Jim Klein let me know about Herbie’s 50th birthday. We both thought we had done a proper post on that important piece of popular culture before here, to re-run. Turns out not so. That’s probably because I never saw any Herbie movies; not quite my thing. But I love this picture, and I’m sure some of you will chime in with your tributes.
I feel like I should have known that.
Ed! There’s still time for you to finish yours, road trip in 2022!
It’s been on my calendar for two years, but life events kept pushing VW work (and a trip to the big celebration being held at Disney in FL) off the back burner completely. There are supposed to be around 38 Herbies at the event, including some screen-used cars.
As a kid who liked cars, Herbie movies were among my favorites. I was momentarily surprised Paul has never seen any of them, but then again I guess he was probably a little too old for them when they came out.
Good grief, has it been 50 years already?
My 6-year-old self remembers the movie. Dean Jones and Buddy Hackett may have been the stars, but the implausible Beetle was the true hero of the story. However….
Even 6-year-old me understood that this was total BS. No Beetle could race against Ferraris or other sports cars, even if it was “alive” and had a big heart. But, I understood that the Beetle was ubiquitous, even if I didn’t understand that word. In a USA where 95% of cars on the road were both US built and less than 10 years old, the old school Beetle was both the representative outsider and instantly recognizable.
Imagine had Herbie been the other import of the era with similar popularity? Would we see a Dauphine sporting 53 on the side with stripes? Would it have been accepted if it was a Datsun or Toyota, or a Subaru 360 or Honda 600?
This was at the end of any Camelot era and begining of the hippy flower decals all over the Beetles and Vans. That model lasted longer in our collective psyche than the Model T ever did. The fact it made it to 2005 with Lindsey Lohan as a franchise speaks volumes.
Yeah, it was a cheesy movie for kids. But by gosh, Disney got it right.
You had me thinking for a moment there, but I don’t reckon it would have worked with any other car. The Beetle was so much a part of popular culture worldwide that it was an obvious pick as the ‘star’.
The only other cars it would had worked might had been the Austin Mini and the Citroen 2CV.
I wondered what if James Bond was behind the wheels of Herbie instead of the 2CV in “For your eyes only”? 😉
Wiki: “Before film began production, the titular car was not specified as a Volkswagen Beetle, and Disney set up a casting call for a dozen cars to audition. In the lineup, there were a few Toyotas, a TVR, a handful of Volvos, an MG and a pearl white Volkswagen Beetle. The Volkswagen Beetle was chosen as it was the only one that elicited the crew to reach out and pet it.”
Yep, The Love Bug could have been a Volvo….
Interesting though that no American cars were considered.
And neither was the Mini, at a time when they really were winning international rallies.
My only tattoo is inspired by that 53, but I changed it to my birth year (75). The friend who made the design, however, couldn’t find the typography and used the same as the London tube.
This makes my tattoo a 3-fold: car-based, year and that I lived in London for a while…
I know I’ve seen the original a couple of times and some of the sequels as well, overall light and enjoyable (if not exactly cerebral but that’s okay) fare with some pretty good scenery thrown in as well. But a Bug is pretty much the perfect car to give a real personality to as it simply has personality in spades to begin with.
Happy Birthday Herbie!
I was kind of surprised to learn the love bug was made in 1969, it always seemed more early-mid 60sish than late 60s when I watched it as a kid(I saw it in the 1990s), probably because Herbie himself was a 63. I can say with absolute certainty if not for these movies I probably wouldn’t like the VW bug, I’d probably still be into cars regardless but these movies hugely contributed to my car enthusiasm from a young age.
My favorite one was actually Herbie Rides Again, which I’m certain i’m in the minority in liking. But the reason perfectly mirrors this picture, when Herbie needs help during the climax every Beetle in San Fransisco comes to life, even ones from junkyards – I love that scene. There’s no racing in this movie like the original but I found it a more fun watch, but then again I last saw it when I was probably 10
Our kids loved watching that one too.
“I was kind of surprised to learn the love bug was made in 1969”
Disney’s live action movies seemed to stand still in about 1964 for quite a few years.
That was something of a golden age for family viewing.
“I was kind of surprised to learn the love bug was made in 1969”
The concept of “Love Bug” didn’t exist prior to about this time. Before the hippies adopted the VW as their own car of choice starting in ’67, VWs were not the object of all of this kind of new attention as a cultural object of a new generation. There’s no way the “Love Bug” could have been made in 1964 or 1965. Hollywood was just following cultural trends, not creating them.
