Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released to theaters on June 22, 1955, by Buena Vista Distribution. The 15th animated film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, it was the first animated feature filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen film process.^[2] The story centers on a female anthropomorphic American Cocker Spaniel named Lady who lives with a refined, upper middle-class family, and a male stray mutt called the Tramp. A direct-to-video sequel, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, was released in 2001.

Plot[link]

On Christmas morning 1909, Jim Dear gives his wife Darling a cocker spaniel puppy that they name Lady. Lady enjoys a happy life with the couple and with a pair of dogs from the neighborhood, a Scottish Terrier named Jock and a bloodhound named Trusty. Meanwhile, across town by the railway, a stray mutt, referred to as The Tramp, lives life from moment to moment, be it begging for scraps from the local Italian restaurant or protecting his fellow strays Peg (a Lhasa Apso) and Bull (an English bulldog) from the local dog catcher.

Later, Lady is saddened after Jim Dear and Darling begin treating her rather coldly. Jock and Trusty visit her, and determine that the change in behavior is due to Darling expecting a baby. While Jock and Trusty try to explain what a baby is, Tramp offers his own thoughts on the matter. Jock and Trusty take an immediate dislike to the stray and order him out of the yard. As Tramp leaves, he reminds Lady that "when the baby moves in, the dog moves out".

Eventually, the baby arrives and Jim Dear and Darling introduce Lady to the infant, to whom Lady grows fond. Soon after, the two decide to go on a trip together, leaving their Aunt Sarah to look after the baby and the house. Aunt Sarah, however, dislikes dogs, refusing to let Lady near the baby. When Lady clashes with Aunt Sarah's two trouble-making Siamese cats, Si and Am, she takes Lady to a pet shop to get a muzzle. Lady flees, but is pursued by some street dogs. After the Tramp rescues Lady, the two visit a local zoo, where Tramp tricks a beaver into removing the muzzle. Later, Tramp shows Lady how he lives "footloose and collar-free", eventually leading into a candlelit Italian dinner. Lady begins to fall in love with Tramp, and the two spend the night together on a hilltop in the park.

As Tramp escorts Lady back home the next day, Tramp stirs up trouble in a chicken coop. As the two dogs flee, Lady is caught by the dog-catcher. At the pound, the other dogs admire Lady's license, as it is her way out of the pound. Soon the dogs reveal the Tramp's many girlfriends and how he is unlikely to ever settle down. Eventually, Lady is collected by Aunt Sarah and is chained to the backyard doghouse. Jock and Trusty visit to comfort her, but when Tramp arrives to apologize, thunder starts to rumble as Lady angrily confronts him about his past girlfriends and failure to rescue her, after which Tramp leaves.

Moments later, as it starts to rain, Lady sees a rat trying to sneak into the house with the apparent intention of harming the baby. Lady barks frantically, but Aunt Sarah tells her to be quiet. Tramp hears her and runs back to help. Tramp enters the house and confronts the rat in the nursery. Lady breaks free and races to the nursery to find the rat on the baby's crib. Tramp manages to kill the rat in battle, but knocks over the crib in the process, awakening the infant. When Aunt Sarah comes to the baby's aid, she sees the two dogs and thinks they are responsible. She forces Tramp into a closet and Lady into the basement, then calls the pound to take Tramp away.

Jim Dear and Darling return as the dogcatcher departs. They release Lady, who leads them and Aunt Sarah to the dead rat, vindicating Tramp. Overhearing everything and realizing Tramp's intentions, Jock and Trusty chase after the dogcatcher's wagon. 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, who rear up and topple the wagon onto a utility pole. Jim Dear arrives by car with Lady, and Lady reunites with Tramp. However, Trusty is injured in the struggle and Jock howls in sorrow.

That Christmas, Tramp, now a part of Lady's family, has his own collar and license. Aunt Sarah has also reconciled with Lady by sending her a box of dog biscuits. Lady and Tramp raise four puppies together: three resemble Lady (Annette, Danielle, and Collette) and the other resembles Tramp (Scamp). Jock comes to see the family along with Trusty, who is carefully walking on his still-mending leg.

