filmed in the Cinemascope widescreen film process. The story pairs a female American Cocker Spaniel named Lady who lives with a prosperous, upper middle-class family, and a male stray mutt named Tramp.[1]
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One Christmas, Jim Dear gives his wife Darling a cocker spaniel puppy that they name Lady. Though initially determined that Lady would sleep in a basket in the kitchen like a proper "dog," she ends up sleeping on the bed with the couple. When she is six months old, she receives a collar and license. Lady goes to show off her badge of "faith and respectability" to her canine friends Jock, a Scottish terrier and Trusty, a Bloodhound. Across town, a stray mutt, referred to as the Tramp by other characters, visits an Italian restaurant where he gets a large bone from the owner for his breakfast. He also spots his fellow strays Peg(a former Dog and Pony Showdog) Pekingese and Bull a Bulldog, locked up in a dog catcher's van and sets them free, leading the dogcatcher away in a decoy chase.
Later, Lady is saddened after Jim Dear refers to her as "THAT Dog", and another occasion when Darling gently swats her for pulling on the yarn she was sewing with. When she tells Jock and Trusty about these events, and how Jim Dear is always asking about Darling's "condition" they explain to her that Darling is pregnant and going to have a baby. While her friends try to explain, the Tramp wanders into the yard. He tells her that they are nothing but trouble and warn her that when the baby comes she'll lose her comfortable place in their home. Jock and Trusty take a dislike to the stray and order him out of the yard, then try to reassure her that her humans would never be so cruel.
The baby boy arrives amidst much confusion. Curious, Lady creeps towards the nursery. Jim Dear spots her, but rather than ordering her away as she expected, he lets her in. Lady loves the baby as soon as she sees it, and assigns herself as its protector. Soon after the baby is born, Jim Dear and Darling decide to go on a trip together, leaving their Aunt Sarah to look after the baby and the house. She brings her two Siamese cats, Si and Am. While Aunt Sarah is looking at the baby, the two cats begin causing mischief. When they try to go upstairs to steal the baby's milk, Lady barks at them and chases them, and the cats wreck the room in the process of being chased. Aunt Sarah comes down at all the noise and the two cats pretend to be hurt.
Blaming Lady for the trouble, Aunt Sarah takes her to a pet shop and has her muzzled. Terrified, Lady escapes from her arms and runs out into the streets. A pack of vicious street dogs chase her, but Tramp hears the barking and rescues her. Seeing the muzzle, he takes her to the zoo where they convince a beaver to remove the muzzle. With Lady free from the muzzle, the two dogs go around town and Tramp tells her about his life, and all the "homes" and names he has.
At dinnertime he takes her to his favorite Italian place, Tony's, where Tony and Joe prepare the couple a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and serenade the couple. As they eat, the dogs inadvertently share a kiss. After dinner, they go for a walk through the park, lending up on a hill overlooking the town. In the morning, Tramps asks Lady to stay with him, but she feels she must watch over the baby so he agrees to take her home. On the way, he convinces her to stop to chase some chickens, but while they are escaping, the dogcatcher catches Lady. At the pound, Lady is teased a bit by the rougher strays for being high bred, but Peg (who has been caught again), has them lay off. The other dogs talk about Tramp's many girlfriends, and how he is unwilling to ever settle down. They also predict that if he ever does, he'll grow careless and likely be caught and put to sleep. The talk upsets Lady, but she is soon taken home. Aunt Sarah chains her to a doghouse in the back yard, much to her shame. Jock and Trusty visit to try to comfort her, and even propose marriage so she could move to one of their homes. Lady appreciates their gesture but gently turns them down.
Tramp tries to apologize for her being caught. When he calls her a "cute little trick" Lady furiously turns on him and questions him about all of his other girls. Refusing to see him, Tramp sadly leaves. Moments later, Lady sees a rat sneaking into the house. She barks frantically, but Aunt Sarah yells at her to be quiet. Tramp hears her and runs back to help. Following Lady's directions, he gets into the house and finds the rat in the baby's room and kills it. Lady, having broken her chain to follow him into the house, thanks him for his help. Aunt Sarah runs in, and seeing the overturned crib thinks Tramp attacked the baby. She pushes him into a closet and Lady into the basement then calls the pound to take Tramp away.
