THE ARISTOCATS (1970) 2 Original Production Drawings

THE ARISTOCATS (1970) Original Production Drawings

Production Drawings are the building blocks of animation; through these drawings, the animator carefully plans the look and movement of each character.  Drawings are refined (often using different colored pencils) until the animator is satisfied with the look, detail, and degree of motion for each character; at this point, cels are created by tracing  drawings onto clear acetate.  Production Drawings provide perhaps the most intimate look in the animation process.

The Aristocats is an animated feature produced and released by Walt Disney Productions in 1970. The twentieth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, and revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress' fortune which was meant to go to them. It was originally released to theaters by Buena Vista Distribution on December 11, 1970. The title is a pun on the word aristocrats.

The film's basic idea — an animated romantic musical comedy about talking cats in France — had previously been used in the UPA animated feature Gay Purr-ee.

The film is set in Paris, France, in 1910, and centers around a mother cat named Duchess and her three kittens Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse. The cats live in the mansion of retired opera singer Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, along with her English butler Edgar.

Madame Adelaide, early on, settles her will with her lawyer Georges Hautecourt, an aged, eccentric old friend of hers, stating that she wishes Edgar to look after her beloved cats until they die and then inherit the fortune himself. Edgar hears this from his own room and believes (based on the fable that cats have nine lives) that he will be dead before he inherits Madame Adelaide's fortune, and plots to remove the cats from a position of inheritance. He sedates the cats by putting an entire bottle of sleeping pills into the cat's food and then heads out into the country side to dispose of them. However, two hound dogs named Napoleon and Lafayette, ambush Edgar, biting his rear and his leg. After the conflict, Edgar escapes leaving behind his umbrella, bowler hat, the cats' bed-basket, and the sidecar of his motorcycle. The cats are left in the country side, while Madame Adelaide, the mouse Roquefort, and Edgar's horse Frou-Frou discover their absence.

In the morning, Duchess meets an alley cat named Abraham de Lacy Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley, who ultimately offers to guide her and the kittens to Paris. From their meeting onward, Duchess is enamored of the handsome Thomas O'Malley (as he is most frequently called) and he with her; the kittens, too, are enraptured though he takes a moment to be fond of them.

The cats have a struggle returning to the city, briefly hitchhiking on the back of a milk cart before being chased off by the driver. Marie subsequently falls into a river and is saved by O'Malley. O'Malley himself is then rescued from the river by a pair of English geese, Amelia and Abigail Gabble, who are traveling for Paris. Assuming he is learning to swim, the two geese attempt to help him, nearly drowning him in the process. Upon their return to dry land, Amelia and Abigail join the cat group on their way back to Paris, all of them marching like geese.

Traveling across the rooftops of the city and exhausted, O'Malley offers his "pad" for them to spend the night. In doing so, the cats meet Scat Cat and his band, close friends to O'Malley, who perform "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat". After the band has departed and the kittens in bed, O'Malley and Duchess spend the evening on a nearby rooftop and talk, while the kittens listen at a windowsill. Though it is obvious they both have feelings for each other, Duchess ultimately turns him down, out of loyalty to Madame Adelaide. Edgar, meanwhile, retrieves his sidecar, umbrella, and hat from Napoleon and Layafette (who had made beds out of them) with some difficulty.

In the morning, the cats make it back to the mansion, and O'Malley sadly departs. Edgar recaptures the cats in a sack and briefly hides them in an oven. Roquefort is dispatched to pursue O'Malley for his help. He does so, whereupon O'Malley races back to the mansion, ordering Roquefort to find Scat Cat and his gang. Peppo the Itailan cat scares Roquefort. He tries to escape but ends up getting caught by Scat Cat. Roquefort tells him that he was sent by O'Malley and that Duchess, Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse are in need of help.

Edgar places the cats in a trunk which he plans to send to Timbuktu, Africa. O'Malley, Scat Cat and his gang, Roquefort and Frou-Frou all fight Edgar, while Roquefort frees Duchess and kittens. In the end, Edgar is booted into the trunk, locked inside, and sent to Timbuktu himself. Madame Adelaide's will is rewritten to exclude Edgar and include O'Malley; simultaneously, Madame Adelaide starts a charity foundation providing a home for all of Paris' stray cats. The grand opening thereof, to which most of the major characters come, features Scat Cat's band, who perform a reprise of "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat".  {from Wikipedia}