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\nAs I\u2019ve mentioned in earlier installments of this column, David Gerstein and I have been working for some time on a forthcoming major publication on Donald Duck. This has been a blessing, not least because it has afforded the opportunity for a deeper-than-ever research dive into Donald\u2019s screen and comics career\u2014an opportunity for a Disney nerd to pursue endless details of individual films and comic strips to his heart\u2019s content. But along with all those countless ground-level details, the overall process has given rise to some more general thoughts on Donald Duck himself and his place in Disney and pop-culture history. I hope Cartoon Research readers won\u2019t object if I wind up this series by indulging in some of those broader reflections\u2014and, possibly, will consider offering some of their own.<\/p>\n
Walt and company doubtless hoped that all their characters would find favor with audiences, but the popular response to Donald\u2019s first appearances was far out of the ordinary. Practically overnight, the Duck was a phenomenon. This brought out a key facet of Walt Disney\u2019s genius: the ability to seize an unexpected, serendipitous event and run with it, giving it the appearance of a strategy that had been carefully planned all along. Noting the public\u2019s appetite for his cranky new antihero, Walt wasted no time: Donald soon began to appear in Disney comic strips and storybooks. His rise to prominence on the movie screen was particularly notable. Introduced as a supporting character in 1934, Donald was headlining in his own starring series within three years.<\/p>\n (And, in fact, he might have attained this career milestone even earlier if not for contractual obligations. Disney\u2019s early distribution contracts called for specific quantities of Mickey Mouse<\/em> and Silly Symphony<\/em> cartoons, a rigid guideline that didn\u2019t allow for new variations. Irrepressible Donald refused to be constrained by such regulations, and was seen in 1936\u201337 starring in several shorts that were \u201cMickey Mouse\u201d cartoons in name only. Finally Disney\u2019s new distribution contract with RKO, taking effect in 1937, allowed a new flexibility that made possible an official Donald Duck<\/em> starring series, and the Duck was off and waddling.)<\/p>\n Pseudo-Donald Ducks in Schlesinger’s “Shake Your Powder Puff” (1934)<\/p><\/div>Once launched on his stellar trajectory, Donald was unstoppable. It has often been observed that Donald\u2019s star power threatened to eclipse that of Mickey Mouse, and in fact he did ultimately star in a far greater number of films than Mickey did, despite the latter\u2019s six-year head start. This brings an obvious question to mind. Mickey\u2019s own rise to fame in 1928\u20131930 had been equally remarkable, and his success had produced a flood of imitations. Within a year or two, nearly every other cartoon studio had introduced its own character or characters in frank imitation of Mickey. Some of the imitations were more blatant than others; our friend Steve Stanchfield has recently shared one of the more brazen ripoffs here on Cartoon Research<\/em>. As historically fascinating as some of these appropriations were, they didn\u2019t last long, and the genuine Mickey Mouse asserted his preeminence over the pretenders from other studios. But this chapter in Mickey\u2019s success story begs the question: Donald Duck enjoyed a spectacular success story of his own in the mid-1930s; why weren\u2019t there a legion of Donald imitations?<\/p>\n \n Model Sheet from Fleischer’s “Chicken Ala King” (1936)<\/p><\/div>It wasn\u2019t for lack of effort. Those other cartoon studios remained alert to the latest Disney innovations, and soon after Donald\u2019s debut, some of them began to take notice. In October 1934, a scant two months after Orphans\u2019 Benefit<\/em>, Warner Bros. released Shake Your Powder Puff<\/em><\/a>, a Merrie Melodie directed by Friz Freleng, which included a trio of singing ducks in sailor suits, looking very much like Donald\u2019s then-current model. But apart from such superficial costuming similarities, Donald quickly proved inimitable. Ducks continued to turn up in other studios\u2019 cartoons, but the producers implicitly acknowledged the impossibility of trying to duplicate Donald\u2019s personality or voice. Fleischer\u2019s Chicken a la King<\/em><\/a> (1936) featured a seductive Mae West duck, and her boyfriend, a bold desert bandit duck, both of whom spoke in funny \u201cduck\u201d voices but came nowhere near Clarence Nash\u2019s distinctive Donald voice.