It makes sense now knowing the history, my Mom first corrected me on the release dates, but in terms of the movie’s execution and dialogue it just looked and felt more mid-60s when compared to other movies of the times. There was very little hippie culture actually present in the movie past the title, the one scene I can think of that featured anybody resembling hippies they were driving a T-bucket hot rod!
It was released in 1968 actually, and was the last film (or at least the last non-animated film) that Walt Disney was involved in making.
it always seemed more early-mid 60sish than late 60s
That’s because Walt Disney was a flaming cultural/political reactionary/right winger. Everything had to be squeaky clean, and about 10 years behind the real cultural norms. Unless you were white with short hair and no beard, you didn’t work at Disneyland. I still remember the battles in the 80s or early 90s about them finally relinquishing on beards.
Disney was considered something of a fascist by the liberals. And lots of folks hated him for what he did to all the classic children’s literature. Stephanie’s dad, who was an English Lit prof, loathed Disney and refused to let his kids be exposed to him.
What movies did I see in 1969? Candy. Easy Rider. Midnight Cowboy. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Fellini Satyricon, Alice’s Restaurant, and of course, Putney Swope. Not The Love Bug.
Politics aside, I never was a Disney fan, his films seemed so corny and seemed to be stuck in a `50s cultural time warp of some kind. My mom dragged my younger brother and I to see ‘Mary Poppins’. We hated it, and she took us to see ‘Goldfinger’ to make up for it. I was about 11 years old at the tome.
The ONLY Disney movie I ever enjoyed was the brilliant ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Excellent cast with James Mason as a teriffic Nemo, and Kirk Douglas as the master harpooner. Ned Land.Even the design of the Nautilus was amazing, and it seemed to foreshadow the contemporary ‘steampunk’ style of today. ‘Herbie Fully Loaded’ was on cable recently, but after about 25 minutes, I had to shut it. Lindsay Lohan`s acting was annoyingly bad.
Agreed. And the technical quality of the animation in its golden years was unparalleled. As in Fantasia, and some others.
But way too much of the Disney stuff was the equivalent of Wonder Bread.
Yeah, bland , tasteless, and as light as air.The equivalency of a Mc Donald`s hamburger, IMHO.
That animation was amazing, but it almost busted the company. Disney did not want to make schlock; he wanted to make films like Fantasia and Cinderella. It was brother Roy that pushed for less ambitious projects that paid the bills.
Walt Disney also had consistent labour problems with the hundreds of artists he needed for making such amazing productions.
My kids watched the original Mary Poppins recently and enjoyed it. The combination of animation and live action still holds up. That and Julie Andrews carry the movie.
And helped us ignore Dick Van Dyke’s terrible attempt at a Cockney accent.
You are not the minority in my book. Herbie Rides Again is my favorite, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo is a close second. And any movie with Herbie is a winner. I grew up with them all and would watch them anytime they are on.
I have shown my kids the movies recently and they loved them all. One of the girls asked to see the original twice, and the new one with Lohan, twice.
It wasn’t about the car, actually. It was about the California state of mind during the 1960s. Herbie is actually a part of the Beach Blanket movies popular a few years earlier, the surf music popular during the decade, and the celebration of American optimism. Herbie’s VW-ness was the canvas onto which Disney projected this feeling. Only California-based Disney could have come up with these movies.
As a kid back then, Herbie fit my life as well as the “Smile” happy face t-shirts, Twister, the Archies and the Banana Splitz. Being naïve, silly and young was considered a good thing. My mom dressed us kids in day-glo colored bell bottoms, Snoopy sweatshirts and Flower Power hats.
The Love Bug was a movie that would have happened even without the Beetle.
Yes, I remember seeing The Love Bug in the theater when it first came out. I guess I would have been about 9. As a kid who loved cars I absolutely loved it. Although I was sad right at the beginning where Tennessee cut up the Edsel. 🙂
It aged well because we got it from the video store when my kids were little. They loved it too. So when we came across this one in 2005 my then-11 year old wanted his picture taken with it.
My parents took my younger brother and I to see it at a drive-in in the summer of 1969. We were both young enough to enjoy the movie, although we were sufficiently car-savvy to get the “joke” about a VW Beetle outperforming all of those sports cars.
