(Note: this blog was originally posted in October 2021 and revised in July. I have made occasional revisions as I’ve learned more about Disney and his production of the film.)

A couple of years ago I was reading some short stories by the Italian author Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). Pirandello is known outside of Italy primarily for his ground-breaking plays Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV, but he was also the author of important novels and a large (250+) number of short stories, many of which have never been translated into English. I have read quite a few of these stories, and even published translations of a handful.

One of Pirandello’s stories I came across is entitled “Pallino e Mimì” (“Pallino and Mimì”). The title refers to its two canine protagonists. Pallino is an ugly, tough street dog, having been abused and abandoned as a pup by his human family. He’s top dog in his little Italian resort town, taking no guff from anyone or any dog, until one summer he runs into Mimì. Mimì is a pampered fluffball of a lapdog, owned by a well-to-do American woman in town to take the waters. Pallino is utterly smitten by Mimì.

As the relationship between Pallino and Mimì grows, a parallel one develops between Mimì’s owner and an Italian dandy visiting the spa from Rome.

Now as I read this story a suspicion grew in my mind that a certain animated film produced by Walt Disney was based on this story. Did Disney appropriate “Pallino e Mimì” in making Lady and the Tramp?

A recent viewing of the DVD version of the film reinforced my suspicions. The relationship between Lady, a pampered house pet from a well-to-do family who needs protection from the street dogs of the city, and the rough-and-tumble Tramp, who fends off the competition while romancing Lady, perfectly mirrors the one between Pallino and Mimì.

There are other aspects of the film that suggest a tie to “Pallino”: It’s set in the vaguely Edwardian coach-and-horses era of Pirandello’s story rather than the mid-50’s “present” of Lady’s release.

And there’s an odd plot detail. Early in the Pirandello story, a young, hungry Pallino, having run away from his abusive home, is wandering the streets. He is taken in by a kindly (if rather depressive) butcher. When we’re introduced to Tramp, he’s pondering where to find “breakfast.” He considers but passes over a standard greasy-spoon diner and a fancy French pastry shop before settling on…an Italian restaurant, whose cook (a stereotypically jovial and romantic Italian) throws him a bone.

Of course, there are major differences between the two works. The wealthy American woman and her calculating Italian gigolo lover from the story are replaced by a happy young married couple in the film. Dramatic tension is added with the introduction of their newborn baby, whose presence initially appears to threaten Lady’s position in her owners’ house.

But such a change would not be surprising. Lady was intended for children, and Disney had a track record of watering down or sentimentalizing brutal or discomfiting aspects of adapted material, as he did with Mary Poppins and Pinocchio.

So much for the resemblance. Is there any direct evidence that Disney co-opted Pirandello’s story?

First, I looked at the dates. There is no question that “Pallino e Mimì” came first: it was originally published in a magazine in 1905. Lady and the Tramp was released in 1955.

What about credits? According to the film’s opening titles, the script for Lady is “from the story by Ward Greene.” “The story” is not in fact “Lady and the Tramp,” which didn’t exist. Wikipedia and other online sources identify it as Greene’s 1945 Cosmopolitan magazine story “Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog,” though Wikipedia also claims that the idea for a dog picture based on a spaniel named Lady had been kicking around in Walt Disney’s brain since 1937.

But the notion that Lady is “based on” “Happy Dan the Cynical Dog” is just doggone wrong, or rather contains only the flimsiest shred of truth.  I know, because I took the trouble to find that story in the February 1945 issue of Cosmopolitan—with a lot of help from a reference librarian at the University of Texas here in Austin. That story takes up only about half a magazine page (the rest is an illustration and a big ad for Simoniz floor polish). It’s a brief humorous sketch about a sly street dog who fools several humans into believing they’re his only “master,” in order to get extra meals in those wartime days of meat rationing. Nothing about a romance with a pampered pet, or about a human romance, etc.

Now to be fair, the Wikipedia article states that Walt Disney himself conceived of the “Lady” half of the story back in ’37, and that the Greene story inspired him to come up with the canine romance angle by introducing a street-dog foil to the ladylike Lady. In other words, it was Disney who had the original idea of connecting two disparate doggy tales with a romance, which became the backbone of the Lady plot. *

Well…maybe. I wanted to take a peek into any surviving archival material from the Lady production that might confirm this version of events. But I had no luck in finding anyone with Disney who would help me.

And, having no direct evidence to support my hypothesis, I am also left with one gaping hole of plausibility. How would Disney—or perhaps Greene—have come across Pirandello’s story?

The Disney historian Didier Ghez has stated in an interview that Disney, his brother Roy, and their wives made an extended tour of Europe in 1935, during which he “bought hundreds of books, whose stories and illustrations would influence him and his artists for years to come.” If you follow the link to that interview, you will see a photo of Disney standing shoulder to shoulder with…Luigi Pirandello. (The photo was evidently taken in New York, shortly after Disney’s return from his European trip. Pirandello died the following year, 19 years before the release of Lady and the Tramp.)

It is unlikely that Disney or Greene read Italian. But Disney did have Italians on his staff. For example, one of the director/animators on Lady was an Italian-American, Clyde Geronimi, who was born in Italy in 1901 but emigrated as a young child to the U.S.

In any case, barring evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe that Disney might somehow have stolen the idea for Lady from Pirandello. The parallels between the two stories are too great.

By the way, “Pallino e Mimì” is a wonderful story, darkly funny, and, not surprisingly, much tougher than the Lady story (and free of the arrant racism of the Disney picture). I don’t want to give it away; let’s just say that it doesn’t end with the happy marriage of an adorable young couple, an equally adorable newborn baby girl, two adorable dogs with a comfortable middle-class home, and a litter of frolicking, well-cared-for pups. Nope, sorry. You don’t win a Nobel Prize writing stories like that.

I wish you could read the story for yourself and make up your own mind about a possible Disney-Pirandello connection. And before too long, you will. I plan to publish my translation of Pirandello’s story on the Pirandello Society of America’s website or, if not, elsewhere on the Internet.

Update: you can now read Pirandello’s story in English here: https://www.pirandellointranslation.org/pellet-and-mimi

My thanks to Dr. Vanessa Fanelli for collaborating with me on this translation.

*As evidence, the Wikipedia article references the book Disney’s Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Hercules by Bob Thomas, which I have not read.