Chapter One Hundred: Lady and the Tramp (1996)
(Concept Art)
If you ask people today what they think of Lady and the Tramp, they will tell you one of two things. They either love it and think it’s an underrated gem or they will tell you it was Disney’s biggest train wreck since the 80s. There seems to be no in-between either. At the time of its production, some in the staff knew the film would falter, but the question of why it did falter is clear. When the idea first came up, the Disney company was still young as the idea was first proposed back in 1937 when Disney Story artist Joe Grant came up with an idea inspired by the antics of his English Springer Spaniel Lady. He had approached Walt Disney with sketches of Lady. Disney enjoyed the sketches and commissioned Grant to start story development on a new animated feature titled Lady. That film soon faced issues, however, as the onset of the Second World War moved around films and thus the lady film concept laid dormant.
Cut forward to the 90s and Disney was enjoying a whole new era of success and though Walt had passed, Joe Grant still lived, through now in his 80s and since retired. The idea came back to light when Don Bluth met Grant when he was made a Disney Legend in 1994. And so, production on the newly named Lady and the Tramp began. With that, so did the issues. See Bluth believed in 2D films, but he also saw the future and the power of 3D animation. The studio itself was divided. The older generation who had been working in the studio since the 70s (some of them even going as far as the 60s) wanted to preserve 2D animation. They believed it was the only correct way to make films and by changing that format they insulted the memory of both Walt and UB. On the other hand, it was the newer generation who pushed for innovation and the chance to move forward. They believed that Walt and Ub favoured the push forward and would happily embrace 3D. Even the family members couldn't fully agree.
What is likely is that the pair would have been a mix of both. Calling for the preservation of 2D animation, as well as embracing CGI. The Squabbles in the studio by the time Lady and the Tramp came to production were reaching a fever pitch. The Disney civil war (which is wrongly named) was in full effect and in the middle-sat Don Bluth. Bluth was nearing his 60s and had been in charge of the animation studio since 1986. He was getting tired, the same overbearing workload that had affected past studio heads now became a crushing weight. Bluth longed to return to focusing on the art of filmmaking instead of the constant fighting the studio had devolved into.
Writer Tab Murphy was brought on board to write the screenplay. He attempted to work closely with Bluth to craft the story even as the studio seemed ready to burn to the ground. Yet trying to keep the studio together kept Bluth away from the writing. The studio could not see the disaster they were heading towards. After much debate, the film would be made in the 2D style, which annoyed some. In 1994, the film was scheduled for a Christmas 1995 release, though the film was delayed due to late animation, issues with the script and members of the animation crew quitting. The Disney Renaissance did not come to a slow and steady stop. It came to a crashing halt as the train came off the tracks and proceeded to crash at full speed into a wall. Lady and the Tramp was slammed for a lacklustre story, odd-looking animation and a rushed climax. Not since The Wind in the Willows had a Disney animated film taken such a beating.
Don Bluth, however, was able and ready to prevent disaster from consuming the studio. As said before, people call this Era the Disney Civil War, but it did not last long, enough to be termed that, nor did it last long enough for people to call it the Second Dark Age. It was more of a transition period from the Disney Renaissance into the Hybrid Era of the 2000s. Bluth knew his time was coming to an end at Disney, so he began to work closely with Katie Fleischer-Disney to prepare the studio and her for the transition. Bluth also signed the Hollywood Studio Agreement of 1997; an agreement put together by the studios that saw them agree to preserve 2D animation (as well as allowing them to move forward with innovation). And in the most important move, Bluth helped establish Disney-Luxo, which would take on the role of crafting CGI animated films.
Thus, the divide that had created issues and exploded with a lady and the tramp was already on the way to healing. It would take time to fully recover, as things did not go back to normal overnight. Katie Fleischer-Disney and Don Bluth looked forward to the future. Times were changing again, never being still. With the transition era in full effect, the question that Bluth turned to was what did they do next? They needed a movie that could prove they still had it. That lady and tramp was not the start of a return to films that were hated. Thankfully, 1997 would not deliver one film but two. As Hercules and Alice in Wonderland both offered two very different outings for Disney, all the while Disney-Luxo set out to prove itself before the century was out.