Lady and the Tramp

Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 American animated musical romantic comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. Based on Ward Greene's 1945 Cosmopolitan magazine story "Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog", it was directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson. The film features the voices of Peggy Lee, Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson, Bill Baucom, Stan Freberg, Verna Felton, Alan Reed, George Givot, Dallas McKennon, and Lee Millar. The film follows Lady, the pampered cocker spaniel, as she grows from puppy to adult, deals with changes in her family, and meets and falls in love with the homeless mutt Tramp.

The inspiration for Lady and the Tramp originated in 1925 when Walt Disney presented his wife Lillian with a chow puppy in a hatbox. In 1937, Joe Grant, a storyboard artist, pitched to Disney an original idea as inspired by his English Springer Spaniel. Throughout the 1940s, the project underwent numerous story revisions, but it was shelved due to Disney's production of several package films. Grant left the Disney studios in 1949.

In 1952, Disney placed the project back into active development, and the final story was revised by Erdman Penner and Joe Rinaldi. The film's art direction was supervised by Claude Coats, who took inspiration from gingerbread architecture. Peggy Lee and Sonny Burke wrote the film's original songs, while Oliver Wallace composed the instrumental musical score. During production, Disney decided Lady and the Tramp would be the first animated film to be filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen film process. It was also Disney's first animated film to be distributed by their Buena Vista division following their split from RKO Radio Pictures.

Lady and the Tramp was released in theaters on June 22, 1955, and achieved box office success. While it initially received mixed reviews from critics, the film's critical reception has grown more favorable over time, and it is now regarded as one of the greatest animated films of all time. The film launched a long-running Disney comic strip featuring Scamp. A direct-to-video sequel, titled Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, was released in 2001. A live-action/CGI hybrid remake premiered in 2019 as a launch title for the Disney+ streaming service. In 2023, Lady and the Tramp was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

Plot

In 1909, "Jim Dear" gives his wife "Darling" a cocker spaniel puppy as a Christmas present. The puppy, named Lady, grows up pampered by her doting owners, and befriends her neighbors' dogs Jock (a Scottie) and Trusty (an elderly bloodhound). Across town, a stray terrier-mix named Tramp lives freely on the streets while avoiding the dogcatcher.

After overhearing that Darling is expecting a baby, Tramp warns Lady that babies often replace household pets. Lady worries about losing her place in the family, but her fears ease after the baby is born and she is introduced to him.

Later, Jim Dear and Darling take a short trip, leaving the house, Lady, and the baby in the care of Jim Dear's aunt Sarah, who dislikes dogs and brings along her two Siamese cats, Si and Am. The cats cause damage in the house and make it appear that Lady is responsible. Sarah takes Lady to have a muzzle fitted, but Lady escapes into the streets after being frightened by several stray dogs. Tramp rescues her and later takes her around town, including a dinner at Tony’s Restaurant. Although Lady enjoys spending time with him, she ultimately decides her responsibility is to remain with her family.

While escorting Lady home, Tramp is distracted chasing chickens, and Lady is captured by the dogcatcher. At the dog pound, several stray dogs tell Lady about Tramp’s history with other female dogs, causing her to doubt his sincerity. After Sarah retrieves Lady, she chains her in the backyard as punishment. When Tramp later attempts to apologize, Lady angrily rejects him.

That night, Lady notices a rat entering the house through the baby’s bedroom window. Unable to alert Sarah, she barks until Tramp returns to investigate. Tramp fights and kills the rat, but the struggle overturns the baby’s crib. Sarah assumes the dogs attacked the child and has Tramp taken away by the dogcatcher while locking Lady in the cellar.

When Jim Dear and Darling return home, Lady leads them to the dead rat, proving what happened. Jock and Trusty pursue the dogcatcher’s wagon in an attempt to rescue Tramp, causing an accident that injures Trusty. Jim Dear and Darling arrive in time to save Tramp, who is welcomed into the family.

