Did You Know?

Peggy Lee later sued Disney for breach of contract claiming that she still retained rights to the transcripts. She was awarded $2.3m, but not without a lengthy legal battle with the studio which was finally settled in 1991.

"Darling's" real name is never used, even her friends call her "darling" at the baby shower. It is unclear if that's her name or an endearment.

In the 1999 video release, some scenes had pieces of dialogue missing that had been part of the original theatrical release. This was believed to be caused by the studio restoration process that incorporated both US and international formats of the film, which inadvertently created a hybrid version. Disney often produces different international and foreign versions of their films to make the foreign dialogue fit.

In early script versions, Tramp was first called Homer, then Rags and Bozo. A 1940 script introduced the twin Siamese cats. Eventually known as Si and Am, they were then named Nip and Tuck.

The film's opening sequence, in which Darling unwraps a hat box on Christmas morning and finds Lady inside, is reportedly based upon an actual incident in Walt Disney's life. After he'd forgotten a dinner date with his wife, he offered her the puppy-in-the-hat box surprise and was immediately forgiven.

The decision to film in Cinemascope was made when the film was already in production, so many background paintings had to be extended to fit the new format. Overlays were often added to cover up the seams of the extensions.

The film's setting was partly inspired by Walt Disney's boyhood hometown of Marceline, Missouri.

Disney's 15th animated feature.

The background artists made models of the interiors of Jim Dear and Darling's house and shot photos from a deliberately low angle to simulate a dog's eye view of their world.

In 1937, story man Joe Grant approached Walt Disney with some sketches he had made of his Springer spaniel called Lady. Disney really liked the sketches and told Grant to put them into a storyboard. However, Disney ultimately didn't think much of the finished storyboard. Six years later, he read a short story in Cosmopolitan by Ward Greene called 'Happy Dan the Whistling Dog'. He was sufficiently interested in the story to buy the rights to it. Then in 1949, after Joe Grant had left the studio, his spaniel drawings were unearthed and a solid story using his designs started to take shape. Grant never received any acknowledgement for his contribution to the film until the Platinum Edition DVD in 2006.

CinemaScope presented some new problems for the animators. The wider canvas space made it difficult for a single character to dominate the screen, and groups had to be spread out to keep the screen from appearing too sparse.

At the time of its release, this was the highest grossing Disney cartoon since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The studio's first officially self-penned story since Dumbo.

Walt Disney originally didn't want to include the 'Bella Note' spaghetti-eating scene, now one of the most iconic moments in the whole Disney canon.

When we are in the "December" month of Darling's pregnancy, we see her writing down some girl names. The names are Betty Ann, Betty Lou, Betty Ann Lou, Betty Lou Ann, Mary, and Mary Lou. Betty Ann Lou and Mary Lou get crossed off the list.

In order to make the fight between the rat and the Tramp more exciting Wolfgang Reitherman animated from the point of view of the loser and then attempted to avoid that particular outcome.

In the climax of the picture, Trusty was originally killed when hit by the wagon. That is why Jock nudges him and he does not rouse. When Walt Disney viewed this scene, he was shocked. Walt did not want a repeat of the traumatic scene in Bambi. He thought it was too intense. Walt then made the animators put Trusty into the end Christmas scene to reassure the audience that Trusty was simply knocked out and injured in the previous scene.