More on Donald's origins

[Monte-Cristo]

Rebecca wrote:

> In the 50th aniversery book which came out for Donald's birthday in 1984,
> there is a quote from Walt Disney that they put donald in a sailor suit
> because sailor suits "were quite typical for young boys to wear in the
> thirties" and that they had wanted Donald to seem as immature as possible
> since he and Peter Pig were prepresenting the "just desserts" aspect of 'The
> Wise Little Hen'. (woops, now there's a run on sentence...)
>
> In that same book, there's a section on Clarence Nash. It said that Clarence
> came to Walt with a whole bunch of animal immiations. Donald's voice had
> initially been his immitation of a baby goat but when Walt heard it he was
> like, "I found my duck!" (cause I think they were already working on 'The
> Wise Little Hen' at that time...or something like that....)

Here's some more on the subject: I've read (from several sources) Walt was
listening to radio where he heard Nash doing his duck imitation. It was a little
girl duck reading the song "Mary had a little lamb" (incindetally [?] I remember
a short cartoon with Mickey (Orphan's Benefit, methinks) where Donald is trying
to recite exactly the same rhyme). Walt got the idea for a duck character from
that and invited Nash to the studios.
The book "The Disney Studio Story" (Holliss & Sibley, 1988) tells nothing more
than this: "His (Donald's) unique voice was supplied by Clarence Nash, who had
auditioned at the Studio while working for a milk company." That seems to support
Rebecca's story.

Now, back to lurking mode...

|--<Monte>--|