African Disney Characters

Rod Davidek rdavidek at idirect.com
Thu Jun 29 17:58:14 CEST 2000


Pam wrote,

>My friends and I were trying to figure out if there was ever a black or =
>african Disney character, either in the early days of comics and shorts =
>and cartoons, or otherwise.

There was only one recurring black character in the Disney short cartoons.
She was "Aunt Delilah", an obvious caricature of actress Louise Beavers.

Aunt Delilah appeared in four cartoons: "Three Orphan Kittens", "More
Kittens", "Pantry Pirate" and "Figaro and Cleo". She's seen only from the
waist down, more or less from the point of view of the pet animals that are
the stars of each cartoon.

"Three Orphan Kittens" was the first of these and it set the formula for
the others: Black housekeeper tells animals to behave or else, animals
misbehave while her back is turned. 

I've seen this Disney character identified as "Mammy Two Shoes", but that's
actually the name of the character in the Tom and Jerry cartoons that are a
blatant rip-off by Hanna and Barbera of the earlier Disney stories.

Black sterotypes in Disney cartoons were conspicuous by their absence
compared to the other cartoons of that era, but I can think of several.
However, the only example that comes to mind who was animated as a person
(as opposed to an animal, bird, insect, doll or cookie) was a caricature of
Stepin Fetchit in the Donald Duck cartoon "The Autograph Hound".


                                 - Rod -   





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