"The Love Bug" released 1969

Everyone's favorite racing car Herbie appeared first in The Love Bug, which opened to wide release March 13, 1969.  It premiered in a limited release December 24, 1968.  The movie starred Dean Jones, Michelle Lee, David Tomlinson, Buddy Hackett and Gary Owen of Laugh-In fame.

It is based on the book Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford, published in 1961, and it was the last live-action movie authorized by Walt Disney.  It was released two years after his death.  Dean Jones attributes this to the movie's success.

It was the third-highest grossing movie of 1968.

"Blackbeard's Ghost" premieres (1968)

Walt Disney's fantastical story Blackbeard's Ghost premiered February 8, 1968.  It starred Peter Ustinov (as Blackbeard), Dean Jones, who probably starred in every live action Disney movie in the 60s and 70s and the lovely Suzanne Pleshette.

The basis of the movie was that Blackbeard, who had been cursed by his last wife (a witch) so he would never die, had to do a good deed to break the curse.  The screenplay was written by Bill Walsh.  He wrote many Disney screenplays, including Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, from 1950 until his death in 1975.

A squeaky-clean, antiseptic movie, Blackbeard's Ghost was a fun movie, but one must suspend copious disbelief, especially if one has any notion of the real Blackbeard, a man who shot a man indiscriminately.