BRIAN VINER looks back at the history of 101 Dalmatians
Joyce Kennedy was an actress of modest renown, who died in 1943, aged just 44, entirely unaware that an off-colour remark she had once made to a friend would inspire one of children's literature's greatest villains. 'He would make a nice fur coat,' she blithely observed of a Dalmatian puppy called Pongo, unwittingly planting the seed that would grow into the monstrous Cruella de Vil. Pongo's smitten (and offended) owner was the playwright Dodie Smith, who more than 20 years later, having never forgotten Joyce's remark, wrote her first children's book, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Puppy...
Source: dailymail.co.uk
