A Hundred And One Dalmatians is an animated film based on the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith and was released in 1961. The villain of the movie is Cruella de Vil and she was voiced by Betty Lou Gerson. Animator Marc Davis added her cheekbones to the character's looks but mostly Cruella was based on actress Tallulah Bankhead.

The actress was considered to be “unsuitable for the public” and earned a high spot in Will Hays’s famous Doom Book which is kind of a blacklist of actors. That made her a perfect inspiration for the mean, rude, loud, greedy and selfish woman that Cruella de Vil was.