Donald Duck and His Friends

[RMorris306@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/16/00 6:06:16 AM, David Gerstein writes:

<< 
    Hey Rich,

>Based on the original question, I would definitely add to Donald's "creator
>credits" the book "The Adventures of Mickey Mouse" published by David McKay

>of New York and the poem entitled "More HooZoo" from the "Mickey Mouse
Annual"
>published by the English firm, Dean & Son, both printed in 1931
    The Dean MM ANNUAL in question was really published in 1932, as
explained in several reference books. British annuals are traditionally
published for the Christmas season each year; the copy in my collection has
a holiday inscription dated 1932.
    The poem in it, illustrated with comic art and some speech balloons,
is really titled "Mickey's 'Hoozoo', Witswitch, and Wotswot." The running
title "More Hoozoo" is just printed on the later pages of the poem so
readers will know that it's continuing.

>Oddly, another character, who seems to have originated from that list of 
>Mickey's friends, never quite made it very far:  Jenny Wren.  She appeared 
>in "Who shot Cock Robin?"
    That should be WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN ("killed", not "shot").

    Jenny Wren long predated the Disney cartoons. She appeared in a couple of 
old Mother Goose rhymes (maybe more); one dealing with her wedding to Cock 
Robin, and the second dealing with his accidental death and funeral ("Who 
killed Cock Robin?/'I,' said the Sparrow. /'With my bow and arrow/I killed 
Cock Robin.'") The cartoon, which I've never seen, seems to have been an 
adaptation of the rhyme, possibly with a happier ending (Cock Robin wasn't 
really dead?).

>Clara Hen (Cluck)
    She's been Clara Cluck from the beginning in 1931, when McKay's
ADVENTURES OF MICKEY MOUSE BOOK 1 calls her "Clara Cluck the Hen".
    The name "Clara Hen" is only used in the 1932 MICKEY MOUSE ANNUAL.
It was used when she'd already been Clara Cluck for a year. That means that
"Clara Hen" is very simply an *error* on the part of the English writer at
Dean and Son.>>

    I know I asked a Disney archivist if Clara Cluck was the title character i
n THE WISE LITTLE HEN, and was told she wasn't...she was a different hen 
character used in the Mickey Mouse shorts after Donald became a regular. THE 
WISE LITTLE HEN was itself renamed; it had originally been called THE LITTLE 
RED HEN, but Disney learned Ub Iwerks was working on a cartoon by the same 
name (according to legend, because he'd offered Clarence Nash a part in 
it...that's the traditional name of the folk tale on which both cartoons are 
based), so changed the name of his short.

>and Patricia Pig fared only slightly better, but at least
>they are still around.  Others like Robert Rooster and Olga Owl never
appeared
>again though.

    The earliest MM Annuals have *lots* of characters who never appeared
again.

    But there are some obscure characters out there who actually did
make regular return appearances.
    Gideon Goat, the hick farmer from some 1930s Mickey Sunday pages, is
also a recurring character in 1930s W- and U-coded stories.
    MICKEY MOUSE MAGAZINE and MICKEY MOUSE WEEKLY regularly include a
character named Sammy Skunk as a member of Mickey's gang. He looks like
Squeakie the squirrel from YM 003, but with a white stripe on his tail and
humanized.
    MICKEY MOUSE MAGAZINE also includes a *giraffe* member of the gang
named Peninsula Giraffe. Looks like a younger version of the giraffe
character from Elmer Elephant. Fairly frequent around 1937.>>

    You really know your Disney characters! But did Donald Duck actually 
appear, or was he just mentioned? With the tradition of giving cartoon 
characters alliterative or punny names, duplications do appear...DC Comics 
had a Roger Rabbit before Disney's (the title character of their comic book 
CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW, who later changed his first name to 
Rodney to avoid confusion...that strip also had a politician duck named 
Mallard Fillmore who predated the title character of Bruce Tinsley's 
reactionary newspaper strip), and I believe there was at least one Woody 
Woodpecker besides the famous Walter Lantz character. Bill Blackbeard claimed 
there were a pre-Disney Mickey and Minnie Mouse in one of Johnny Gruelle's 
books, but I've never seen that documented elsewhere.

Pietro Reynaud-Bersanino wrote:

<<In DCML digest, Vol 1 #149, 

Steven Rowe wrote:

>the sailor suit ?  Didn't he do a hornpipe in the film?

In 1930 sailor suit was a usual suit for young boys ... and DD was a young
boy.>>

    But was he? Walt Disney himself once said he wore a sailor suit because, 
quite simply, he was a sailor. "Being a duck, he likes water. Water and 
sailors go together. We'll make him a sailor." And, in that first cartoon, he 
lived on a houseboat.

    Still, the ages of the major Disney characters were always 
indeterminate...no doubt deliberately so, to enable viewers of all ages to 
identify with them. It's been said that that's one advantage to animal 
characters, since animals age at a different rate from people anyway. (If a 
temporary one; I have to agree with Don Rosa that, by Barks's day, Donald and 
Scrooge and the rest were so thoroughly human that Scrooge's life span was 
seen as that of a very vigorous man...nobody even considered how long actual 
ducks live.) Mickey Mouse seems to have been thought of as a young boy at 
first; wearing short pants (again, typical of young boys at the time but not 
of adults) and spoken of at one point by Disney animators as possessing the 
mischief of a 9-year-old but the mechanical expertise of a clever 
14-year-old. The former didn't last and was seen mostly in the very early 
cartoons, where the worst he did was to take any excuse to grab Minnie's 
panties...and even that kind of sexual harrassment (seen from the perspective 
of a different era) died quickly after a few slaps in the face from Minnie. 
The latter seemed to last up to World War II (where a few cartoons showed him 
definitely of draft age), after which he, almost symbolically, donned long 
pants and became a middle-aged family man.

    Donald Duck at first seemed to be considered as somewhat younger than 
Mickey...certainly Floyd Gottfredson thought so, presenting him at first as li
ving with his guardian, "Uncle Amos" and subject to his discipline. But that 
too changed quickly as he "grew up" and acquired his own girl friend and 
family (and Huey, Dewey and Louie were far more ensconced in his life than 
Morty and Ferdie ever were in Mickey's). I'd have to say that, analogous to 
Disney's description of Mickey, Donald was a 25-year-old with the emotional 
maturity of a 6-year-old...but since such individuals are all too common in 
real life, he's hardly an unconvincing character...

Rich Morrissey