Speedy Gonzales (short)

Speedy Gonzales is a 1955 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Friz Freleng from a story by Warren Foster. It is the second cartoon to feature the title character, but the first one to feature Speedy in his current design. It won the Oscar as Best Animated Short of 1956.

Storyline
The film-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. Speedy then says "I like thees pussycat fellow; he's seelly!" and the short ends.

Additional Credits

 * Screenwriter: Waren Foster
 * Backgrounds: Paul Julian
 * Storyboards: Hawley Pratt