Butlers

Luca Boschi cnotw at zen.it
Sat Sep 13 00:44:18 CEST 2003


Maybe my e-mail don't arrive to the list. Surely I don't receive many of
'em...

So... 

Hi, David and Rich,

Dave says:

> Edgerton never appears again, after this single story, until his later
> use by Don Rosa (in the 1990s!). Do keep that in mind.
> I think any similarity in appearance between Battista and Edgerton is
> purely coincidental. I might be convinced otherwise if Edgerton were
> translated with the name Battista in the early Italian editions of "Bear
> Mountain", but I don't have those editions to check. (Italians? Want to help
> me here?)

Yeah. His Italian name is FIRMINO, and not Battista (a "traditional" name
for an Italian butler; for example, in this way was even called the actor
Giulio Marchetti, starring a "pirate butler" in the very famous,
kids-oriented TV musical show "Giovanna la nonna del Corsaro Nero"
("Johanna, Black Buccaneer's Grandma"). Marchetti's Battista was on TV from
1962 on, created by the Italian satirical writer Vittorio Metz, a sort of
Wodehouse writing for the cinema, who might had Jeeves in his mind.

Scrooge's taxy driver, in the same story, is called Giacomo.

But you know that from the 50es, ALL Scrooge's butlers (also the bull-dog
faced one drawn by Perego or Pier Lorenzo De Vita) were called "Battista".
> 

> I might agree with you here if anyone had used Edgerton after 1947. But
> no; Edgerton simply appears in that one story and was totally forgotten
> afterward. Other butlers did appear as one-offs and a few of them did look
> sort of like Duckworth, too: it's just as likely that Duckworth is inspired
> by those butlers as by the original Edgerton.

Yeah. And in recent italian translations, their "new" name is Battista as
well.


 Best, Luca



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