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Wednesday, June 9, 2004
Donald Duck 70th Anniversary Special

Donald first appeared in a "Silly Symphony" feature (a 7:40 short) on June 9, 1934: "The Wise Little Hen". The duck soon reappeared, with a shorter beak, yellow legs & feet and a shorter neck, in Mickey Mouse cartoons, and quickly became one of the favorite characters, along with the bumbling Goofy. Like the latter, Donald evnntually got his own series of cartoons, and was even the main recurring character in the propaganda and educative shorts produced during WWII.

After the comic strip adaptation of "The Wise Little Hen", Donald appeared in "Silly Smphonies" strips as well as in Mickey's strips-- in which he was much less of a show-stealer than in the animated shorts.

Three artists were associated with teh classic Donald.
Clarence "Ducky" Nash was responsible for his voice characterization.
Al Taliaferro (along with writer Bob Karp) was in charge of his gag-a-day comic strips.
Carl Barks rounded the character for the comic book, and even sent him on wild & exotic adventures, just like Gottfredson had done with Mickey.


Below are links to a couple of features celebrating Donald's 70th Anniversary.

        - "The Wise Little Hen" (June 9, 1934): snapshots from the "Silly Symphony", available on two DVD's of the Walt Disney Treasures collection: Silly Symphonies and the Chronological Donald (the latter was released in June 2004).

        - "The Wise Little Hen" (199 kB): the Sunday strip adaptation of the cartoon was actually first published in Le Journal de Mickey; this picture is taken from Happy Birthday Mickey!-- 50 Ans d'Histoire du Journal de Mickey (Chêne, 1984)

        - DDA 10
(190 kb): cover of Gladstone's DDA10 (December 1988), reproducing a detail from Carl Barks' WDC&S 86 (November 1947)

 

 

 

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