Anita Radcliffe

Anita Radcliffe (Anita Dearly in the live-action version and TV series) is a character from Disney's 1961 animated feature film One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
==Background==
Anita is the wife of Roger Radcliffe and the owner of Perdita. The first film establishes that she and Cruella De Vil had gone to school together as children and were apparently friends at one points. Although by the time of their adulthood (at least after Anita had married Roger), Anita appears to have grown weary of their meetings and admits to Roger at one point that she does consider Cruella to be eccentric.
===Personality and physical appearance===
Anita is beautiful, kind, and intelligent. She is also devoted to her husband, Roger Radcliffe, and loving toward Perdita, Pongo, and the puppies. She wears a light blue long-sleeved shirt, a matching low apron, and a blue skirt. Anita has long strawberry blonde hair and black eyes. In one scene of the film, she has a yellow shirt and her apron and skirt are grey. At the beginning of the film, she wears a dark green hat with a red-stemmed yellow flower tied to a purple ribbon, a matching scarf, and a light green dress. In another scene, her jacket and suit are purple and she wears boots. In other scenes, her apron is light green and her skirt is dark green.
==Appearances==
===One Hundred and One Dalmatians===
In the animated film, Anita is spotted by Pongo, while out on a walk with her Dalmatian, Perdita. Pongo, who is looking for potential mates for both him and Roger, attempts to bring the two owners together. Pongo tricks Roger into going to the park earlier than usual and pursues Anita. Eventually, Anita and Roger are both tangled up in Pongo's leash, resulting in the two of them falling into a pond. Anita frets at first, as she was wearing a new suit and hat, but she and Roger begin laughing together.
A time skip shows that Anita marries Roger, and she and Perdita move into a small home with Roger and Pongo, joined by Nanny. It's also revealed that Pongo and Perdita are expecting puppies. Anita is shown trying to get Roger, who is busy composing, to come down for tea. When he finally does, she playfully teases him on the song that he is writing. Their tea is interrupted by the impromptu visit of Anita's former schoolmate, Cruella De Vil. The name inspires lyrics for Roger's song, and he begins singing in a somewhat mocking tone. Anita tries to silence him, but Roger goes upstairs to work on the song, leaving Anita to entertain her friend.
Cruella walks in, and Anita notes Cruella's new fur coat. Cruella responds with a comment about her love for fur. Cruella then gets down to business and asks where the puppies are. Anita tells Cruella that the puppies are not expected for a few more weeks and that these things cannot be rushed. However, Cruella is now looking at a picture of Pongo and Perdita, murmuring about their coats. Anita invites Cruella for tea, but Cruella cannot stay. Cruella leaves just as quickly as she came, noting that she will be back in three weeks when the puppies are born.
Three weeks later, Perdita gives birth, and Anita, along with Nanny, assist. Anita is shown calling out puppy numbers, as the litter increases from 8 to 11 to 14 to a total of 15. However, one of the puppies apparently dies. However, Roger is able to revive the puppy, much to Anita's relief. Cruella soon comes in, as she had promised. However, Cruella is shown to be disappointed and angry that the puppies are all white. Anita notes that the spots come in a few weeks after the puppies are born. Cruella is relieved and quickly offers to buy the puppies, noting that Anita and Roger cannot possibly afford to keep them all. Anita notes that they couldn't sell the puppies, as Perdita would be heartbroken, and that she and Roger could find a way to get along. Cruella laughs at the idea of Roger's songs supporting the family. This incites Roger to step in, furious at Cruella disrespecting his passion. Roger sternly tells Cruella that they have no intention of selling the puppies for any price with finality. Cruella is angered to the point that she ends her friendship with Anita, and storms out vowing revenge. Anita applauds Roger on his bravery.
One night, when the puppies are older, Anita and Roger take Pongo and Perdita to the park. They return to find that the puppies have been stolen. Soon after, Cruella calls, expressing shock over the theft. Roger is shown to believe that Cruella was behind the theft, but Anita isn't convinced only because of her former friendship with Cruella. She admits that Cruella is eccentric, but that she couldn't be a thief. Anita also notes that Cruella's home had been searched, but no evidence had turned up. However, unknown to her, Cruella had hired two henchmen, Jasper and Horace Badun, to steal the puppies, with the intention of turning them into fur coats and hid them in another deserted house.
Anita is not shown again until around Christmastime. She is shown decorating a tree while Roger listens to the radio, which is playing the song he wrote. Anita notes that the song was Roger's first hit and brought in a substantial amount of money. Roger agrees but notes that he can't believe that Pongo and Perdita ran away. (Unknown to either of them, Pongo and Perdita had gone to rescue the puppies from Cruella.) Suddenly, a group of "Labradors" bound in through the door. Anita cleans the face of one of the adults and discovers that it's actually Perdita. Anita and Roger notice that the puppies with them are much greater in number than the original 15. She, along with Nanny, counts the puppies while Roger adds up the totals, finding out that there are 101 Dalmatians in total. Anita asks Roger what they should do with the other puppies. Roger decides to keep them, which leads Anita to point out that they have a small house. Roger responds that they can use the money from his song to buy a country home large enough for them all.