By the following Christmas, Tramp has settled into domestic life with Lady, and the two have puppies together. Jock and the recovering Trusty visit the family, with Trusty entertaining the puppies with stories from his past.

Voice cast

Peggy Lee as Darling, Lady's owner and Jim Dear's wife.
Lee also voiced Peg, a stray female Pekingese with a Brooklyn Accent whom Lady meets at the pound, as well as Si and Am, Aunt Sarah's twin Siamese cats with a knack for mischief and never-ending trouble.
Barbara Luddy as Lady, an American Cocker Spaniel, who is the primary character in the film.
Larry Roberts as Tramp, a mongrel (with a mixture of a schnauzer and a terrier), with a talent for escaping dog-catchers. He nicknames Lady "Pidge", short for Pigeon, which he calls her owing to her naivety. He never refers to himself by name, although most of the film's canine cast refer to him as the Tramp. Tony and Joe like to call him "Butch".
Bill Thompson as Jock, a Scottish Terrier who is one of Lady's neighbors.
Thompson also voiced Joe, Tony's assistant chef; Bull, a stray male bulldog from the dog pound who speaks with a Cockney accent; Dachsie, a stray male dachshund at the dog pound who speaks with a German accent;

In 1937, Joe Grant, a storyboard artist working for Walt Disney Productions, pitched an idea inspired by the antics of his English Springer Spaniel Lady, and how she got "shoved aside" by Grant's new baby. The twist is that the story would be told from a dog's perspective. Grant then presented Disney with several sketches of Lady, which Disney enjoyed. He then commissioned Grant to commence story development on a new animated feature. According to Frank Tashlin, who had worked on the film's early development, a rough story outline had been written by 1940. The outline included two Siamese cats that were named Nip and Tuck as secondary characters. Tashlin stated: "Joe Grant had models of the dog, Lady, and Sam [Cobean] and I did a story. I never saw the film...I think we had rats coming after the baby at the end...did they have that? Then that's what we did."

In 1943, story development resumed when Disney decided to produce the story into an animated featurette. Grant pitched the new story, and while Disney was fascinated by the charm of the character Lady, he felt the story was lacking something "extra". Disney explained, "We discovered during our preliminary conferences that we only had half of the story we wanted. Our prim, well-bred, house-sheltered little Lady, when confronted with a crisis, just up and ran away." That same year, Disney then read the 1937 short story "Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog" by Ward Greene, an editor for King Features, which also distributed Disney comic strips. The story was later published in the February 1945 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. In the story, Happy Dan was a streetwise, happy-go-lucky mutt compared to Lady, in Grant's story, who was refined. Disney contacted Greene and suggested a romance between the dogs, stating, "Your dog and my dog have got to get together!" Greene agreed, and he promptly rewrote his story retitling it "Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog, and Miss Patsy, the Beautiful Spaniel." Disney subsequently acquired the rights to the story. Back at the studio, the stray dog was first named Homer, Since Huemer and Grant had left the Disney studio in 1948 and 1949, respectively, the final story development were done mostly by Erdman Penner and Joe Rinaldi. A solid story began to consolidate in 1953, based on Grant's storyboards and Greene's short story.

Casting

Barbara Luddy was a radio actress best known for her role on the First Nighter radio program. From a dozen auditions from several actresses, Luddy was selected as the voice of Lady. She later provided the voice for several Disney characters, including Merryweather in Sleeping Beauty (1959), Kanga in the Winnie the Pooh featurettes, and Mother Rabbit and the church mouse Mother Sexton in Robin Hood (1973). Backed by the ballad "Bella Notte" sung by George Givot, the animation has since become one of the most indelible romantic scenes in cinema history.

Eric Larson animated the character Peg, among other characters. He became acquainted with the character's voice actress Peggy Lee, and watched her recording sessions. Larson reflected, "She did some of her gestures as she went through the dialogue. I thought, 'God, if I could get a lot of that in the dog, I could at least have some fun with it. When he designed the character, Larson took inspiration from Lee and Mae West; Peg's hairstyle was supposedly inspired by Veronica Lake. Disney was impressed with Larson's animation that he selected him to direct Sleeping Beauty (1959), which was simultaneously in production, after Wilfred Jackson had suffered a heart attack.

