“Here at the Studio, we feel both privileged and proud to have been associated with Donald (Duck) over the years. His perseverance, his loyalty and unshakeable devotion to his chosen profession in the entertainment world has endeared him forever in our hearts.
“And as they say, 'to meet him is to esteem him, to know him is to love him, to work with him is a rare unforgettable experience.' Donald is a duck of distinction.” – Walt Disney talking about Donald on the weekly television episode “Donald's Silver Anniversary” November 1960.
Since his debut in the animated short The Wise Little Hen (1934), Donald Duck became the most beloved and popular Disney character worldwide with his success even exceeding Mickey Mouse.
I am excited that Disney historians J.B. Kaufman and David Gerstein have just finished a massive volume about Donald in the same format as their best-selling Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History. It will be filled with lots of new information and should be released later this year.
I thought this might be a good time to share some Donald Duck stories that might be unfamiliar to many Disney fans.
Why is Donald's last name “Duck”? Well, it is certainly a long tradition to have alliterative names for animal characters like Mickey Mouse, Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. However, Walt used to joke there was another reason.
“We've got this wonderful character for the television show. He's an uncle of Donald's. Ludwig Von Drake and he's of the continental branch of the family. The paternal side,” stated Walt Disney to interviewer Pete Martin before the debut of the Wonderful World of Color weekly Disney television show in 1961.
“Actually, you know, the drakes are males and the female is known as a duck. Donald took his mother's name. One little story I tell that gets a laugh. People say 'How come, you know, he's named Donald Duck and he's a male?' So I shock them by saying 'Well, he was a little bastard so he took his mother's name.'”
Was Donald Duck's father a goose? Donald waddles like a goose rather than a duck. Geese have longer necks than ducks and their beaks are straight, just like Donald's design in his first cartoon appearance The Wise Little Hen (1934).
After all, Donald has a cousin who is a goose, Gus Goose, who first appeared in Donald's Cousin Gus (1939). Actually, a male goose is called a gander, like Donald's lucky rival Gladstone Gander.
Could this supposed illegitimacy explain some of Donald's terrible temper and rage?
At the Disney Studio, Donald was always referred to as “The Duck.” Mickey Mouse was always referred to as “Mickey” or “Mickey Mouse” but never as “The Mouse,” especially around Walt Disney. People who worked on writing, animating or directing Donald's adventures were always referred to as “Duck Men.”
A new Disney storyman from New York named Mike Myers was hired and before his first presentation of a Donald Duck story pitch to Walt that he had written, director Dave Hand, and a bunch of other Disney storymen, decided to help him out by having him do a dress rehearsal so they could give some pointers and encouragement.
As storyman Jack Kinney remembered the story, Myers stood in front of the group with his 8-by-4 storyboards filled with drawings but had a very colorful New-Yorkish vernacular way of speaking:
“Well, we open on Donald Duck's house. It's early morning. The f*king sun's just peekin' over another f*king rooster and boids start whistlin'. A cat yowls. Pluto wakes up an' starts chasin' the g*d*mn cat barking like a sonofab*tch. All kinda noises are raisin' hell.
“Donald Duck leaps outta bed madder'n a g*d*mn harnit. He trips over a pair of shoes and falls on his ass, then the f*kin' duck jumps to his feet an' runs out the f*king door. He sees Pluto chasin' that g*d*mn cat up a nearby f*king tree, raisin' hell with that f*king cat. Then the f*king' duck runs on, swinging a rake at the g*d*mn dog. As the f*king duck takes a big swing at ol' Pluto, his f*kin' unnerwear catches ta clothesline hung with red unnerwear. The f*king duck gets hisself all f*ked up with all the f*king clothes….”
The storymen by this point were literally on the floor with uncontrollable laughter. Some could barely catch their breath to speak.
Dave Hand finally yelled out, “Mike! Mike! Hold it! Hold it! You gotta clean up your dialogue. Walt won't stand for you referring to Donald as 'that f*kin' duck'.”
A puzzled Myers replied, “Well, that's what he is, ain't he?”
“No,” Dave roared. “He's a duck…D-O-N-A-L-D-D-U-C-K!”
Myers answered, “I don't care how you spell it. He's still a f*kin' duck.”
Myers quit the Disney Studio that day and the other storymen finished the story.
The New Spirit
It has been said that the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. So, this month, as some of us struggle with taxes, we can blame Donald Duck.
In December, 1941, Henry Morganthau who was then Secretary of the Treasury came up with a brilliant idea to encourage Americans to pay their taxes to help the war effort. Walt Disney was asked to fly to Washington, D.C. to discuss a special project which Walt assumed had to do with the promotion of War Bonds.
Walt was confused when he found out the request was to get people excited about paying their taxes because he just assumed that everyone just paid their taxes on time as part of their responsibility as an American citizen.
