Grandma's car, and ducks as hams

Mattias Hallin Mattias.Hallin at jurenh.lu.se
Thu Dec 23 14:44:55 CET 1993


Tryg:

     About where/with whom Grandma's car originated, I'm pretty confident it
was with Taliaferro - at least I seem to recall her driving a car similar to
the one she has in Barks' episodes in a fairly early Taliaferro strip... but I
might be wrong?! Any one else has any ideas about this?

Now, about that car being an electric, and recharging it's batteries and so
on...  well, there's is at least one story I can remember offhand: a Gyro story
(incidentally the one where Mickey's nephews appear) where Gyro traps lightning
in a box, by way of a kite a la Franklin, in order to get inexpensive eltric
power. Which indeed he does... and how! Among other gags, he recharges
Grandma's car (she just happens to drive by, it seems) from this lightning box,
and it takes off at break-neck speed! I don't know off-hand whether or not
Barks himself wrote this particular story, but it would least seem to indicate
that the car in question is indeed electric, and that it does need recharging
occasionally...

...which just might be a problem of it's own - I also seem to recall something
somewhere that says that Grandma's farm doesn't have electricity - but on the
other hand there IS (and of this I'm sure) the Grandma story where HD$L comes
for a visit and Grandma says about the TV-set Donald has given her that "she
tried to turn it on, but a lot of rude people stuck their heads out of it, so 
she just turned it of again", or something to that effect; then again, this is,
I think, the "Donald's Grandma Duck"-story of some previous fame here on the 
net, and that story is NOT written by Barks. Well...

Also, Tryg: I don't see no reason for you to go lurking again, just because
we've had some subjects under discussion before; in fact I'd love to see all
you nice but shy lurkers out there to come out of your closets, and play a
nice round of golf with the rest of us - I'm absolutely POSITIVE Gladstone
Gander won't show up to spoil our fun!

Don:

    About this "can a character act another character?"-question... You gave
some rather good examples there, of how absurd such a principle could become;
and NO! I don't think Indiana Jones would make a very good Ebenezer, nor that
the Beast would be cut out for the role of Sebastian... and yet. I think, one
reason that I PERSONALLY might be inclined to feel different about $crooge
McDuck (the REAL one, that is) is because to me he doesn't feel like "just" a
character - to me he is a person. Well, I don't mean that I ACTUALLY believe
him to exist (or have existed) FOR REAL in MY universe; but it's pretty close!

Another reason, of course, that I don't object or react so aversely to $crooge
acting Scrooge is probably closer to how Disney must have reasoned: hey!
they're both misers, and they even have similar names!!! Which is of course
rather shallow reasoning - don't I know it - looking almost only to form. And I
don't for a second believe that Disney would think like "well, $crooge McDuck,
this interesting personality that Carl Barks created and developed - wouldn't
he, being such a rather complex person make a fine actor"...

Well, for my part this is about as much as I've got to say on the subject, so
if you wanna consider it closed - please do; or if you want to continue, that's
fine, too - and concerning the more principal part of the question, I guess I
think you're right on the whole - maybe a character playing another character
is not a generally good idea, even though the result occasionaly - as with MCC
f'rinstance - can be rather charming entertainment. But then, none of us has
seemed to say anything else on THAT issue... And it IS certainly and indeed a
pity that the people at Disney aren't interested in the full potentials of the
characters they happen to own - now, there we certainly agree!!!

Y'all:

      Now I'm outta here in a little while, and then I won't be back until next
year - January 3rd, I think - so until then: All me best,

                                                    GOD JUL och GOTT NYTT AR!!!

Mattias



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