Since the DVD commentary and sequel confirm that Cruella was arrested for the theft of the puppies after she failed to ram the truck apart, it's presumed that Anita finally accepted the idea of Cruella being a thief and possibly pressed charges against her.
===101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure===
Anita returns for the sequel and is shown, alongside Roger, to be preparing for the move to a country home they have bought. It's also revealed that Anita cut contact with Cruella, evident when the latter did not know about her and Roger moving to the country. A while after they move, the family learns of Patch being left behind in London when they see him in the newspaper; they frantically travel back in their car to find him, arriving in time to retrieve not just Patch, but the rest of their puppies who had also been kidnapped from the farm while they were gone. Jasper and Horace confess to her that it was Cruella who was behind the dognapping. As they find the puppies, they also adopt Thunderbolt.
===101 Dalmatian Street===
While set 60 years after the original, both Anita's spring hat and reading glasses can be seen in certain episodes. In "London, We Have a Problem", Anita appears in a photo with Roger, Pongo, and Perdita, when Doug grabs a vial containing a sample of Cruella's hair.
===House of Mouse===
She appears in the episode "Mickey vs. Shelby" in the audience with her husband.
==Live-action appearances==
===101 Dalmatians===
In the live-action remake, Anita is the human deuteragonist. Her maiden name is Campbell-Green (which is changed to Dearly after marrying Roger). She works as a fashion designer for Cruella in the House of DeVil. As she works for the fashion house, Cruella catches her drawing a sketch with a Dalmatian-spotted coat for fun (which inspires Cruella). Later Cruella asks Anita to meet her in her office where Cruella praises her talent and notes that Anita wasn't famous despite being talented, to which Anita replies that she isn't very interested in fame and Cruella states her fears about Anita going to work somewhere else, Anita claims she'll only retire if she met someone and working clashed with their plans and then suggests Cruella to make her coat design with linen, but Cruella would rather it to be made with real fur, which leaves Anita worried.
She later meets Roger in St. James Park when she hits him with her purse after a misunderstanding of her thinking Roger was abducting Perdita (as Roger mistook Perdita for Pongo). After Roger apologizes for the mistake, he asks her what she has in her purse, thinking its rocks. She replies that they're bricks; she's been repaving her garden, and whenever she sees a discarded brick, she picks it up (and also revealed she had collected three on that specific day). Roger remarks "Oh, that's what I would've guessed."
After she crashes her bike into the pond because of Perdita, Roger rescues her and tries to give her mouth-to-mouth, but wasn't able to do it well, since Anita's arms were around his neck. Anita apologizes for that later, and Roger accepts. She and Roger later marry and move into their own house, where her old Nanny from her childhood comes back to work for them. Nanny realizes, whilst diagnosing Perdita to be expecting, that Anita is pregnant too.
Cruella comes to visit and feels that Anita just sending the sketches of her designs because she is on leave from work isn't the same as the interaction they had together. She mocks Roger for his job and for starting a family which makes his respect for her, turn to hatred. When she hears that Perdita is having puppies as well, she tells them to let her know when the event will take place.
After the fifteen puppies are born, Cruella comes barging in, wanting to buy them in advance when they get their spots and are ready to leave their mother. Roger angrily tells her that they are not selling them at any price. Anita tries to keep her relationship with Cruella by claiming that they do not mean immediately to sell them, and is suspicious as to why Cruella would want to adopt the puppies at all. But after Cruella frightens her when she doesn't take the check she writes out, Anita ultimately gains the courage to stand up against her and agree with Roger that they are not for sale. A furious Cruella then fires Anita from her job and leaves vowing revenge.
When the puppies have their spots grown, she and Roger go out for a walk in the park, taking Pongo and Perdita with them. Two bandits named Jasper and Horace break in and lock Nanny in the closet before stealing the puppies. They return home, hearing the barking of the Pensioner's bulldog (who had been barking angrily at Jasper and Horace and is the witness). Realizing what she and Roger had done - leaving the puppies unprotected - Anita and Roger call the Metropolitan Police.
