Peggy Lee - my 330th choice to be named a Disney Legend

Singer and actress Peggy Lee is my 330th choice to be named a Disney Legend.

She provided the original speaking and singing voices of Darling, Si and Am and Peg in Disney's 1955 animated film, Lady and the Tramp. She also composed the majority of the film's soundtrack with Sonny Burke. For the film, she performed "He's a Tramp", "La La Lu", "The Siamese Cat Song" and "What is a Baby?". She is also the original singer of the song "Why Don't You Do Right?" which was covered by Amy Irving for Who Framed Roger Rabbit during Jessica Rabbit's introduction.

The following information regarding Lee's legal battles with the Disney company come from the website Cartoon Brew:


Few contributed as much to the success of Lady and the Tramp as the singer and actress, Peggy Lee, who performed the role of the sultry Pekingese Peg, as well as the twin Siamese cats Si and Am.

In his recent biography, Is That All There Is: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee, James Gavin details not only her many contributions to the animated classic’s music and voice tracks, but also to its storyline.

Gavin describes how Lady and the Tramp’s script originally called for Old Trusty the bloodhound to be run over by a dogcatcher wagon and killed, to create dramatic tension. With memories of her own dog dying in her arms years before, Lee worried about the effect the Old Trusty’s death might have on children in the audience, and convinced Walt to let the beloved bloodhound live. And so instead at the film’s denouement, Old Trusty hobbles around on a bandaged leg, with Lady and her Tramp’s little puppies scrambling around before him.

Lee also directly influenced the story’s characters, particularly the dog pound vamp, Peg, who was originally named Mame. When Walt Disney asked for Lee’s permission to name Peg after her, she quickly agreed. Animator Eric Larson even studied Lee’s movements as she strutted around his office, to get Peg’s attitude just right.

According to Gavin, Lee made all of these contributions for a grand total of $4,500 in fees: $3,500 for the voices, and $1,000 for the songs she wrote — which was split with her co-songwriter, Sonny Burke. Gavin noted that this was a respectable sum in 1955, as no one at the time foresaw the fortunes to be had in home entertainment. Because Lee had an exclusive recording contract with Decca Records, her contract with Disney specified that Disney “retained no right to ‘make phonograph records and/or transcriptions for sale to the public.'” As used in the recording industry, “transcriptions” commonly referred to audio discs produced for radio broadcast, not for commercial sale.

That usage in Lee’s contract would prove unfortunate.

In 1987, Disney released Lady and the Tramp on VHS, selling 3.5 million units in one year. The film soon became the best-selling home video of all time.
Disney reported $90 million in profit from Lady and the Tramp’s VHS release and, reluctant to share its windfall, offered Lee only a nominal fee for promotion of its release. Insulted, Lee hired New York copyright litigator David Blasband and his partner, Alvin Deutsch, who brought Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s attention to the contractual language about rights to “transcriptions.” In their view, “transcriptions” was synonymous with “copies,” meaning that Disney had already contractually agreed they had no right to sell copies of Lee’s works to the public. By selling VHS copies of Lady and the Tramp to the public, Lee’s lawyers contended, Disney had violated that provision of the agreement.