Speedy Gonzales

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This article is about the cartoon character. For other uses, see Speedy Gonzales (disambiguation).
Speedy Gonzales
First appearance

Official: Speedy Gonzales (1955)
Created by

Robert McKimson (original)
Friz Freleng/Hawley Pratt (redesign)
Voiced by

Mel Blanc (1953–1989)
Joe Alaskey (commercials, Tiny Toon Adventures, Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor)
Eric Goldberg (Looney Tunes: Back in Action)
Bob Bergen (Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas)
Fred Armisen (The Looney Tunes Show)
George Lopez (2014 film)
Information
Species Mouse
Gender Male
Relatives Slowpoke Rodriguez (cousin)
Nationality Mexican

Speedy Gonzales (commonly shortened to just Speedy) is an animated caricature of a mouse in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He is portrayed as "The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico" with his major traits being the ability to run extremely fast and speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent. He usually wears an oversized yellow sombrero, white shirt and trousers (which is a common traditional outfit worn by men and boys of rural Mexican villages), and a red kerchief, similar to that of a reveler in the San Fermin festival. To date there have been 46 cartoons made either starring or featuring this character.

History

Speedy debuted in 1953's Cat-Tails for Two, directed by Robert McKimson. This early Speedy was a leaner, rattier-looking creation with a sizable gold front tooth and wore a red Polo shirt. The cartoon featured him outwitting a smart-and-stupid pair of cats, George and Benny (parodies of George and Lenny), aboard a ship. Later on, this original version of Speedy is used as an unnamed background character a couple of times. Though he was created by McKimson, the majority of the cartoons with him were directed by Friz Freleng.

According to William Anthony Nericcio, the name derives from a joke about a Mexican man nicknamed "Speedy" either because of his premature ejaculation or quick copulation, though the name of the character was not intended to be derogatory.[1]

A prototype version of Speedy Gonzales as designed by his creator, Robert McKimson, in the 1953 short Cat-Tails for Two

It would be two years before Friz Freleng and animator Hawley Pratt redesigned the character into his modern incarnation for the 1955 Freleng short, Speedy Gonzales. The cartoon features Sylvester the Cat guarding a cheese factory at the United States-Mexican border from a group of starving Mexican mice. The mice call in the plucky, excessively energetic Speedy to save them, and amid cries of "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Epa! ¡Epa! ¡Epa! Yeehaw!" (Spanish for "Go on! Go on! Up! Up!", although "Ándale arriba" may have been intended as meaning "hurry up") courtesy of Mel Blanc, Sylvester soon gets his comeuppance. The cartoon won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).

While Speedy's last name was given as Gonzalez in Cat-Tails (on a printed business card shown in the cartoon), it was spelled with an 's' from Speedy Gonzales onward. Today, the earlier spelling is occasionally used by accident.

Freleng and McKimson soon set Sylvester up as Speedy's regular nemesis in a series of cartoons, much in the same way Chuck Jones had paired Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner in his Road Runner cartoons. Sylvester (often called "El Gringo Pussygato" by Speedy) is constantly outsmarted and outrun by the Mouse, causing the cat to suffer all manner of pain and humiliation from mousetraps to accidentally consuming large amounts of Tabasco hot sauce. Other cartoons pair the mouse with his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, the "slowest Mouse in all Mexico." Slowpoke regularly gets into all sorts of trouble that often require Speedy to save him—but one cat in Mexicali Shmoes says that as if to compensate for his slowness, "he pack a gun!"[2] In the mid 1960s, Speedy's main nemesis became Daffy Duck.

