Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted from a 1956 children’s novel by Dodie Smith. It was made at a time when the future of animated features at the studio was in jeopardy: Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty had been unsuccessful at the box office. However, the animation department was able to produce the film on a modest budget—partly by Xeroxing the artists’ drawings onto the animation cells rather than having them inked on by hand. Dalmatians became one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time. Its iconic Disney villainess Cruella de Vil was reputedly an amalgam of Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell and Tallulah Bankhead.