Wolfgang Reitherman, known for action-driven animation, animated the sequence where Tramp fights several alley dogs and Tramp's fight with the rat in the nursery room. Notably, for the rat fight sequence, Reitherman kept multiple rats in a large cage next to his desk while animating the sequence so he could perfect the rodent's physical movement and behavior. Milt Kahl animated nearly all the dog characters, but primarily focused on Tramp. John Lounsbery worked closely with Kahl on animating Tramp. He also animated Tony and Joe, the respective proprietor and chef of an Italian restaurant, and Bull, an English bulldog. Les Clark animated the scenes of Lady as a puppy.

While reviewing the animation dailies, Disney decided to remove several animators, whom he felt had focused too much attention on detail and had lost sight of the characters. He reassigned them to work on Sleeping Beauty for six months and placed them back on Lady and the Tramp in hopes they would be rejuvenated with "new enthusiasm." To compensate for the production delays, animators had to work six days a week to have the film finished on time.

Art direction

An early proposed version of Lady and the Tramp was set in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. Mary Blair provided early conceptual art for the film during the 1940s, as it was one of the first projects she had worked on for the Disney studios.

However, the film's setting was changed to occur during the turn of the twentieth century in New England, which resonated with Walt Disney. During a 1952 story meeting, Disney affectionately remembered: "In this period—I can remember those days, you know—I lived in a little town in Missouri, and there were only two automobiles. It was 1908. They began to come in then." Claude Coats was then appointed as the key background artist. He explained, "The period was turn-of-the-century Americana, so we made much use of porch furniture of that era, plus the gingerbread ornamentation of the houses, the curly-cue fences, etc."

To create greater authenticity, Coats and the artists studied photographs of older Los Angeles mansions that reflected the ornamented gingerbread architecture within the once-fashionable West Adams neighborhood. To maintain a dog's perspective, Coats built miniature models of the interiors of Jim Dear and Darling's house, and took photos and shot film at a low perspective as reference. Tony Baxter, who was mentored by Coats, further explained: "[He] was trained in architecture so was particularly good at giving credibility to the setting. Coats liked to build models so he could see how things would translate dimensionally."

Music

The score for the film was composed and conducted by Oliver Wallace who composed music from previous movies stating with Dumbo. It was the last Disney animated film for which Oliver Wallace did the score, as the scores for the next six Disney animated films were composed by George Bruns, starting with Sleeping Beauty (1959) until Robin Hood (1973).

Recording artist Peggy Lee wrote the songs with Sonny Burke and assisted with the score as well. 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.

On August 27, 2015, Disney released an expanded two-disc album as an installment of The Legacy Collection series to coincide with the film's 60th anniversary. The first disc includes the film's complete original soundtrack. The second disc included one demo recording, two Lost Chords recordings, and six tracks from the 1962 Disneyland Records vinyl album Lady and the Tramp: All the Songs from the Motion Picture.

Songs

Original songs performed in the film include:

Release

An episode of the Disneyland television series titled "A Story of Dogs" aired on ABC on December 1, 1954. The first half of the episode, hosted by Walt Disney, was specifically devoted to Lady and the Tramp. The episode featured appearances from animators Wolfgang Reitherman, Frank Thomas, and Milt Kahl; co-director Clyde Geronimi, and story artist Erdman Penner. The episode re-aired on May 25, 1955 and later on July 20, 1955.

Another Disneyland episode titled "Cavalcade of Songs" was originally broadcast on February 16, 1955 to promote the film. in Chicago on June 16, 1955. It was released in general theaters on June 22. The film was paired as a double feature with the short subject documentary Switzerland of the People & Places film series.

During its initial release, Lady and the Tramp took in a higher figure than any other Disney animated feature since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), earning an estimated $6.5 million in distributor rentals.

