Remembering when Disney went to the dogs

The Walt Disney animated classic “101 Dalmatians” is celebrating its 47th anniversary -- that’s 329 in dog years -- with a beautiful new digital restoration, a two-week engagement beginning Friday at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood and a two-disc DVD release March 4.

Based on the book by Dodie Smith, the film revolves around the adventures of two Dalmatians, Perdita and Pongo, who take matters into their own paws by arranging for their respective humans, Anita and struggling songwriter Roger, to fall in love and get married.

Love is also in the air for Perdita and Pongo, as they become parents to 15 puppies. The adorable pups, though, attract the attention of the flamboyant Cruella De Vil, who decides she wants the dogs’ fur for coats.

“101 Dalmatians” was the first Disney animated film to use the Xerox process to transfer the animators’ drawings to cels.

The film, says film historian Leonard Maltin, was unique in the Disney animated canon. “It is a contemporary story,” he says. “It doesn’t have the feel of a classic fairy tale. Though there’s music in it, it’s not a musical. Then, of course, the look of it was so different. It was the first contemporary Disney animated film where the characters were really stylized, angular, not rounded or cute. There was a very kind of rough, almost sketchy quality visually that made it look very modern.”

“Dalmatians” was a far less ambitious or expensive film than the studio’s previous animated effort, “Sleeping Beauty,” which was a box office failure. Hence the use of the Xerox process.

“They needed to do something manageable and more modestly priced,” Maltin says. “But if necessity was the mother of invention, it certainly worked in their favor.”

Maltin will be hosting a panel discussion at the Friday screening of “101 Dalmatians,” featuring Lisa Davis (the voice of Anita) and Alice Davis (the wife of Cruella De Vil animator Marc Davis)

-- Susan King