Disney Stock – Cruella de Vil Was Nearly the Villain in the Disney Hit, The Rescuers

In the latest Movie Legends Revealed, see how close Cruella de Vil came to being the villain in the Disney hit film, The Rescuers.

MOVIE UR(BA)N LEGEND: Cruella de Vil was originally going to be the villain of Disney’s The Rescuers.

For a medium that requires so much work done in advance, it is amazing how often Disney films have dramatic chances made in them after work has begun on the films. Whether it be Belle in Beauty and the Beast not coming off as enough of a feminist or Toy Story just seeming too dark of a story in general, Disney has always been willing to make major pivots in its animated films. The really fascinating thing, though, is when the whole villain of a story changes, like how Frozen went from Elsa as the villain of the film to being one of its main protagonists instead (all thanks to a little song called “Let it Go,” as I wrote about in this old Movie Legends Revealed).

This was the case, as well, with The Rescuers, where one of the plans for the film was to have the villain be the legendary Disney villain, Cruella de Vil, from 101 Dalmations!

101 Dalmations came out in 1961 and it was a huge hit, both financially and critically (one prominent reviewer even said that it was the best Disney film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!). The breakout character of the film was undoubtedly the villain of the movie, the cruel heiress, Cruella de Vil, who wants to capture the title characters of the story and skin them to make a Dalmation-skin coat!

101 Dalmations was based on the 1956 children’s book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dobie Smith. Children’s books were, naturally, a key area for Disney to adapt for new films and another novel of the era was initially adapted for the next Disney film. That book was the 1959 release, The Rescuers, by Marjory Sharp. The book was about the Prisoners’ Aid Society, an organization of mice that help, well, you know, rescue people. A Norwegian poet is being kept in captivity and in need of someone who speaks Norwegian, the Society’s butler, Bernard, goes on a mission to free Miss Bianca, a pampered mouse who belongs to the son of the Norwegian ambassador. Bianca actually doesn’t speak the language, but she is inspired to help anyways and after she and Bernard enlist the help of a sailor mouse named Nils, the three mice successfully recuse the poet, although Bianca finds herself brought back to her owner while Bernard becomes the new head of the Prisoners’ Aid Society.

The book was quickly optioned by Disney, but Walt Disney was wary about the political nature of the story (it’s basically a version of a story I wrote about for a Novel Legends Revealed about how the Soviets were imprisoning or threatening to imprison all sorts of artists during the 1950s) and so the film was put off indefinitely.

It was later revisited in the mid-1970s, during a period where Disney would alternate BIG animation films with smaller animation films done by the studio’s younger artists. The Rescuers was originally going to be one of those smaller films, but after the main guys finished Robin Hood, they decided to pick The Rescuers as the next film by the “main” studio. By the time, Sharp had done other Rescuers stories that had less of an overt political plot and so Disney decided to adapt the second book in the series, Miss Bianca (after initially going with Miss Bianca in the Antarctic). The story involved the Rescuers rescuing eight-year-old Patience, who was the sad servant girl of the evil Duchess in the Diamond Palace.

The Disney animators thought that this “Diamond Duchess” could easily be adapted to Cruella de Vil, so the animators set out to try to adapt the character to be a return of the famous villain. Of course, almost twenty years had passed since the original 101 Dalmations, so the animators had to update the character for the late 1970s and so they did a number of designs of Cruella in late 1970s attire, a sort of disco-look for Cruella, with her new animal-obsession being alligators…

However, the animators (specifically longtime Disney veteran animator Ollie Johnston) decided that they did not want to do a sequel of any sort (Disney, at the time, had never done a sequel to any of their animated films) and so Cruella de Vil was abandoned from the project.

Instead, the Diamond Duchess was adapted into the evil Madame Medusa (based on the then-wife of animator Milt Kahl, who was in the process of divorcing her at the time so I guess he got some sort of satisfaction over making her the villain of this new film. Kahl ended up doing almost all of the animation for Medusa)…

The basic setup of the Rescuers remained from the first two books, with Patience being adapted into becoming Penny, but the same basic idea applied, Miss Bianca and Bernard help to rescue the innocent young Penny from the clutches of the evil pawn shop owner, Madame Medusa, who wanted Penny to find a diamond for her, as only Penny’s hands were small enough to fit into the hole where the diamond was. Like the Cruella de Vil designs, Madame Medusa was also obsessed with alligators, although in the end, it appears as though she is killed by her own pet alligators!

The Rescuers came out in 1977 and was a major hit for Disney…

In an amusing piece of irony, the concern over the animators to avoid doing a sequel was misplaced, since the success of The Rescuers led to Disney doing, yes, you guessed it – a sequel! 1980’s The Rescuers Down Under became the first Disney animated film to release a sequel (now, obviously, it is rarer to find a major Disney release that HASN’T had a sequel!).

The legend is…

STATUS: True

Thanks to my good friend, Loren Collins, for suggesting this one!

Be sure to check out my archive of Movie Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film. Click here for legends specifically dealing with Walt Disney films and shows (and amusement parks).

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.

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