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 dates
  • 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 released theatrically by Walt Disney Studios on 6 June 1952. 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.

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, its 2011 sequel, Cars 2, and the TV short films A Cars Toon.[1]

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

According to multiple online sources, the short appears to have lapsed into the public domain, although the reasons for this are unclear. However, it has been included in a number of retail releases of public domain cartoons,[2] and remains freely available online, without any indication of legal action by the Disney corporation to assert copyright; in spite of the film's connection to the Cars franchise. 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;[3] which is not the usual practice for Disney "properties".

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. She is pampered, but time takes its toll on her, mechanically and cosmetically; eventually, her owner trades her in. A second owner buys her but her new life is much less pampered, being left outside in the cold and being poorly maintained. One night, she is stolen, chased by the police and totaled in the resulting wreck. Rotting in a junkyard, all looks hopeless for Susie when a young male human notices and buys her, and with the help of his friends, completely restores and revives her into a brand new hotrod.

Voice cast

Appearances in other Disney culture

References

  1. ↑ Cars Production Information
  2. ↑
  3. ↑
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.