December 13, 2023 – Lady and the Tramp

Every year, the Library of Congress picks 25 movies to be added to the National Film Registry. They just announced this year’s entries, which include the 22nd Disney movie to be added to the registry, Lady and the Tramp!
In 1937, a story artist at Walt Disney Productions named Joe Grant came up with an idea inspired by the antics of his dog, an English Springer Spaniel named Lady. Disney liked his sketches and commissioned him to start developing a new animated feature. Grant and other artists worked on the story throughout the late 30s and 40s, but Disney found Lady to be too sweet and didn’t think there was enough action. A few years later, Disney read a story in Cosmopolitan magazine called “Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog”. He realized this story and the one about Lady could be combined to create a stronger movie. Before choosing the name Tramp, the cynical dog had various names including Homer, Rags, and Bozo.
There was a specific dog that inspired Tramp, too. The story goes that another one of Disney’s story artists spotted a mutt in his neighborhood while driving home one night. He lost sight of it, but eventually found it at an area shelter. The dog was actually a female, but they decided to move forward with using her as inspiration. Later, Disney employees adopted the dog and she lived out the rest of her days in a private area behind Disney Land.
Animators studied many different dogs of many different breeds to capture the right personality and movement. Not only were there dogs of size roaming around the studio, but one of the artists even kept a cage of rats on his desk to reference for the rat fighting scene in the movie. The spaghetti scene is one of the most famous from the movie. But Disney was prepared to leave it out because he thought it wouldn’t be romantic and that dogs eating spaghetti would look ridiculous.
Singer Peggy Lee not only voiced 4 characters in the movie, she also co-wrote 6 songs for the soundtrack. She sued the Walt Disney Company in 1988 for $25 million in royalties and damages. Her contract said she would receive money for “transcriptions for sale to the public”, but at the time, VHS didn’t exist. So she argued that she should get a piece of the millions of VHS tapes that had been sold. She was eventually awarded $2.3 million in 1991.
Lady and the Tramp was released on June 22, 1955. It was the first animated movie to be filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen film process. It received generally mixed reviews but has since become regarded as a classic. Learn more here.