Just prior to seeing the movie, my parents had bought me the new Matchbox VW Beetle, which was painted white (although it wasn’t supposed to be a model of “Herbie.”). My brother and I pretended that the Matchbox VW was Herbie.
I, too, have a drive-in memory about Herbie the Love Bug, which makes the artwork (above) appropriate for me.
My earliest movie memory is attending a drive-in double feature of the Love Bug and Jungle Book. This would have been early seventies, so maybe Herbie Rides Again was one of the movies. But it’s hard to know, since Disney had regular second runs of their kid flicks to milk each new generation who hadn’t yet seen 101 Dalmations or Snow White or whatever.
I wonder what kids think now when they see these movies. At the time the movies were made, VW Bugs were everywhere, so the joke about a Beetle race car was obvious. But now I can’t think of the last time I actually saw an air-cooled Beetle on the road. Maybe to a young child a Bug just looks like any other old car.
Me also. The only movie I saw at the drive in; I was 6. Concordville, PA, Philly ‘burbs.
(Mostly OT, that same summer we stayed at a motel in Machias Maine that was next to the local drive in. The motel room had a big picture window and a speaker in it. I think the movie may not have been g-rated, as I seem to recall my parents keeping the curtains drawn.
The family vehicle for that trip was a 67 Saab 95 2 stroke wagon, which actually would have been a pretty reasonable alternative to a Bug for Herbie. Plenty of character!!)
Also, I had the paper back novelization of Herbie. I must have read it 20 times. Terribly written, but it was something to do on those days I was sick and home from school.
I watched all the Herbie movies, since my age group is right.
Even when I was a little kid, Beetles perplexed me. Whenever I heard grown ups talk about it was how they fixed it. Any one I rode in was freezing on the winter.
Even now we see youngsters taking VW vans around the world so they can blog about how many times the they have fixed the thing. A vintage Chevrolet van with 230 Turbo Thrift would never break, but would make for boring YouTube videos.
Oh, that drive-in movie picture wins it! I had a real thing for the Herbie movies when I was about 8 to 10, and I was sure my first car was going to be a Beetle, except when I was sure it was going to be a Volvo Amazon wagon. I was also sure I was going to be a racecar driver.
(the racecar driver dream died of natural causes, and by the time it came time to actually get a car, I’d upgraded from a Beetle to a Valiant)
The Love Bug isn’t the only one who turn 50, there was another Disney movie who turns 50 as well, “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” with Kurt Russell as Dexter Riley, the first of the “Dexter Riley trilogy”. Too bad there wasn’t a crossover between Herbie and Dexter Riley, what might have been….
In our small Ontario village there was a guy who travelled around showing Disney movies at the town hall.
This is where I saw Herbie 1&2, and just about any Disney movie with Dean Jones and Kurt Russell. ( which was just about all of them! )
Corny as they were it brought a lot of life to small town Ontario for a lot of kids that might not have viewed it otherwise.
Happy Birthday Herbie and thanks for the happy memories!
In the opening scene (figure 8 racing) you can watch all these curbside classics destroying themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oswqR8hrb4s
Also this may have been the first movie to show how terrible it was to obliterate historic neighborhoods in San Francisco (and other cities) through the use of eminent domain and urban renewal. It was an anti-urban renewal, pro-Victorian preservation film, which was a really a radical, anti-establishment position to take in 1969.
You can also see the ugly elevated freeway that used to run right along Fisherman’s Wharf, which was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and has since been removed.
Ugly but once used for some good car stunts like that one from the movie “Freebie and the Bean”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R–Hz4C9XSo
The firehouse ( among other scenes ) is a matte painting!
http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2010/10/disneys-love-bug-matte-painting-in-top.html
Another lost art…
I guess VWOA isn’t taking any notice of this. Have you guys seen anything/
I honestly thought “The Love Bug” came out earlier than that. The VW to me was a good choice, given its global popularity at the time. I watched most of the Herbie movies when I was a child and loved them, but the last one with Lindsay Lohan in 2006 was awful. Thankfully, unlike “The Italian Job” remake in 2003 with the then recently introduced BMW MINI, it wasn’t a glorified commercial for the New Beetle.
I saw it at the cinema when ti came and remember enjoying it, as a 7 year old would.
But i haven’t seen the sequels and now cannot remember the story line, assuming there was one.
Still see the occasional new Beetle with 53 stickers though.