Censorship

Feeling that the character presented an offensive Mexican stereotype, Cartoon Network shelved Speedy's films when it gained exclusive rights to broadcast them in 1999. In an interview with Fox News on March 28, 2002, Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg commented, "It hasn't been on the air for years because of its ethnic stereotypes."[3]

Despite such controversy over potentially offensive characterizations, Speedy Gonzales remains a popular character in Latin America. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens called Speedy a "cultural icon", and thousands of users registered their support of the character on the hispaniconline.com message boards. Fan campaigns to put Speedy back on the air resulted in the return of the animated shorts to Cartoon Network in 2002.[4]

On the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD box sets, the Speedy cartoons are prefaced by a disclaimer[citation needed] that states:

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were false then and are still false today. While the following does not represent the WB view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

Other appearances

In 1983, he co-starred in Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island. In 1988, he made a cameo appearance in the ending scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He had one appearance in the Tiny Toons episode segment "The Acme Acres Summer Olympics", as the coach, and serving as the mentor of Lightning Rodriguez. In 1996, he made a short appearance in film Space Jam. In 2003, he made a cameo appearance alongside Porky Pig in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, making fun of his politically incorrect status. At around the same time, he made a non-speaking cameo in an episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! titled "Lucha, Rinse and Repeat". In 2009, he made a cameo appearance on Kid vs. Kat in "The Kat Whisperer".

Volume 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD series, released on November 14, 2006, has an entire disc of Speedy shorts, although some of his other shorts had previously been released on Volumes 1 and 3. Speedy is mentioned in one Duck Dodgers episode, after Cadet sits on Dodgers, prompting him to say, "I knew I should've chosen Speedy Gonzales as a sidekick!"

Speedy Gonzales also appears occasionally on The Looney Tunes Show, living with Bugs and Daffy as their "mouse in the wall" and running the pizza parlor Pizzariba. He is shown to act as Daffy's "Jiminy Cricket", which is a far cry from the antagonistic relationship they had in the old days. The episode "Sunday Night Slice" showed that Bugs bought his favorite restaurant to prevent it from being closed and hired Speedy to help him. When Bugs decides he doesn't want to own a restaurant anymore, he hands ownership of it to Speedy. In "The Black Widow," Speedy Gonzales answers Daffy Duck's call and races to Tacapulco to convince Sheriff Slowpoke Rodriguez to let Daffy Duck and Porky Pig out of jail.

In other media

In 1962, pop singer Pat Boone scored a top 10 hit in the United States with the song "Speedy Gonzales" which featured Mel Blanc spouting faux-Mexican phrases as Speedy. It was also sung by Manolo Muñoz and A.B. Quintanilla's Kumbia All Starz, whose music video featured Speedy.

In 2006, Volkswagen licensed Speedy Gonzales for a series of Spanish-language commercials for the Volkswagen Golf, using footage from the cartoon of the same name.[5]

Speedy Gonzales can refer to Chilean footballer Mark Gonzalez of FC CSKA Moscow

Speedy Gonzales starred in his own SNES video game Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos as well as his own Game Boy game. He also appeared as an enemy in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and Looney Tunes: Marvin Strikes Back! as both a miniboss and playable character.

Film

A February 2010 blog post by Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter revealed plans of a New Line Cinema live-action/CG-animated feature film based on the Looney Tunes character, to be voiced by comedian George Lopez. The source of this information was an interview with Ann Serrano, now former spouse Mr. Lopez.[6] As of October 2013, no further news of a film production has been released.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Nericcio, William Anthony (2007). Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. University of Texas Press. p. 248. ISBN 0292714572. 
  2. ↑ "Speedy Gonzales and Slowpoke Rodriguez in Mexicali Shmoes". Retrieved April 11, 2010. 
  3. ↑ Park, Michael Y. (March 28, 2002). "Speedy Gonzales Caged by Cartoon Network". FoxNews.com. Retrieved July 7, 2009. 
  4. ↑ Emling, Shelly (June 21, 2002). "Cartoon Network putting Mexican mouse back in the lineup". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved November 6, 2010. 
  5. ↑ "Arriba! VW Turns to Speedy Gonzales To Push GTI". Indiacar.net. March 20, 2006. Retrieved July 7, 2009. 
  6. ↑ "Heat Vision - The Hollywood Reporter". Heatvisionblog.com. Retrieved October 19, 2013. 

Further reading

External links

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