Speedy Gonzales is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. 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, being quick-witted and heroic while speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent. He usually wears a yellow sombrero, white shirt and trousers (which was a common traditional outfit worn by men and boys of rural Mexican villages), and a red kerchief, similar to that of some traditional Mexican attires. To date, there have been 46 theatrical shorts made either starring or featuring the character.
History
Speedy's first appearance was in 1953's Cat-Tails for Two though he appeared largely in name (and super speed) only. It would be two years before Friz Freleng and layout artist Hawley Pratt redesigned the character into his modern incarnation for the 1955 Freleng short of the same name. The cartoon features Sylvester the Cat guarding a cheese factory at the international border between the United States and Mexico from starving Mexican mice. The mice call in the plucky, excessively energetic Speedy (voiced by Mel Blanc) to save them. Amid cries of "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Epe! ¡Epe! ¡Epe! Yeehaw!" (Spanish for "Go on! Go on! Up! Up!", although "Ándale arriba" may have been intended as meaning "hurry up"), 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 sometimes used.
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 (and indeed, all four characters ended up competing with each other in the short "The Wild Chase"). 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!" In the mid 1960s, Speedy's main rival and second nemesis became Daffy Duck, whom Speedy usually referred to as "the loco duck."
Speedy has the reputation of being a hit with the female mice. In many cartoons, when the mice decide to get Speedy to help them, one mouse will say words to the effect of "Speedy Gonzales is friend of my sister". Another mouse will say "Speedy Gonzales is friend of everyone's sister".
Notable cartoon appearances
Cat-Tails for Two (1953) - Early version
Speedy Gonzales (1955) - Debut, official, Academy Award-winner, 28th (1955) - Short Subject (Cartoon) Tabasco Road (1957), Academy Award-nominated Mexicali Shmoes (1959), Academy Award-nominated The Pied Piper of Guadalupe (1961), Academy Award-nominated A Message to Gracias (1964) It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House (1965) - first appearance with Daffy Duck. See Ya Later Gladiator (1968) - final theatrical appearance.
Concern about stereotypes
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 (as a subsidiary of Time Warner, Cartoon Network is a corporate sibling to Warner Bros.). 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."
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.
Speedy Gonzales remained a popular character in Latin America. Many Hispanic people remembered him fondly as a quick-witted, heroic Mexican character who always got the best of his opponents, at a time when such positive depictions of Latin Americans were rare in popular entertainment.
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.