Pete, or Gambadilegno, or other Petes

Luca Boschi cnotw at zen.it
Thu Jan 11 03:48:55 CET 2001


Hi, Henri, and all!

>>Incidentally, try to control the Romano Scarpa's "Tapioco VI" story, in the
>>MM comic book, where Pete was totally naked in a panel. Do you remember that
>>famous sequence of panels?
>
> No; and I'm in doubt if anyone outside of Italia has ever seen them. (Inducks
> tells me the story appeared in Italian editions only.)

Well, it seems impossible to me that INDUCKS doesn't list the american
version. The story was reprinted in "Mickey Mouse" # 256, April 1990, and
the
panel is the second on the 55th page. From that panel on, Mick and Pete are
naked in a sequence three pages long and Pete shows his peg-leg all the
time, under the the shoe he desn't wear anymore.
It's a WONDERFUL story, if you never read it, it deserves your attention!
>
>>Obviously, SCARPA knows a lot about SHOES... (this sort of joke should be
>>understandable only to the Italian-speaking memebers, I suppose).
>
> A dictionary explained this one to me. Very nice.

So, it seem that now all know the meaning of "Scarpa"! :-)

Indeed, I checked again to answer Marco's question properly.

And I see that Dave Gerstein is right. The whole production of Western,
starting with Hannah-Barks' "DD Finds Pirate's Gold", has BLACK PETE instead
of PEG-LEG PET. So, we can say that the "old" name of the villain survives
only in the Gottfredson's (and colleagues) production, poppin' up sometimes.
So, all the critics and columnists who went on calling the character
"Peg-leg" didn't do right.
I checked also the old Pete's movies. Well, in Barks' (not produced)
"Nortwest Mounted"
(1936), he was only Pete, and got no peg-leg anymore.

Starting from the beginning, in "Steamboat Willie" (1928) he has no name
(and I
even wrote, and Disney USA approved my version, that the character was not
even Pete, but a "formative version" of Terrible Tom, announced in an Ub
Iwerks strip and later changed into Peg-Leg Pete).
In "The Cactus Kid" (1930), the villain is Peg Leg Pedro, in "The Klondike
Kid" (1932) is Peg Leg Pierre, in "The Mail Pilot" (1933) is only Pete...
But in "The Dognapper" ('35) and in "Mickey's Service Station" ('35) is Peg
Leg Pete again, as in the comic strips!
At least, in "Movin' Day" he still has not the peg-leg anymore and
he's called only Pete (in the movie we even can see his very signature). And
from here on,
the name (or nickname) "Peg Leg" or "Peg-leg" doesn' survive in the movies!
His following film is with DD ("The Riveter", 1940). And it really seems
that in no movies there is the name "Black Pete".

Cuntent?

Luca






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