He headed back to California with a six week deadline to make an animated cartoon and get it into the theaters by February of 1942. Production on other projects at the Disney Studio was stopped while a full time work force labored around the clock on the new film.
The film was called The New Spirit and written by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer. When the preliminary storyboards were completed, Walt headed back to Washington to preview them for Mr. Morganthau and his staff.
The story started with Donald Duck, a patriotic little fellow who was very reluctant to pay his income tax. Listening to a radio broadcast about taxes, Donald progressively realized that paying the income tax would help win the war.
“The New Spirit” was commissioned by the U.S. Government to inspire citizens to pay their taxes.
With a whole new attitude, Donald quickly goes to work filling out his income tax return. Donald becomes so enthusiastic about paying his income tax that he races from California to Washington to submit his tax return in person.
When Walt had finished his presentation, there was a brief silence and Morganthau's secretary spoke out that she hated Donald Duck. An aide stated that he expected that the Disney Studio would have created a brand new animated character called “Mr. Average Taxpayer.”
Insulted and very angry, Walt defended his project and argued that using Donald Duck in the cartoon was like MGM loaning the talents of Clark Gable or some other big star. Donald Duck was Disney's biggest and most popular star at the time.
In addition, his brother, Roy Disney, in a memo to Walt had pointed out that since the short was being given to theaters free, the theaters who already had booked in Disney shorts would cancel and replace it with the free short.
This warning proved true and the Disney Company eventually lost over $40,000 in bookings when theaters cancelled their commitments to a new Disney cartoon which was a harsh blow since the Disney Studio started the fiscal year over a million dollars in debt.
Mr. Morganthau eventually but very reluctantly approved the short because there wasn't enough time to prepare another cartoon. Since income tax payments were due March 15 (back in those days), the Disney Studio had to rush to put together the short in time for a February release.
For the purposes of the cartoon, tax experts determined that Donald Duck was “unmarried but maintains a home in which he supports three adopted nephews under 16 years of age for whose maintenance he has a legal and moral obligation.”
Donald listed his profession as “actor” with an income of “$250l.00” but as the head of the family he was entitled to certain exemptions and dependent credits, so his taxes came to only “$l3.00”!
Walt ordered a full scale publicity campaign to coincide with saturation bookings at theaters. The New Spirit was an instant success and Walt had agreed to make it “without profit” as he had for all the war related work the Disney Studios did.
However, due to some errors in handling administration procedures, the United States Treasury never properly paid Walt the $80,000 in costs for production and prints so not only did Disney Studio not make a profit, it experienced a substantial loss.
In fact, when the news was revealed to the public about Walt asking for money for the cartoon, some irritated citizens who misunderstood what was going on started a “Not a Dime for Disney” campaign.
The Treasury Department estimated that sixty million Americans saw the cartoon, and a Gallup Poll indicated that an amazing thirty-seven percent of the people who saw the cartoon said that it had directly effected their willingness to pay their taxes.
The New Spirit was even nominated for an Academy Award in documentary short subjects! (Donald Duck in Der Fuehrer's Face won an Oscar that same year.)
The following year, the Treasury Department again approached Walt to make another short cartoon to encourage Americans to pay their taxes. Walt could re-use the majority of the animation from the previous short (since it had been a year since audiences had seen it) and in this way, Walt would be compensation for most of the animation he had previously produced.
Entitled The Spirit of '43, the short tells the framing story of Donald torn between a thrifty patriotic duck (who resembles an early Scrooge McDuck) and a spendthrift, zoot-suited duck who doesn't have Donald's best interests at heart. They are battling over what Donald should do with his paycheck. Donald eventually wallops the free spender and runs off to surrender his money to the Internal Revenue Service. Just as we do today. Sigh.
Der Fuehrer's Face
“When der Fuehrer says, 'We ist der master race',
“We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face!
“Not to love Der Fuehrer is a great disgrace,
“So we HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face!”
Those are the opening lyrics to the iconic theme song of the only animated cartoon for which Donald Duck won an Academy Award, Der Fuehrer's Face (1943), that has been locked deeply in the Disney vault because of its content for many decades and only occasionally being shown under limited circumstances despite its popularity. (It was only released to home video media in two limited edition sets of the Disney Treasures in 2004/5.)
“Der Fuehrer's Face” is the only film for which Donald Duck won an Academy Award.
Written by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer (the writing team responsible for Dumbo among other classics), it was originally to be entitled Donald Duck in Nutziland (Nutsy Land/Nazi Land because Nazis were “nuts” or crazy, get it?) and was intended to be used to encourage audiences to pay their taxes promptly to support the war effort.
Grant and Huemer wrote that “…we feel that a public character such as Donald Duck, writhing rebelliously in the clutches of the Nazis, will bring the situation home to every man, woman and child in this country…for Donald belongs to them like a member of their own family. They will end up hating Hitler twenty times more than if they had gone through the same ordeal with some curly haired hero who is, after all, merely another movie actor.”