As the dogcatcher is taking him away, Jim Dear and Darling return home and Lady shows them the dead rat. Jock and Trusty, having overheard everything, chase after the dogcatcher van. Jock is convinced Trusty has long since lost his sense of smell, but the old bloodhound is able to find the wagon. They bark at the horses to make it stop, causing the wagon to fall. Jim Dear and Lady are not far behind and Lady is happily reunited with Tramp before they discover that the wagon fell on Trusty.
Christmas arrives and Tramp now has his own collar and license. She and Tramp have a litter of four puppies: three girls who look like Lady and a boy who looks like Tramp. Jock and Trusty come to see the family and Tramp's new collar, with Trusty carefully walking on his injured leg.
The film was based on a short story written by Ward Greene, called Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog, published in the mid-1940s in Cosmopolitan (a literary magazine at that time), about a mutt from the wrong side of the tracks; and a story line worked on for several years by Disney story man Joe Grant and others at the Disney studio, about a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Lady, based on Grant's own pet, a Springer Spaniel named Lady (his dog was brown and white while Lady was honey-colored all over). Greene later wrote a novelization of the film that was released two years before the film itself, at Walt Disney's insistence, so that audiences would be familiar with the story.[2]
Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.55:1 it is, to date, the widest film that Disney has ever produced.
The finished film is slightly different from what was originally planned. Although both the original script and the final product both shared most of the same elements, it would still be revised and revamped. Originally, Lady was to have only one next door neighbor, a Ralph Bellamy-type canine named Hubert. Hubert was later replaced by Jock and Trusty. There were numerous scenes thought up but then deleted, as well. One scene created but then deleted was one in which, while Lady fears of the arrival of the baby, she has a "Parade of the Shoes" nightmare (similar to Dumbo's "Pink Elephants on Parade" nightmare) where a baby bootie splits in two, then four, and continues to multiply. The dream shoes then fade into real shoes, their wearer exclaiming that the baby has been born. Another cut scene was one in song, while Lady and Tramp are at the park, they engage in a bizarre Dog's World fantasy in which the roles of both dogs and humans are switched; the dogs are the masters and vice-versa.
Jock's real name, as is revealed during the movie, is "Heather Lad o' Glencairn." Jock was not the only character who was the subject of a name-game either. In fact, Lady was just about the only character who did not at one point or another have a different suggested name. For instance, prior to being "Tramp," Tramp went through a number of suggested names including Homer, Rags and Bozo. It was thought in the 1950s that the name "Tramp" would not be acceptable, but since Walt Disney approved of the choice, it was considered safe under his acceptance. On early story boards shown on the Backstage Disney DVD had listed description "a tramp dog" with "Homer" or one of the mentioned prior names.[3] Clearly, the movie's title was influenced by the pop standard "(That's Why)The Lady is a Tramp".
Tramp himself never refers to himself by that name, although most of the movie's canine cast refer to him by that name. It isn't until the second film in which any human calls him Tramp and it is never explained why they "name" him with the very name he was known by on the streets.
Tramp had other names in the movie, and when asked by Lady about having a family, Tramp states, "I have a different family for every day of the week, point is none of them have me." Each family mentioned had a different name (such as Mike and Fritzi), nationality, and meal. Since he doesn't belong to a single family, Tramp implies it is easier than the baby problems Lady is going through. "When you're footloose and collar free, you have no worries."[4]
Even though Trusty survives in the film, death is still shown in the dog pound. A dog known as "Nutsy" is put down. He is taken away and the lights sort of blink, and Lady asks, "You mean he's..." and the reply was yes. In the case of Lady and the Tramp it was to show what Tramp's fate would be with the dog catcher. This is done in future Disney animation, as in The Fox and the Hound. Tod's mother is shot at the beginning of the film (albeit off-screen), and we see the skins of animals including foxes later in the film. This is unlike other films where someone dies, such as in Bambi, where audiences were familiar with Bambi's mother, or in The Lion King, where everybody was familiar with Mufasa.
