Huey, Dewey, and Louie: the faqs.

Per Starback starback at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE
Fri May 14 22:18:38 CEST 1993


me> What FAQ's are there anyway?

Rich> Some I can think of, off-hand, concern the color arangements of
Rich> HD&L, [the rest of a long list deleted]

OK, I'll start with that one and other questions about HD&L, so here's
a first draft of a small faq file on HD&L.  It's mostly compiled from
what I've already written to the list with additional facts from the
postings of other.  Any comments?  (Like corrections to the facts or
to my English; additional info where I have comments enclosed in
[...]; other questions on HD&L that should be answered, ...)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

* Origin

Huey, Dewey, and Louie appeared for the first time in the Donald Duck
newspaper Sunday page October 17, 1937, written by Ted Osborne and
drawn by Al Taliaferro.  At the time the Studio was working on a
cartoon called _Donald's Nephews_ (directed by Jack King) with the
same theme, but due to the longer production time it didn't premiere
until 1938.  In the daily strip the boys stayed with Donald only for a
while, but later they returned for good.

* Relationship

How are the boys related to Donald?

In their premiere Sunday page Donald gets a letter with the following
text:

	Dear Donald:
	I am sending your angel nephews Louie, Huey and Dewey, to stay
	with you while their father is in the hospital.  A giant
	firecracker exploded under his chair.  The little darlings are
	*so* playful.  I hope you enjoy them.
		Your cousin,
			Della.

Supposedly this cousin Della is the boys' mother, but it's not made
explicit.  In the cartoon the letter (addressed to mr. Donald Duck,
Hollywood, Calif) instead said:

	Dear Brother ---
	I am sending
	your angel nephews
	to visit you ---
	Sister Dumbella

Supposedly this *sister* *Dumbella* is the boys' mother, even if it
never really says so this time either.

In the fifties Carl Barks made a Duck Family Tree for his own
reference, and there he calls HD&L's mother "Thelma Duck" and she is a
sister to Donald.  This Thelma has never been used in a story though,
and in Don Rosa's revised version of the family tree her name is Della
instead.  The poor father of the boys has never had a name anywhere.

* Colours

How do you tell them apart?  Which one wears which colour
(red/blue/green)?

In the old cartoons HD&L wore different colours in different cartoons,
and sometimes two or all three of them wore the same colour, very
often red.  In their very first cartoon they wore red, orange and
green shirts. [I know they introduce themselves by names so that you
get to know which is which, but I don't remember the order, probably
Huey is the green one.]

So this red-blue-green thing was invented in the comics, where their
shirts are black but their caps have different colours.  The
colourists have not been consistent about it though, so not only do
they wear different colours in different stories, but also they seem
to switch caps between panels!

[Hm, I skipped over the Sunday pages.  What about the colouring of them?]

[What about the current colourists at Gladstone and Disney.  Do they
try to be consistent?  I haven't checked.]

In the modern TV animation, i.e., in DuckTales, they were consistent
about the colouring though: Huey red, Dewey blue, and Louie green, so
this is probably the "official" Disney word on the matter.
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"



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