Cast[link]

• Barbara Luddy as Lady
• Larry Roberts as The Tramp
• Bill Thompson as Jock, Joe, Bulldog, Dachsie, Policeman
• Bill Baucom as Trusty
• George Givot as Tony
• Peggy Lee as Darling, Si, Am, Peg
• Verna Felton as Aunt Sarah
• Stan Freberg as the beaver
• Alan Reed as Boris
• Thurl Ravenscroft as Al the alligator
• Dallas McKennon as Toughy, Pedro, Professor, Hyena
• Lee Millar as Jim Dear, Dogcatcher
• The Mellomen (Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee, Max Smith, Bob Hamlin and Bob Stevens) as Dog Chorus

Production[link]

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Story Development[link]

In 1937 Disney story man Joe Grant came up with an idea inspired by the antics of his of his Springer Spaniel Lady, and how she got "shoved aside" by Joe's new baby. He approached Walt Disney with sketches of Lady. Disney enjoyed the sketches and commissioned Grant to start story development on a new animated feature Lady.^[3] Through the late 1930s and early 1940s, Joe Grant and other artists worked on the story, taking a variety approaches, but Disney wasn't pleased with any of them, primarily because he thought Lady was too sweet, and there wasn't enough action.^[3]

In the early 1940s Walt read a short story written by Ward Greene, "Happy Dan, The Whistling Dog", in Cosmopolitan Magazine.^[4] He thought Grant's story would be improved if Lady fall in love with a cynical dog character like the one in Greene's story, and bought the rights to it.^[5] The cynical dog had various names during development, including Homer, Rags, and Bozo, before "Tramp" was chosen. It was first thought "Tramp" wouldn't be acceptable because of the sexual connotation associated with the word ("The Lady is a Tramp"), but as Walt Disney approved it was considered safe.^[4]

The finished film is slightly different from what was originally planned. Lady was to have only one next-door neighbor, a Ralph Bellamy-type canine named Hubert. Hubert was later replaced by Jock and Trusty. Aunt Sarah was the traditional overbearing mother-in-law. In the final film she's softened to a busybody who, though antagonistic towards Lady, is well-meaning (she sends a packet of dog biscuits to Lady at Christmas to apologize for mistreating her). Aunt Sarah's Nip and Tuck^[4] were later renamed Si and Am. Originally, Lady's owners were called Jim Brown and Elizabeth. These were changed to highlight Lady's point of view. They were briefly referred to as "Mister" and "Missis" before settling on the names "Jim Dear" and "Darling". To maintain a dog's perspective, Darling and Jim's faces are rarely shown, similar to Mammy Two Shoes in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The rat was a somewhat comic character in early sketches, but became a great deal more frightening, due to the need to raise dramatic tension. A scene created but then deleted was one in which after Trusty says "Everybody knows, a dog's best friend is his human". This leads to Tramp describing a world where the roles of both dogs and humans are switched; the dogs are the masters and vice-versa.^[3] There was a love triangle among Lady, Tramp, and a Russian wolfhound named Boris (who appears in the dog pound in the final version).^[6] By June, 1943 a treatment had been completed. But the artists weren't allowed to go any further, as the studio was producing mostly instructional and propaganda films for World War II. Story development continued after the war.

The film's opening sequence, in which Darling unwraps a hat box on Christmas morning and finds Lady inside, is based on an incident when Walt Disney's presented his wife Lily with a Chow puppy as a gift in a hat box.^[7]

In 1949 Grant left the studio, but Disney story men were continually pulling Grant's original drawings and story off the shelf to retool.^[3] A solid story began taking shape in 1953,^[5] based on Grant's storyboards and Greene's short story.^[3] 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.^[8] Grant didn't receive film credit for his story work, an issue that animation director Eric Goldberg hoped to rectify in the Lady and the Tramp Platinum Edition's behind-the-scenes vignette that explained Grant's role.^[3]

Animation[link]

As they had done with deer on Bambi, the animators studied many dogs of different breeds to capture the movement and personality of dogs. Although the spaghetti eating sequence is probably now the best known scene from the film, Walt Disney was prepared to cut it, thinking that it would not be romantic and that dogs eating spaghetti would look silly. Animator Frank Thomas was against Walt's decision and animated the entire scene himself without any lay-outs. Walt was impressed by Thomas's work and how he romanticised the scene and kept the scene in.^[3]