The cartoon is a clever nightmare of Donald working in a munitions plant in Nazi Germany. The film ends with a famous image of Hitler's face being hit by an overripe tomato. (On the sheet music, Donald Duck himself tosses the tomato.)
The cartoon features the memorable song written by Oliver Wallace who began his career at the Disney Studio in 1936. Like Carl Stalling, Wallace had been a theater pianist and organist (who had also written motion picture scores at Columbia and Universal Studios before joining Disney).
Wallace scored for 147 shorts between 1937 and 1956 (including most of the Donald Duck shorts including creating Donald's theme song) as well as contributing to Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
According to Disney Studio records, the song was published before the film was released and Spike Jones, a trombonist in the John Scott Trotter band who had started his own jazz group, The City Slickers, thought the novelty tune might make a good “B” side to the main song on his record, I Wanna Go Back to West Virginia.
However, when the record was released, it was Der Fuehrer's Face that drove the sales of the record to over a million and a half copies and helped establish Spike Jones and his City Slickers as a bonafide entertainment phenomenon.
A New York radio personality played the song on his show and got so many requests that he offered a free copy of the song to anyone who pledged a fifty dollar war bond. That promotion was so successful that in just two days, the song had earned sixty thousand dollars for Uncle Sam.
There even had to be restraints put on the performance of the song to allow RCA's Bluebird label (who released the record) and Southern Music (who released the sheet music) to catch up with the avalanche of orders.
Composer Oscar Hammerstein II called the song “the great psychological song of the war.” Before the cartoon was released in 1943, the title of the short was changed to the title of the popular song.
Originally released January 1, 1943, the cartoon was directed by Jack Kinney and had animation by Bob Carlson, Les Clark, Don DaGradi, Bill Justice, Milt Neil, Charles Nicholas, and John Sibley.
While there was a campaign manual published (suggesting such things as hanging an effigy of Hitler in the theater lobby so audiences could give the Bronx cheer raspberry sound to the dummy), like most of Disney war work, it is difficult to find documentation about the short. Fortunately, there is Dispatch from Disney.
Dispatch from Disney is an extremely rare booklet that was done by the Disney Studio for employees who were serving in the Armed Forces during World War II. It was intended to be a regularly published booklet that would keep Disney servicemen up to date on the happenings at the Studio. Unfortunately, only one issue was done: Volume One Number One!
From that very rare edition (that has sold for upwards of a thousand dollars), here is Oliver Wallace's memory of writing that very famous World War II song in his own words:
How I Wrote “Der Fuerher's Face”
By Oliver Wallace as told to Ralph Parker
The time was 3:00 P.M., and I was feeling low. I had been a naughty boy the night before.
That had to be the moment when Walt encountered me in the hall and gave me a rush order: “Ollie, I want a serious song, but it's got to be funny.”
The further information that it was to be for a picture telling Donald Duck's adventures in Nazi land didn't help very much.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Suppose the Germans are singing it,” Walt offered. “To them, it's serious. To us, it's funny.”
Walt walked away. I stood in the hall. I continued to stand in the hall. Once more I was on the spot. Arriving home disgruntled, I encountered no idea while eating dinner.
Then I laid down for a rest. “To hell with it,” I told myself.
The wee small voice told me what it thought of me. It was a familiar routine.
“Get off your back and get on your bike,” said my wife. “You're going to the store with me.”
The fresh air brought out the nobility in me. I turned receptive and laid myself wide open to any idea. There ought to be a German band. The music came to me in one flash. It nearly knocked me off the bicycle. My mouth opened in surprise.
There followed a second surprise. Words came out of that mouth. I heard myself singing with the loudness which distinguishes my voice: “Ven Der Fuehrer says, 'Ve iss der Master Race,' Ve Heil! Heil! Right in Der Fuehrer's Face.”
My wife laughed. “Who wrote that?”
“I'm writing it!” I yelled–and almost ran into a truck.
Half an hour later, it was finished. I sang it to my two daughters (separately) –and when each said she liked it, I thought I had something. But would Walt like it?
Arriving at the studio next day, I sang it all over the place.
The sound brought Walt out into the hall (where he does most of his business).
“Let's hear it,” he said.
I stalled. “Orchestration . . . there's a funny sound in it . . . can't be made without an instrument . . . has to be practiced . . .” The truth is, I didn't know what Walt would think of the highly robust Bronx cheer. Could such a sound be used in a Disney picture?
“Let's hear it,” said Walt.
I let loose. Walt laughed. The rest is history.
The song became popular everywhere. On the August 1943 cover of the Four Favorites comic book (Number 11), the four heroic stars of the comic (The Unknown Soldier, Captain Courageous, Lightning and Magno the Magnetic Man) loudly sing the song while a War Bond knocks out Emperor Hirohito, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini with one blow.
