Speedy Gonzales (film)
Speedy Gonzales | |
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![]() The title card of Speedy Gonzales | |
Directed by | I. Freleng |
Produced by | Edward Selzer (uncredited) |
Animation by | Gerry Chiniquy Ted Bonnicksen Arthur Davis Virgil Ross |
Color process | Technicolor |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Running time | 6 minutes 45 seconds |
Speedy Gonzales is a 1955 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Friz Freleng from a story by Warren Foster. It is the official debut of the title character. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[1] [2] This cartoon is the first time Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester meet.
Plot
The short opens on a small, white-shirted, worried group of mice wearing sombreros thinking of how to get cheese from the AJAX cheese factory across the Mexican–American border that is guarded by Sylvester the Cat. Sylvester has eaten other mice who have tried. The leader comes up with a brilliant idea: retain the services of the aptly named "Speedy Gonzales". The group agrees, so the leader goes to the carnival where Speedy resides.
Speedy Gonzales is at the carnival attraction "Shoot Speedy" in which people try to shoot Speedy with bullets from a gun in order to "win a beeg prize." The leader tells Speedy, in Spanish, about the dire situation the mice are in, not having access to the cheese guarded by Sylvester. Speedy agrees.
Speedy runs through the wire field between the mice and Sylvester shaking his legs as he yells "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!," and runs past Sylvester, gets into the cheese factory and brings back a round of cheese. Sylvester then throws a baseball at the AJAX cheese factory, but it turns out Speedy is inside the baseball, and therefore able to get even more cheese from Sylvester to the mice.
Sylvester then tries using landmines and mousetraps, to no avail. Finally, Sylvester gets fed up with Speedy's agility and evasive maneuvers and gets all the cheese from the factory and stacks them up (speaking his only line in the short). Sylvester uses a bomb to blow up all the cheese but the cheese boxes only explode, and much of the cheese lands where the mice are, causing Sylvester to cry and bang his head on an electric pole in vexation. Speedy then says "I like this pussycat fellow; he's silly!" and the short ends.
See also
References
- ^ "The 28th Academy Awards (1955) Nominees and Winners - Short Subject (Cartoon)". Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on November 11, 2014. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
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External links
- 1955 films
- 1955 animated films
- 1950s American animated films
- American films
- 1950s animated short films
- American short films
- Best Animated Short Academy Award winners
- Short films directed by Friz Freleng
- Merrie Melodies shorts
- American animated short films
- Films about animals
- Animated films about animals
- Films featuring anthropomorphic mice
- Films about cats
- Animated films about cats
- Films set in the United States
- Films set in Mexico
- Merrie Melodies stubs
- Films scored by Carl Stalling