Welcome to my weekly discussion of the animated films of the Walt Disney Studio. I’m proceeding mostly chronologically. We have done the animated films, so we have moved on to the live-action and partially animated films. The title comes from a quote from Walt, “I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”
A note going forward: when reviewing films that have many sequels, we’re going to cover all the films together
Title: The Love Bug
Year: 1968
Source materials : Car, Boy, Girl, a story written in 1961 by Gordon Buford.
Budget: $5,000,000
Box office: $51,264,000
Plot: Jim Douglas is a miserable racing driver, reduced to competing in demolition derby races against drivers half his age. Jim lives in an old fire house overlooking San Francisco Bay with his friend and mechanic, Tennessee Steinmetz. After yet another race ends in a crash, Jim finds himself without a car and heads into town in search of some cheap wheels. He is enticed into an car showroom after setting eyes on an attractive sales assistant and mechanic, Carole Bennett. Jim witnesses the dealership’s British owner, Peter Thorndyke, being unnecessarily abusive towards a white Volkswagen Beetle, and defends the car’s honor.
The following morning, Jim is shocked to find that the car is parked outside his house and that Thorndyke is pressing charges for grand theft. A Carole persuades Thorndyke to drop the charges if Jim purchases the car on a system of monthly payments.
Jim soon finds that the car is prone to going completely out of his control and believes Thorndyke has conned him. Tennessee, however, tries to befriend the car, naming it Herbie. Jim’s feelings about his new acquisition soon improve when it appears that Herbie is intent on bringing him and Carole together. He also discovers Herbie to have an incredible turn of speed for a car of his size and decides to take him racing.
After watching Jim and Herbie win their first race together, Thorndyke offers to cancel the remaining payments Jim owes on Herbie if Jim can win a race that they will both be competing in. Jim accepts, and despite Thorndyke’s underhanded tactics, he and Herbie take the victory. Over the next few months, they go on to become the toast of the Californian racing circuit, while Thorndyke suffers increasingly humiliating defeats.
Thorndyke finally loses his composure and persuades Carole to take Jim out on a date while he sneaks round to Jim’s house. After Tennessee gets drunk on his own Irish coffee recipe, Thorndyke proceeds to tip the remainder of the alcoholic coffee and whipped cream into Herbie’s gas tank. At the following day’s race, an apparently hungover Herbie shudders to a halt and backfires while Thorndyke blasts to victory.
That evening, Jim returns home in a brand new Lamborghini 400GT, and has agreed to sell Herbie to Thorndyke to pay the remaining installments that he owes on it. Carole also angrily confronts Jim that he did not care about Herbie and that he was not winning any of the races he participated in. Herbie then jealously proceeds to damage the Lamborghini, proving to Jim once and for all that he does have a mind of his own.
Herbie runs away and Jim sets off into the night hoping to find Herbie and make amends before the car is seized by Thorndyke’s goons. After narrowly escaping being torn apart in Thorndyke’s workshop, and a destructive spree through Chinatown, Herbie is about to launch himself off the Golden Gate Bridge when Jim reaches him. In his attempt to stop Herbie from driving off the bridge, Jim nearly falls into the water. Herbie pulls Jim back to safety, but is then impounded by the San Francisco Police Department.
There, Tang Wu, a Chinese businessman whose store was damaged during Herbie’s rampage, demands compensation that Jim can no longer afford. Wu is willing to drop the charges in exchange for becoming Herbie’s new owner. Jim agrees to this, as long as Wu allows him to race the car in the El Dorado. If Jim wins, Wu will be able to keep the prize money, but will then be required to sell Herbie back for one dollar.
Before the start of the race, Thorndyke persuades Wu to make a wager with him on its outcome. Thorndyke initiates every trick known to man to ensure that he and his Thorndyke Special are leading at end of the first leg of the race. As a result of Thorndyke’s nutty, kooky antics, Jim limps home last with Herbie missing two wheels and having to use a wagon wheel to get to the finish line.
Thorndyke then arrives and claims that this makes him the new owner of the car. Wu regretfully tells Jim of the wager and that in accordance with its terms this is true. Thorndyke, thinking he is Herbie’s new owner, gloats to Jim about what he is going to do to Herbie and kicks Herbie’s front fender, and punches Jim, but Herbie then unexpectedly lurches into life and chases Thorndyke from the scene, showing that he is more than willing to race on.
Thanks to some ingenious shortcuts, Jim is able to make up for lost time in the second leg and is neck and neck with Thorndyke as they approach the finish line. In the ensuing dogfight, Herbie’s hastily welded-together body splits in two. The back half crosses the line just ahead of Thorndyke, while the front rolls over the line just behind, meaning Herbie takes both first and third place.
In accordance with the terms of the wager, Wu takes over Thorndyke’s car dealership, while Thorndyke and Havershaw are relegated to lowly mechanics. Meanwhile, a fully repaired Herbie chauffeurs the newlywed Jim and Carole away on their honeymoon.