Originally the background artist was supposed to be Mary Blair and she did some inspirational sketches for the film. However she left the studio to become a children's book illustrator in 1953. Claude Coats was then appointed as the key background artist. Coats made models of the interiors of Jim Dear and Darling's house, and shot photos and film at a low perspective as reference to maintain a dog's view.^[8] Eyvind Earle (who later became the art director of Disney's Sleeping Beauty) did almost 50 miniature concept sketches for the Bella Notte sequence and was a key contributor to the film.^[8]

CinemaScope[link]

Originally Lady and the Tramp was planned to filmed in a regular full frame aspect ratio. However due to the growing interest of widescreen film amongst movie-goers, Disney decided to animate the film in CinemaScope making Lady and the Tramp the first animated feature made in the process.^[4] This new innovation presented additional problems for the animators: the expansion of space created more realism, but gave fewer closeups.^[5] It also made it difficult for a single character to dominate the screen, so that groups had to be spread out to keep the screen from appearing sparse.^[4] Longer takes become necessary since constant jump-cutting would seem too busy or annoying.^[2] Layout artists essentially had to reinvent their technique. Animators had to remember that they had to move their characters across a background instead of the background passing behind them.^[5] Yet the animators overcame these obstacles during the action scenes, such as the Tramp killing the rat.^[2]

More problems arose as the premiere date got closer, since not all theaters had the capability to show CinemaScope at the time. Upon learning this, Walt issued two versions of the film: one in widescreen, and another in the Academy ratio. This involved gathering the layout artists to restructure key scenes when characters were on the edges of the screen.^[9]

Release, reception and reputation[link]

The film was originally released in theaters on June 22, 1955. At the time, the film took in a higher figure than any other Disney animated feature since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, earning an estimated $6.5 million in rentals in North America.^[10][11] An episode of Disneyland called "A Story of Dogs" aired before the film's release.^[12] The film was also reissued to theaters in 1962, 1971, 1980, and 1986.

Despite being an enormous success at the box office, the film was initially panned by many critics: one indicated that the dogs had "the dimensions of hippos," another that "the artists' work is below par".^[13] However the film has since come to be regarded as a classic. The sequence of Lady and the Tramp sharing a plate of spaghetti and meatballs—climaxed by an accidental kiss as they swallow opposite ends of the same piece of spaghetti—is considered an iconic scene in American film.

Lady and the Tramp was named number 95 out of the "100 Greatest Love Stories of All Time" by the American Film Institute in their 100 Years...100 Passions special, as one of only two animated films to appear on the list, along with Disney's Beauty and the Beast (which ranked 34th).^[14]

In 2010, Rhapsody (online music service) called its accompanying soundtrack one of the all-time great Disney & Pixar Soundtracks.^[15]

In June 2011, TIME named it one of "The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films".^[16]

Home media[link]

The movie was released 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.

Lady and the Tramp was remastered and restored for DVD on February 28, 2006, as the seventh installment of Disney's Platinum Editions series.^[17] One million copies of the Platinum Edition were sold on February 28, 2006.^[18] 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.^[19]

The film was released February 7, 2012 on Blu-ray combo pack as a part of Disney's Diamond Editions series.^[20] A standalone 1-disc DVD edition was released on March 20, 2012.^[21][22]

Awards[link]

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - Nominated^[26]
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions - #95
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
  • He's a Tramp - Nominated^[27]
• AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated^[28]
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Animated Film^[29]

Soundtrack[link]

(songs and musical cues as listed on CD)

Peggy Lee[link]

Recording artist Peggy Lee wrote the songs with Sonny Burke, and assisted with the score as well.^[4] In the film she sings: "He's a Tramp", "La La Lu", "The Siamese Cat Song", and "What Is a Baby?".^[30] She helped promote the film on the Disney TV series, explaining her work with the score and singing a few of the film's numbers.^[4] These appearances are available as part of the Lady and the Tramp Platinum Edition DVD set.

On November 16, 1988 Peggy Lee sued the Walt Disney Company for breach of contract, claiming that she retained the rights to transcriptions of the music, arguing that videotape editions were transcriptions.^[31] After a protracted legal battle, she was awarded $2.3m in 1991.^[32]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lady and the Tramp at the Internet Movie Database
• Lady and the Tramp at Rotten Tomatoes
• Lady and the Tramp at Box Office Mojo
• Lady and the Tramp at Disney's Archives