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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