The Love Bug (1969)

Taglines: Herbie will honk his way into your heart.

The Love Bug movie storyline. In 1968, 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, a jolly Brooklynite who constantly extols the virtues of spiritual enlightenment, having spent time amongst Buddhist monks in Tibet, and builds “art” from car parts.

After yet another race ends in a crash (and Tennessee turns his Edsel into a sculpture), Jim finds himself without a car and heads into town in search of some cheap wheels. He is enticed into an upmarket European 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 that rolls into the showroom, and defends the car’s honor, much to Thorndyke’s displeasure. 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 heated argument between Jim and Thorndyke is settled when 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, believes certain inanimate objects to have hearts and minds of their own and 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, himself a major force on the local racing scene, offers to cancel the remaining payments Jim owes on Herbie if Jim can win a race that they will both be competing in at Riverside later that month. 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. However, as the crowd admires Thorndyke’s victory, Herbie blows some whipped cream out of his exhaust pipe, covering Thorndyke.

The Love Bug (sometimes referred to as Herbie the Love Bug) is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and the first in a series of films made by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution that starred an anthropomorphic pearl-white, fabric-sunroofed 1963 Volkswagen racing Beetle named Herbie. It was based on the 1961 book Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford.

The movie follows the adventures of Herbie, Herbie’s driver, Jim Douglas (Dean Jones), and Jim’s love interest, Carole Bennett (Michele Lee). It also features Buddy Hackett as Jim’s enlightened, kind-hearted friend, Tennessee Steinmetz, a character who creates “art” from used car parts. English actor David Tomlinson portrays the villainous Peter Thorndyke, (familiar from his role as Mr. George Banks in Mary Poppins) the owner of an auto showroom and an SCCA national champion who sells Herbie to Jim and eventually becomes his racing rival.

Directed by: Robert Stevenson
Starring: Dean Jones, Michele Lee, David Tomlinson, Buddy Hackett, Joe Flynn, Benson Fong, Joe E. Ross, Barry Kelley, Iris Adrian, Andy Granatelli, Ned Glass, Robert Foulk, Nicole Jaffe
Screenplay by: Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Edward Colman
Film Editing by: Cotton Warburton
Costume Design by: Bill Thomas
Set Decoration by: Hal Gausman, Emile Kuri
Art Direction by: Carroll Clark, John B. Mansbridge
Music by: George Bruns
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: March 13, 1969 (Wide)