<\/p>\n \n The two duck personalities on display in this scene from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988)<\/p><\/div>By far the most successful rival cartoon duck of these years was, of course, Warners\u2019 Daffy Duck\u2014who, again, looked, sounded, and acted nothing like Donald. Daffy came along in 1937, just about the time Donald was moving into his starring series, and quickly established a well-defined persona of his own. Or, rather, a range of different personae. It\u2019s been observed more than once that the various Schlesinger\/Warner directors each applied their own styles and ideas to this character: a Tex Avery Daffy Duck could never be mistaken for a Bob McKimson Daffy Duck, and neither was anything like a Chuck Jones Daffy Duck.<\/p>\n \n This raises another obvious question: did Donald also have multiple personalities? I would argue that, to a certain extent, he did. Disney directors famously had less autonomy than those at the Schlesinger studio, since all were subject to Walt\u2019s own ideas and control; but the three most prominent Disney directors of the 1930s\u2014Wilfred Jackson, Dave Hand, and Ben Sharpsteen\u2014had already demonstrated that a good director could inject his own voice into a Disney cartoon. Over the next two decades, the studio\u2019s Donald Duck unit put that theory to the test. During that time the vast majority of Donald\u2019s films were directed by one of two Jacks: Jack King, who took command of the series in 1938, and Jack Hannah, who stepped into King\u2019s place in the mid-1940s. <\/p>\n But personally, I also have a soft spot for Jack King\u2019s earlier efforts. We\u2019ve observed in an earlier column that Donald\u2019s famous temper did not entirely dominate his personality. King\u2019s cartoons relied less on formulaic skirmishes and extracted rich comedy from other sides of Donald\u2019s personality: his selfishness, his cowardice, his taste for mean-spirited mischief. During King\u2019s tenure Donald tackled ambitious projects\u2014a dog laundry, a window-cleaning business, an all-plastic airplane\u2014inevitably with disastrous results. World War II also took place on King\u2019s watch, and he directed Donald\u2019s series of service comedies, revealing yet another facet of the Duck\u2019s personality: the ordinary Joe, thrust into the armed forces alongside so many of his fellows and experiencing the drudgery of an American GI\u2019s life. It\u2019s also worth noting that King\u2019s years at the helm coincided with what was, arguably, the peak of the studio\u2019s luxurious visual style. In his cartoons, animation connoisseurs can savor the rich, full animation of Disney\u2019s top \u201cDuck men,\u201d taking place before lovely watercolor backgrounds.<\/p>\n And of course, along with King and Hannah, other directors did sometimes contribute nuances of their own to Donald\u2019s story. Among these were Dick Lundy, one of the aforementioned \u201cDuck men,\u201d who moved into the director\u2019s chair for nine of Donald\u2019s adventures, and Wilfred Jackson, one of the top Disney directors, who also paid an occasional visit to Donald\u2019s world. Of particular note was the impact of Jack Kinney, who directed the classic, Academy Award-winning propaganda film Der Fuehrer\u2019s Face<\/em>. Elsewhere, Kinney\u2019s influence steered Donald into the unlikely territory of film noir, as we\u2019ve also noted in an earlier column<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/DonDonaldposter.jpg\")
<\/a>Most of Walt Disney\u2019s great successes had an element of chance in them, and the sudden and unexpected success of Donald Duck in 1934\u201337 was no exception.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Today Hannah enjoys a loyal fan base who cherish his scores of Duck cartoons. It was Hannah who developed two mischievous chipmunks, pesky rascals in earlier films, into Chip and Dale, full-fledged characters who might serve as ongoing foils for Donald. Hannah was fond of picturing Donald in pitched battles (and, invariably, losing battles) against the two chipmunks and other tiny adversaries. Hannah also supervised Donald\u2019s forays into new technology: 3-D (Working for Peanuts<\/em>) and television (\u201cThe Donald Duck Story,\u201d the fourth episode in the premiere season of Disneyland<\/em>, and other Duck-centric episodes).<\/p>\n