Lady was the ideal Christmas present for Darling.
John Grant
Walt Disney Character beschrijving of Lady from "Lady and the Tramp" (1955)
The opening sequence in the movie, when Darling opens up a hatbox to discover that the gift which Jim Dear has gegeven her for Christmas is a puppy, Lady, had its origins in an incident in Walt's own life. Many years before he had forgotten about a avondeten, diner datum with his wife, and some sort of gift door way of a peace-offering was definitely called for - something really special. His solution was to give her a puppy in a hatbox. It worked: she forgave him. It was an event which Walt knew he could someday put to good use in a cartoon.
The model for Lady was a cocker spaniel, spaniël called Lady which belonged to the animator Hamilton Luske. In reality, however, there are two "Ladies" in the movie - the newborn puppy and the young female dog. Both are evidently the same animal, but the older version has quite definite fremale characteristics while the puppy is, like all puppies, essentially sexless. However, the underlying character - loving, basically trusting, good-spirited - is much the same.
Although Lady is not such a strong character as Tramp, she is door no means the useful cipher that so many of the Disney central characters are: romantic she may be, often terrified and confused she may be, but there is also a deal of steel in there, as we discover during the consecutive sequences when she first tells Tramp to go away and leave her and, second, attempts to break her chain (she is finally successful) in order to chase and fight the rat and thereby save the baby. Barbara Luddy voiced these two aspects of Lady's character exellently, being door turns romantic and stern; she also managed to convey Lady's fundamental decency - the voice alone tells u that Lady is the sort of dog u would ideally like to own and let your children grow up with.
Lady is decent, but she is no naíve innocent. Without really skirting around the issue, Disney managed to get over the idea that dogs do in fact mate, even before "marriage", yet in no way is this at all offensive. That, for the studio, was a minor and generally ignored triumph.
One trivial point of interest: Lady has a blue kraag while both Jock and (in due couse) Tramp have pinkish-red ones. No "blue for a boy, roze for a girl" here!
It's amazing how a plateful of spaghetti goes to a lady's head.