Background: Dean Jones tried to pitch Walt Disney a serious, straightforward film project concerning the story of the first sports car ever brought to the United States, Walt suggested a different car story for him.
Herbie’s trademark “53” racing number was chosen by producer Bill Walsh, who was a fan of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Don Drysdale (Drysdale’s jersey number, later retired by the team, was 53). Walsh also gave Herbie his trademark red, white and blue racing stripes presumably for the more patriotic color and came up with the film’s gags such as Herbie squirting oil and opening the doors by himself. Today, only a handful of the original Herbie cars are known to exist. Car #10 was recovered from a warehouse in Pennsylvania, and has been preserved—still sporting its original paint from the film.
Cast: Dean Jones returns as Jim Douglas and David Tomlinson returns as Peter Thorndyke.
Michele Lee as Carole Bennet. She is known for her role as Karen Cooper Fairgate MacKenzie on Knots Landing. She made her movie debut in the film version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Other roles include The Comic and Along Came Polly. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1974 for Seesaw, and for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2001 for The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. Buddy Hackett 1 as Tennessee Steinmetz. Memorable films include The Music Man, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Muscle Beach Party and voiced Pardon-Me Pete in Jack Frost.
Joe Flynn as Havershaw. He was best known for his role in McHale’s Navy. He would later star as Medfield College’s Dean Higgins in a trio of Disney Studio films, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, and The Strongest Man in the World. His final role was the voice of Mr. Snoops in The Rescuers Benson Fong as Tang Wu. One of his earliest roles was as one of the sons in Charlie Chan in the Secret Service. Other films in which he appeared included Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Keys of the Kingdom, His Majesty O’Keefe, Flower Drum Song, Our Man Flint, and The Strongest Man in the World. Later in life, Benson Fong became a successful restaurateur and opened several Ah Fong restaurants in California.
Sequels:
- Herbie Rides Again Herbie is living in the firehouse with Tennessee’s aunt, played by Helen Hayes. Real estate developer Alonzo Hawk needs to buy the firehouse to make way for his new building. Keenan Wynn plays Hawk, the same character he played in The Absent-minded Professor. 2 Stephanie Powers plays her neighbor.
- Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo Jim Douglas and his riding mechanic Wheely Applegate 3 are participating in the fictional Trans-France Race, from Paris, France, to Monte Carlo, Monaco. Meanwhile two thieves, Max and Quincey, 4 steal the famous Étoile de Joie diamond and cleverly hide it in Herbie’s fuel tank.
- Herbie Goes Bananas Pete Stancheck has inherited Herbie from his uncle Jim Douglas and travels to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with his friend Davy “D.J.” Johns to retrieve the car. There, they befriend Paco, a comically mischievous, orphaned pickpocket. Pete and D.J. board the Sun Princess, a cruise ship, to Rio de Janeiro to enter Herbie in the Brazil Grand Prêmio. Harvey Korman plays the ship’s captain and Cloris Leachman is a passenger.
- Herbie: Fully Loaded Many years later Maggie Peyton, played by Lindsey Lohan,, an aspiring racer, acquires Herbie. She finds an anonymous note in Herbie’s glove box, possibly written by Herbie’s old owner Jim Douglas which reads: “Please take care of Herbie. Whatever your problem, he’ll help you find the answer”. The film also stars Justin Long, Michael Keaton, Breckin Meyer, and Matt Dillon.
- A five-episode TV series, Herbie, the Love Bug, directed by Vincent McEveety, aired on CBS in the United States in spring 1982.
- In 1997, there was a made-for-television sequel starring Bruce Campbell which included a Dean Jones cameo, tying it to the previous films.
Critical Reception:
- Vincent Canby of The New York Times panned the film as “a long, sentimental Volkswagen commercial … which has the form of fantasy-comedy, lots of not-very-special effects and no real humor.”
- Variety wrote, “For sheer inventiveness of situation and the charm that such an idea projects, ‘The Love Bug’ rates as one of the better entries of the Disney organization.”
- Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it “brisk, active, bright, technically impeccable, simple-minded, full of tricky effects and free of all but the most glancing resemblances to nasty old reality. It is a formula picture, and such troubles as there are arise mainly from the fact that the formula has known much stronger ingredients (Fred MacMurray and flubber, let’s say) in the past.”
- The Monthly Film Bulletin declared that “this very engaging mechanical fantasy is the best piece of work from the Disney studios for some time. The caper appears to have had the effect of injecting life into Robert Stevenson’s usually pedestrian style, since with the exception of one glutinously sentimental episode the pace never lets up.”
Legacy: At Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Herbie has been immortalized in the “Love Bug” buildings 6 and 7. You can pose next to a life-sized Herbie at the resort.
My take: I have always loved Herbie and these films. They’re cute and silly and fun. However the Chinese stereotypes are a little tough to watch these days.
Next Week: next
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