Susie the Little Blue Coupe

Susie the Little Blue Coupe
Directed by Clyde Geronimi
Produced by Walt Disney
Written by Bill Peet (story & adaptation)
Don DaGradi (adaptation)
Starring Sterling Holloway
Stan Freberg
Music by Paul J. Smith
Production
company
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures
Release date
  • June 6, 1952 (1952-06-06)
Running time
 7 min. 36 sec.
Country United States
Language English

Susie the Little Blue Coupe is an animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures on June 6, 1952. [1] The eight-minute film was directed by Clyde Geronimi and based on an original short-story by Bill Peet. The story was adapted for the screen by Peet and Don DaGradi.

Plot

Susie is a small blue coupe on display in a dealer showroom who is bought by a well-to-do human who is taken with her. Thrust into high-society, she finds herself surrounded by much larger, more luxurious cars but eventually makes do. Her owner treats the car well but neglects to maintain her; after years of neglect, wear and tear, the car no longer runs properly and the owner, when informed that Susie needs a massive overhaul, abandons Susie for a new vehicle. At a used car lot, Susie is purchased again, but the new owner, a cigar-smoking man who lives in a seedier part of town, does not treat the car with the same fondness as the first and leaves her on the curbside at night.

One night, she is stolen, chased by the police and is wrecked; presumed "dead," she is sent to a junkyard. She shows stirrings of life, even in her wrecked state, and a young male human notices and buys her at a bargain price. With the help of his friends, the young man completely restores and revives Susie as a brand new hot rod. An overjoyed and like-new Susie rides off. [2]

Voice cast

Home video release

The DVD release of The Love Bug featured this short as a special feature. [3] The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad DVD also features the short as a bonus episode on the DVD's trivia section. [4]

It also appeared on the It's A Small World of Fun Vol.2 DVD. [5] [6]

Legacy

The film's method of anthropomorphizing the cars, using the windshield for the eyes and eyelids, served as a stylistic inspiration for the 2006 Disney-Pixar animated feature, Cars and its sequels.[7]

Public domain status

According to multiple online sources, the short appears to have lapsed into the public domain [8] [9], although the reasons for this are unclear (the film has a valid copyright notice but it is dated 1951; the most likely reason for the lapse is thus that Disney waited one year too late to renew its copyright by basing the renewal, due 28 years after copyright, on its release date instead of the notice). It has been included in a number of retail releases of public domain cartoons,[10] and remains freely available online, without any indication of legal action by the Disney corporation to assert copyright. A brief clip was also used as stock footage in a Mazda commercial in the U.S.A. in 2012, again with no direct involvement by Disney;[11] which is not the usual practice for Disney "properties".

References

  1. ↑ Letterboxd
  2. ↑ Internet Archive
  3. ↑
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ Amazon.com: Walt Disney's It's a Small World of Fun 2
  6. ↑
  7. ↑ "Cars Production Notes" (PDF). Disney. Archived from the original on March 8, 2007. Among the biggest design inspirations for Lasseter and his team was the classic 1952 Disney short, “Susie the Little Blue Coupe.”
  8. ↑ Taking a Spin with “Susie, The Little Blue Coupe”-Cartoon Research
  9. ↑ Amazon.com: Donald Duck: Spirit of '43, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Hooked Bear & the Old Shell Game
  10. ↑ "Classic Cartoon Favorites DVD". amazon.com.
  11. ↑ "Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott". The New York Times. March 12, 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.