Miss Possum is a character featured in the 1946 Disney film Song of the South. She is an animated anthropomorphic opossum who lives in the Briar Patch whom Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit encounter during the film's animated sequences.
Background[]
Personality[]
Miss Possum is an animated anthropomorphic opossum who carries three opossum joeys on her tail. She is extremely kind to anyone whom she encounters in the Briar Patch, especially Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit. However, she doesn't speak much in the film itself.
Physical appearance[]
Miss Possum wears a maid attire as well as a bonnet on her head and wears a pair of glasses located on her nose and below her eyes. Additionally, each of the three baby possums their mother has on her tail are identical to each other: each wearing blue shirts and light-green caps.
Origins[]
Miss Possum from Song of the South has no existing counterpart in the original Uncle Remus stories. However, she is completely unrelated to Br'er Possum (also known as "Mr. Possum"), a character from the original Uncle Remus stories who is often portrayed as a scapegoat to Br'er Rabbit.
Appearances[]
Media[]
Song of the South[]
Miss Possum appears during the animated musical sequence, "How Do You Do?" where she walks past Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit across the Briar Patch. Just as she and her children hear them whistling, they turn around and face the two talking to them. The baby possums happily greet them, "Fine, how are you?" just as their mother happily observes her children happily greeting Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit. The latter replies, "Howdy, come on!" to Miss Possum and her children to which she replies to Br'er Rabbit while singing, "Pretty good, sure as you're born!" just before leaving.
During the reprise of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" at the end of the film, Miss Possum (in animation form) appears again alongside various animated characters in the live-action scene where Johnny, Ginny, and Toby are happily strolling across the countryside just as she happily greets them where she is seen standing on a tree's branch. She later follows the live-action children happily strolling along just as Uncle Remus catches up alongside the other animated characters following them into the sunset just as the film ends.
Disney Parks[]
Splash Mountain[]
The model of the Plaintive Possum animatronic character from the former "America Sings", would make an appearance in Disneyland's version of the Splash Mountain attraction, as Miss Possum. She was seen during the end of the Laughing Place sequence worried about Br'er Rabbit's encounter with Br'er Fox fearing that Br'er Fox would eat him, followed by a mother rabbit and her children sad about Br'er Rabbit about to become Br'er Fox's meal. Originally, they sang "Sooner or Later" when the attraction first opened, the song itself was eventually replaced by "Burrow's Lament" where the song itself had an ominous-sounding score about Br'er Rabbit being held hostage by Br'er Fox who was about to cook Br'er Rabbit into rabbit stew.
Professor Barnaby Owl's Photographic Art Studio[]
A picture of Charles Boyer's Splash Mountain artwork featuring Miss Possum and her children can be seen in the Professor Barnaby Owl's Photographic Art Studio store.
Louis' Critter Club[]
An Easter egg of her spoon can be spotted on a top shelf inside the store.
Gallery[]
Media[]
Song of the South[]
Disney Parks[]
Miscellaneous[]
Trivia[]
- During the "How Do You Do?" sequence where Miss Possum appears, she wears a light green bonnet with the rest of the clothes she wears being light blue and teal. However, during the reprise of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" at the end of the film, her clothes turn yellow, albeit her bonnet being light green. This is likely an animation error oversight.
- In Disneyland's version of Splash Mountain, the animatronic mother possum seen before the attraction's last drop wears clothes closely resembling her animated counterpart rather than her "America Sings" counterpart (judging by the colors of the clothes which the aforementioned animatronic wears that resemble the one that she wears from the "How Do You Do?" sequence from Song of the South, minus the glasses her animated counterpart wears) where she sings "Burrow's Lament", alongside a mother rabbit, fearing about Br'er Rabbit being stalked by Br'er Fox in his lair at Chick-A-Pin Hill. However, her animatronic is based on the one from the former America Sings attraction rather than closely matching her animated counterpart.
- Miss Possum's name is ironic as she is an opossum and possums are from Australia. This is a common naming misconception, as people inaccurately assume that calling an animal a possum is a shortened form (which could very well be), but actually referring to a different animal.
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