June 09, 2015 :: Animated Disney character, Donald Duck is now 81 years old
Donald Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934, at Walt Disney Productions. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a black or red bow tie. Donald is most famous for his semi-intelligible speech and his mischievous and temperamental personality. Along with his friend Mickey Mouse, Donald is one of the most popular Disney characters and was included in TV Guide’s list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time in 2002. He has appeared in more films than any other Disney character, and is the most published comic book character in the world outside of the superhero genre.
The origins of Donald Duck’s name may have been inspired by Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman. In 1932 Bradman and the Australian team were touring North America and he made the news after being dismissed for a duck against New York West Indians. Walt Disney was in the process of creating a friend for Mickey Mouse when he possibly read about Bradman’s dismissal in the papers and decided to name the new character “Donald Duck”. Voice performer Clarence Nash auditioned for Walt Disney Studios when he learned that Disney was looking for people to create animal sounds for this cartoons. Disney was particularly impressed with Nash’s duck imitation and chose him to voice the new character. Besides, during that period Mickey Mouse had lost some of his edge since becoming a role model towards children, and so Disney wanted to create a character to portray some of the more negative character traits that could no longer bestow on Mickey. Disney came up with Donald’s iconic attributes including this short-temper and his sailor suit (based on ducks and sailors both being associated with water). While Dick Huemer and Art Babbit were first to animate Donald, Dick Lundy is credited for developing him as a character.
