Film
Lady and the Tramp
- Director
- Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson
- Certificate
- U
- Running Time
- 76 mins
Disney’s first animated feature to be shot in cinemascope, this is a searing indictment of class prejudice in which a toffee-nosed cocker spaniel (Lady) falls for a bit of rough in the form of a mangy-yet-lovable mutt (Tramp), and runs away from her pampered home to join him for some (subsequently much parodied) spaghetti-munching fun among the canine lower orders.
In traditional early Disney style, the humans are all complete bastards but the animal lowlife are terrific, especially the manic beaver and the villainous Siamese cats. There’s also much fun to be had from the fine songs by Peggy Lee and Sonny Burke. Lee’s He’s a Tramp, in particular, ranks as one of the sauciest ditties ever to grace a blameless, U-rated Disney animation. History records that Lady and the Tramp made more money than any other film from the ‘50s apart from Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments, which rather suggests that America was ripe for class war in the midst of the Cold War. Or perhaps not.
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