The character that eventually became Aunt Sarah was softened for the movie, in comparison with earlier treatments, where she was a very stereotyped battleaxe of a mother-in-law. In the film, she is a well-meaning busybody of a maiden aunt (revealed to be the sister of Darling's mother in the Greene novelization) who adores her cats, but does not believe that dogs should be around babies. She was more sympathetic in the Ward Greene novelization, where she actually rides to The Tramp's rescue in her electric car, after the dead rat is found. Likewise, the two cats (Si and Am) are more mischievous than evil in the film. However, earlier versions of the storyline, drafted in 1943, during the War, show them as a sinister pair suggesting the yellow peril, and named Nip and Tuck. In Ward Greene's novelization, they tearfully express remorse over causing Tramp's impending execution by hiding the rat's body as a joke, and then try to make amends – in the film, they simply don't figure in the climax at all, and the body of the rat isn't seen until Lady brings it to the attention of the humans. The rat, a somewhat comical character in some early versions, became a great deal more frightening, due to the need to ratchet up dramatic tension--though he was a decidedly malevolent bloodthirsty figure in Greene's 1953 book, so this conception must have been jettisoned very early on. The finished film doesn't really have much to say about Aunt Sarah or the cats, after they serve their purpose in the narrative (to get Lady out on the streets, and Tramp sent off to the pound). Si and Am are not seen after their memorable song sequence, and Aunt Sarah is only briefly referred to at the end of the film, when it is mentioned that she has sent some dog biscuits for Christmas, presumably as an apology for having so badly misunderstood Lady and Tramp.
In pre-production, Jim Dear was known as Jim Brown, and Darling was named Elizabeth. These were dropped, presumably because the humans in Lady's life were meant to be known by the names Lady always heard them call each other. In a very early version, published as a short story in a 1944 Disney children's anthology, Lady refers to them as "Mister'"and "Missis".
According to legend, the film's opening sequence, in which Darling unwraps a hat box on Christmas morning and finds Lady inside, is based upon an actual incident in Walt Disney's life. After he'd forgotten a dinner date with his wife, he made it up to her by offering her the puppy-in-the-hat-box surprise and was immediately forgiven.
Due to the fact that the story is told from a dog's perspective, Darling and Jim's faces were rarely shown. Models of the rooms of the house were used to aid in production of the film.[5]
The Beaver in this film seemed to be the inspiration for Gopher in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), down to the speech pattern (a whistling sound when he makes the "S" sound). This voice was created by Stan Freberg, who has an extensive background in commercial and comedy recording voice overs and soundtracks. On the DVD he demonstrates how it was done and that a whistle was eventually used because it was hard to continue repeating the effect.[6]
Before animating the fight between Tramp and the rat, animator Wolfgang Reitherman kept rats in a cage next to his desk to study their actions.
The plot originally intended to have Trusty die at the end of the film while saving Tramp from the dogcatcher, which is why Jock howls at his accident. Walt Disney, however, did not want a repeat of the controversy concerning the death of the mother in Bambi, and therefore Trusty was written into the epilogue sequence to say that he was merely injured. Since he had clearly not been around for several months, one must assume he had to have extensive surgery, and when he appears again he only has a bandaged leg. This is probably the first Disney film where the heroes of the film's climax, Jock and Trusty, are not the main protagonists, the second being Wall-E.
The famous spaghetti scene and the following night in the park is one of the most romantic moments in all of Disney animation. Like the sequence with Lady at the pound, it does not appear at all in Ward Greene's novelization, or any other earlier version of the story. It has been parodied on many occasions, including in the film's own sequel, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure. Lady and the Tramp was named the 95th best American romance by the American Film Institute in their A hundred years a hundred passions.
The film was reissued to theaters in 1962, 1971, 1980, and 1986, and on VHS and Laserdisc in 1987 (this was in Disney's The Classics video series) and 1998 (this was in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection video series). A Disney Limited Issue series DVD was released on November 23, 1999. It was remastered and restored for DVD on February 28, 2006, as the seventh installment of Platinum Edition series. [7] One million copies of the Platinum Edition were sold on February 28, 2006 [8] The Platinum Edition DVD went on moratorium on January 31, 2007, along with the 2006 DVD reissue of Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure [9]
Peggy Lee, who, along with Sonny Burke, created the songs for the film, later sued the Walt Disney Company for breach of contract claiming that she still retained rights to the transcripts, including those to videotape[10]. She was awarded $2.3m, but not without a lengthy legal battle with the studio which was finally settled in 1991. [11]
This film began a spinoff comic titled Scamp, named after one of Lady and Tramp's puppies. It was first written by Ward Greene and was published from October 31, 1955 until 1988.[12][13] Scamp also stars in a direct-to-video sequel in 2001 titled Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure. Walt Disney's Comic Digest — issue #54 has A New Adventure of Lady and the Tramp dated copyright 1955.[14]
Despite being an enormous success at the box office, the film was initially panned by many critics[15]. However the film has since come to be regarded as a classic. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a rating of 91% out of 23 reviews.
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