When Pongo and Perdita run off to rescue the puppies right in front of their eyes, Nanny notes that the Dalmatians just went to go find the puppies. After she also notes that they were also able to sense ill-intentions in Cruella, Anita asks Nanny where her portfolio is. After opening it, Anita looks at the Dalmation fur coat she made for fun back when she was working for Cruella, making her realize that Cruella is behind the dog-napping and what she plans to do. Anita takes the drawing back to Roger and Nanny and tells them "She did steal the puppies and this is why." After showing them the drawing, Anita tells the pair that Cruella's going to kill the puppies so she can use their fur to make it. The trio then notify the Metropolitan Police and tell them Anita's suspicions.
When she and Roger go to Cruella's London residence with the police, they find the pelt of the missing Siberian tiger from the London Zoo. Anita and Roger sadly hug each other, feeling regretful for going out for a walk to the park instead of staying home and protecting the puppies. The constable in charge tells Anita that her suspicions about Cruella were justified as they found evidence that proves her to be the mastermind behind not only the dognapping but also other animal-related crimes that they were never able to solve. He also informs them that Cruella left for a residence she has in Suffolk and that he's already alerted the Suffolk Constabulary there to be on the lookout for her.
When the Dalmatians are returned, Roger convinces her to keep the other puppies, but she cautions Perdita that she won't have the pups chewing up the carpets and barking into the night.
After Roger's new video game starring the puppies as the main characters and Cruella as the villain becomes a worldwide success, they become billionaires and they buy a huge mansion on the outskirts of London. Anita has her baby; a girl and it's implied that she is pregnant once again.
===Cruella===
Anita meets Cruella back in the '60s as children. She is played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste, making the character African-British. In Cruella, Anita's last name is changed to Darling and she is a journalist working for the Tattletale newspaper. She's indirectly roped into Cruella's mad schemes to get even with the Baroness Von Hellman. Like in the original movie, Anita knows Cruella, formerly known as Estella, from their private primary school days. Anita was one of the few children who was kind to Estella, as everyone else made fun of her hair. Anita spends most of the film using her journalistic connections to make Cruella headline news, directly overshadow the Baroness. She witnesses Cruella, as Estella, fake her death, framing the Baroness. During the mid credits scene, Anita receives a gift from Cruella in the form of a dalmatian puppy named Perdita as a thanking for helping in the arrest of Baroness Von Hellman.
Anita is given the maiden name "Darling". A play on the original movie when Cruella greets Anita as "Anita, darling."
==Relationships==
===Roger Radcliffe===
Anita met her husband Roger Radcliffe in the park when his dog Pongo tied them together with his leash and accidently caused them to fall into the water. When Roger offers his tissue, which is wet, he and Anita share a laugh and realize they've fallen in love with each other and later marry each other, as do their dogs Pongo and Perdita. Anita supports Roger's music career and believes he has excellent talent, but when he begins to write a song about Anita's schoolmate Cruella DeVil, Anita at first doesn't think it will work until the end when it winds up becoming Roger's first big hit and makes them rich. 
===Perdita===
Coming soon!
===Cruella De Vil===
The first film establishes that she was a schoolmate to Cruella De Vil, and the two apparently shared a friendship at one point. By adulthood, Anita seems to be exhausted after Cruella's meetings and admits at one point that she finds Cruella to be eccentric. In the film Cruella, it's revealed that Cruella protected Anita from bullies and they became friends in the process. Because Cruella protected her she helped her in the arrest of the Baroness.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*In the animated movies, Anita's maiden name was never mentioned. However, in the 1996 remake, her last name was originally Campbell-Green before she met and married Roger.
*Anita's maiden name is "Darling" in Cruella.
**Anita is given the maiden name "Darling" in Cruella. This is a play on the original movie when Cruella greets Anita as "Anita, darling. How are you?"
*There has been some debate over whether Anita's hair color is red or brown. In the films and television series, it appears to be strawberry-blonde, but in related books, it appears to be brown.
*Anita's original voice actress, Lisa Davis, was first brought in by Walt Disney, to audition for Cruella. However, she felt that she was wrong for the role. She expressed this to Walt and was cast as Anita.
*Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, voices Anita in the film's sequel.
*In the TV series, Anita has a niece named Amber, who bears an uncanny resemblance to her.
*Anita's name is slightly similar in sound to Perdita.
*In the 1996 remake, she and Roger told Cruella the puppies weren't for sale. However, they seemed to have later changed their minds as it is implied they did sell Dipstick to Chloe Simon. It's also possible that they had more trust in Chloe to take care of Dipstick rather than Cruella.
*According to Disneystrology, her birthday is March 1.
== Variants ==
* Anita Dearly (101 Dalmatians)
* Anita Darling (Cruella)
es:Anita Radcliffe
fr:Anita Radcliffe
hr:Anita Radcliffe
it:Anita Radcliffe
ja:アニータ・ラドクリフ
pl:Anita Radcliffe (101 dalmatyńczyków; 1961)
pt-br:Anita Radcliffe
ru:Анита Рэдклифф
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