Re-releases

Lady and the Tramp was first re-released in 1962 on a double bill with Almost Angels. According to The New York Times, the film earned roughly between $6 to $7 million. The film was re-released in December 1971, and in most markets, the film was paired with The Million Dollar Duck. This release earned $10 million.

Lady and the Tramp also played a limited engagement in select Cinemark Theatres from February 16–18, 2013. Lady and the Tramp has had a domestic lifetime gross of $93.6 million, and a lifetime international gross of $187 million. as part of the Walt Disney Classics video series and in the United Kingdom in 1990. During the home video transfer, technicians for Walt Disney Home Video used a pan-and-scan of the CinemaScope version rather than use the theatrical Academy version.

To promote the 1987 release, Disney launched a $20 million promotional campaign of television and print advertisements. They also partnered with McDonald's and the American Dairy Association. McDonald's offered a three-dollar discount for a videocassette copy, and consumers saved $4.25 ($12 in 2025 dollars) on the videocassette when purchasing milk. When the release went into moratorium on March 31, 1988, the film was estimated to have sold more than three million copies. By early 1988, it was the best-selling VHS title at the time, in which the estimated video sales generated $60 million. Its record was then surpassed by Cinderella (1950), which sold 7.5 million copies and earned $100 million in sales in 1988.

It was re-released on THX-certified VHS and Laserdisc on September 15, 1998, as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection video series. The VHS master used the original Academy ratio, while the LaserDisc presented the film in its widescreen format.

Lady and the Tramp was remastered and restored for DVD on February 28, 2006, as the seventh installment of Disney's Platinum Editions series. On its first day, one million copies of the Platinum Edition were sold. The Platinum Edition DVD went on moratorium on January 31, 2007, along with the 2006 DVD re-issue of the film's sequel Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (2001).

Lady and the Tramp was released on Blu-ray on February 7, 2012, as a part of Disney's Diamond Editions series. A standalone 1-disc DVD edition was released on March 20, 2012.

Lady and the Tramp was re-released on Digital HD on February 20, 2018, and on Blu-ray February 27, 2018, as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection line.

Lawsuit

Peggy Lee, who had originally been paid $3,500, was asked to help promote the 1987 VHS release, for which she was paid an honorarium for $500. Lee contended Disney had breached the 1952 contract she had signed with the studio, which denied Disney the right to make "transcriptions for sale to the public" without her approval. Disney CEO Michael Eisner refused to pay Lee her share of the royalties. On November 16, 1988, 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. Her lawyers demanded $50 million in damages for compensation. In March 1991, Lee was awarded $2.3 million for breach of contract, plus $500,000 for unjust enrichment, $600,000 for illegal use of Lee's voice and $400,000 for the use of her name. From the $72 million Disney had earned in videocassette sales, by 1995, Lee's award was estimated to be four percent of the sales. In December 1992, the California Supreme Court denied a hearing on Disney's appeal of lower-court rulings, which upheld the studio had committed breach of contract.

Reception

Critical reaction

During its initial release, the film initially received mixed reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times claimed the film was "not the best [Disney] has done in this line. The sentimentality is mighty, and the CinemaScope size does not make for any less aware of the thickness of the goo. It also magnifies the animation, so that the flaws and poor foreshortening are more plain. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the artists' work is below par in this film." Time wrote "Walt Disney has for so long parlayed gooey sentiment and stark horror into profitable cartoons that most moviegoers are apt to be more surprised than disappointed to discover that the combination somehow does not work this time." John McCarten of The New Yorker felt the story was handled "with a sentimentality that Albert Payson Terhune might have found excessive" and wrote the two lead characters were unappealing. McCarten also criticized the film's CinemaScope process, writing it gave the characters "the dimensions of hippos."

