These original animation cels capture one of the most memorable moments from the wonderfully mischievous appearance of Si and Am in Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Shown during “The Siamese Cat Song,” the identical Siamese twins are engaged in one of their many acts of household destruction, using a table runner as a makeshift rope as they attempt to pull a fishbowl from its perch. The image perfectly conveys the cats’ sly determination and gleeful sense of mischief. With their bodies stretched almost impossibly long, tails curling dramatically behind them, and paws gripping the runner, the scene is a terrific example of the expressive animation that made these two characters so memorable. Their famous musical introduction, with the unforgettable declaration, “We are Siamese if you please,” immediately establishes their smug, self-satisfied personalities.
Released on June 22, 1955, Lady and the Tramp was the 15th feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and was produced by Walt Disney and released by Buena Vista Distribution. It was also Disney's first animated feature photographed using the CinemaScope widescreen process, giving the film a broad cinematic presentation that was particularly effective in scenes such as this, where the characters' exaggerated movements play out across an expansive interior setting. The film was based on Ward Greene's story “Happy Dan, The Whistling Dog” and follows Lady, a refined American Cocker Spaniel living with an upper-middle-class family, whose life changes when she meets Tramp, a streetwise stray. Their adventures combine romance, comedy, and some of Disney's most memorable character animation.
The origins of Lady and the Tramp reach back nearly two decades before the film's release. In 1937, Disney storyman Joe Grant invited Walt Disney to dinner and showed him a drawing he had made of his own Springer Spaniel, Lady. Walt was impressed by the drawing and encouraged Grant to develop it into a storyboard. Grant did so, but Walt ultimately felt that the story was too simplistic, and the project was shelved. Nearly twenty years later, the idea was revived and transformed into the much richer story that became Lady and the Tramp.
Si and Am themselves appear on screen for only a relatively brief portion of the film, yet their impact has been enormous. The cats have become among the most recognizable and popular villains in Disney history and have generated a remarkable amount of Disney merchandise. Their names together form “Siam,” the former name of the Kingdom of Thailand, cleverly reflecting their Siamese heritage. They are identical twin seal-point Siamese cats belonging to Aunt Sarah, and their highly distinctive designs make them immediately recognizable: sleek cream-colored bodies, angular wedge-shaped faces, enormous blue almond-shaped eyes, dark facial points, triangular ears, small black noses, and the characteristic dark markings on their legs and tails. Even their two protruding middle incisors add to their wonderfully peculiar appearance.
The famed Disney animator Milt Kahl was responsible for the final character design of Si and Am, while Bob Carlson, Bill Justice, and John Sibley brought the cats to life through their animation. Their elongated poses, expressive eyes, curling tails, and almost acrobatic movements are particularly evident in these cels. Here, their bodies seem to become part of the physical comedy itself. The sweeping diagonals created by their legs, tails, and the purple table runner give the scene an extraordinary sense of movement, while their mischievous expressions make it perfectly clear that they know exactly what they are doing.
A tremendous part of the characters' enduring popularity, however, belongs to Peggy Lee. Lee supplied the original speaking and singing voices of Si and Am, as well as the voices of Darling and Peg. She also composed much of the film's music with Sonny Burke and performed several of its memorable songs, including “He's a Tramp,” “La La Lu,” “What Is a Baby?”, and, most famously, “The Siamese Cat Song.” Her sly, distinctive vocal performance gave Si and Am an attitude and personality that went far beyond their relatively limited screen time.
The cats' sequence begins innocently enough, with Aunt Sarah upstairs and Si and Am taking advantage of the opportunity to turn the house into their personal playground. Their song accompanies a steadily escalating series of disasters as they investigate everything around them, including the family's fish and bird. The table-runner sequence represented in these cels is a wonderful example of that escalation: what begins as curiosity becomes deliberate destruction. Their goal is not simply to investigate the fishbowl—they are determined to get at it, and the exaggerated physicality of the animation makes their scheme both ridiculous and wonderfully entertaining.
Ultimately, Si and Am's mischief sets off the chain of events that leads to Lady being blamed for the destruction. The cats have the remarkable ability to transform themselves from aggressors into apparent victims, feigning innocence while Lady bears the consequences. Aunt Sarah ultimately has Lady muzzled, making the injustice of the situation all the more frustrating—and making Si and Am's brief appearance even more memorable. These cels therefore capture not merely two cats pulling on a table runner, but a key element of the characters' personalities: Si and Am are clever, calculating, mischievous, and completely unapologetic. Their combination of distinctive design, superb animation, and Peggy Lee's unforgettable performance helped make them two of the most enduring villainous characters in the Disney canon.
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