Madame Adelaide Bonfamille is one of the minor protagonists from Disney's 1970 feature film The Aristocats. She is a wealthy, elderly woman who is the owner of Duchess and her kittens. She is voiced by Hermione Baddeley who portrayed Ellen the Banks family's housemaid in the 1964 musical film Mary Poppins.
The name "Bonfamille" is French for "good family" ("bon" being a tense of "good" and "famille" meaning family")
Background
Madame Bonfamille, often simply called Madame, is an elderly, wealthy woman, who apparently was a famous opera singer at one point (she said that she once played the title character of George Bizet's Carmen, and was even seen dancing to the aria "Habanera"). She is very kind and generous. At the time of the film, however, she had no living relatives, thus she doted on her cats. Her other friends included her lawyer Georges Hautecourt and her butler Edgar Balthazar. Despite her old age, Madame is very beautiful as well (see below).
Madame has white hair, usually put up in a bun (except when she is sleeping, where it extends down to her waist, but she wears a bonnet while asleep), and wears a violet-red dress. When she is sleeping, she wears a long lavender nightgown including said bonnet and a pink dressing gown.
Role in the film
At the beginning of the film, she is seen in her carriage, driven by Edgar, with her cats. Upon returning home, it is revealed that she is expecting her lawyer and long time friend Georges Hautecourt to come to handle some business matters. After he arrives, she tells Georges that she wants to make out her will. She notes that she has no living relatives, only her cats and Edgar, which Georges interprets to mean that she is leaving her extensive fortune to Edgar. Madame corrects him, revealing her plan to leave the fortune to Duchess and the kittens. Edgar is to care for the cats until their death, when he will inherit the vast wealth himself. Unknown to Georges and Madame, Edgar has overheard her intentions through the pipes. Fearful that he will be dead before he can inherit, he kidnaps the cats and drops them off in the French countryside. Madame is noticeably saddened and worried by the cats' sudden disappearance, but does not know that Edgar kidnapped them, after waking up in the middle of that stormy night and checking on the cats' bed (which is revealed to be empty by a flash of lightning from outside) after appearing to have a nightmare about them.
Much later, Madame thinks she has heard the kittens, and rushes to check the door, bringing Edgar with her. Unknown to her, Edgar has heard the kittens earlier, and had trapped them in an old oven, until he could get rid of them again, and Madame sorrowfully returns to her house. However the cats are rescued from Edgar by O'Malley and all return safely.
At the end of the film, it is revealed that Madame has adopted O'Malley, citing the need for a man around the house. While taking a portrait of the cats, she laments that Edgar left (actually, the cats got rid of him by shoving him into a crate headed for Timbuktu and sending him there), ironically thinking that he wouldn't have left had he known about the will. Per her instructions, Edgar is written out of the will. Instead, Madame begins a foundation that opens up her home for the alley cats of Paris, which is revealed to already include Scat Cat and his gang of alley cats.
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