Gene Arneel of Variety deemed the film "a delight for the juveniles [and] lots of fun for adults". Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times described the film as a "delightful, haunting, charmed fantasy that is remarkably enriched with music and, incidentally, with rare conversations among the canine characters." Harrison's Reports felt the "scintillating musical score and several songs, the dialogue and the voices, the behaviors and expressions of the different characters, the mellow turn-of-the-century backgrounds, the beautiful color and sweep of the CinemaScope process — all these add up to one of the most enjoyable cartoon features Disney has ever made." Mildred Martin of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the film "delightfully written, quaintly drawn" and stated it "could easily become a screen classic." Dorothy Masters of the New York Daily News wrote Lady and the Tramp was "another great work of art, a masterpiece not only by virtue of unerring brush and magnificent color, but because the cartoon genius [Walt Disney] has now perfected his art to the point of making two-dimensional animals more human than people."

thumb|right|The sequence of Lady and Tramp sharing a plate of spaghetti – climaxed by an accidental kiss as they swallow opposite ends of the same strand of spaghetti – is considered an iconic scene in American film history.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review on their show At the Movies when it was re-released in 1986, with Ebert in particular praising the opening scene of Lady as a puppy calling it one of the greatest animated sequences Disney ever did. Dave Kehr, writing for The Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars. In a Los Angeles Times review, Charles Solomon, an animation historian, called the animation "wonderfully polished" and felt it will be regarded as "a timeless film that audiences will still enjoy 31 years from now." The sequence of Lady and Tramp sharing a plate of spaghetti – climaxed by an accidental kiss as they swallow opposite ends of the same strand of spaghetti – is considered an iconic scene in American film history.

Lady and the Tramp contains several instances of ethnic and cultural stereotyping. The depiction of the pair of Siamese cats in particular has been recognized for its racist Asian stereotypes. "The Siamese Cat Song" was cut from the 2019 live-action remake of the film, and in 2020 Disney+ included a content warning at the beginning of the film, advising viewers of "negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures".

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. In 2010, Rhapsody called its accompanying soundtrack one of the all-time great Disney and Pixar soundtracks. In June 2011, Time magazine named it one of "The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films".

Accolades

{| class="wikitable"

|- "

! Year

! Ceremony

! Award

! Result

| rowspan="2"| 1956

| BAFTA Awards

| Best Animated Film

| David di Donatello Awards

| 2006

| Satellite Awards

| Best Youth DVD

American Film Institute Lists

AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – No. 95

Other media

Comics

From October 31, 1955 to June 25, 1988, Scamp comic strip was published by King Feature Syndicate.
The comic book was also published by Dell Comics' first issue being Four Color No. 703 (May 1956); this turned into a regular comic book series which had No. 16 issues ending in December 1960. A second series was launched by Gold Key Comics in 1967–1979; which ran for 45 issues. The film's songs were composed by Melissa Manchester and Norman Gimbel. Titled Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, it centers on the adventures of Lady and Tramp's only son, Scamp, who desires to be a wild dog. He runs away from his family and joins a gang of junkyard dogs to fulfill his longing for freedom and a life without rules. Produced by Disney Television Animation and Disney Video Premiere, Scamp's Adventure was released on February 27, 2001.

Live-action remake

Walt Disney Pictures produced a live-action remake of the film with Justin Theroux and Tessa Thompson in the voice roles of Tramp and Lady respectively. The movie premiered on Disney's new streaming service, Disney+, on its US launch date of November 12, 2019 to mixed reviews.

Video games

In the Kingdom Hearts games, a statue of Lady and Tramp appears in a fountain in Traverse Town.

In the world builder game Disney Magic Kingdoms, Lady, Tramp, Tony, Joe, Jock and Trusty appear as playable characters, along with some attractions based on locations of the film. In the game the characters are involved in new storylines that serve as a continuation of the film.

Disney Parks and Resorts

Walt Disney wanted the setting of the film to be Marceline, Missouri which had been his childhood hometown. Whilst Lady and the Tramp was in production, Walt was also designing Disneyland in California and styled the Main Street, U.S.A. area of the park to Marceline. Tony's Town Square Restaurant is an Italian restaurant inspired by Lady and the Tramp and is located on Main Street, U.S.A. at Walt Disney World, whilst the Pizzeria Bella Notte restaurant is in Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris.