Actually Scrooges first appearance?

[thorbjornmcduck]

I dont know if this has been discussed before, but i was going over Donalds military history, when i stumbled across the short "The Spirit of 43".

In this film, an unnamed character with a Scottish accent who looks exactly like Scrooge, but with Scottish clothes is portrayed. This film is from 1943 and as we all know, Scrooges first official appearance was in "Christmas on Bear Mountain" from 1947.

But the character is actually just a prototype for Scrooge, because the script is written by Carl Barks himself.

Just thought this was pretty fun, and if anyone knows more about Barks creation of Scrooge, i would be very interested to hear it!

[Mesterius]

May 3, 2023 18:34:03 GMT thorbjornmcduck said:

I dont know if this has been discussed before, but i was going over Donalds military history, when i stumbled across the short "The Spirit of 43".

In this film, an unnamed character with a Scottish accent who looks exactly like Scrooge, but with Scottish clothes is portrayed. This film is from 1943 and as we all know, Scrooges first official appearance was in "Christmas on Bear Mountain" from 1947.

But the character is actually just a prototype for Scrooge, because the script is written by Carl Barks himself.

Just because Barks worked on the story for that cartoon short (did he really, btw?), that doesn't necessarily mean the miserly character in SPIRIT OF '43 is "actually just a prototype for Scrooge". That sounds like an assumption someone made more than anything else.

It's also not a fact just because Wikipedia currently says it is... with a link to IMDB of all places as the source for that "info".

[deb]

Is there any proof that can back up claims of Barks’ involvement with “The Spirit of ‘43”? I’ve seen some sources that say Barks worked on it and others that say he didn’t. I ask not to say anyone is wrong, but to satisfy my own curiosity.

[Mesterius]

May 3, 2023 19:11:12 GMT deb said:

Is there any proof that can back up claims of Barks’ involvement with “The Spirit of ‘43”? I’ve seen some sources that say Barks worked on it and others that say he didn’t. I ask not to say anyone is wrong, but to satisfy my own curiosity.

Same with me. I don't think I've ever seen a credible source state that Barks was involved with that film... but like you, I've seen both claims come up. So I'd love to actually know.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

It's readily obvious that the character is a visual antecedent of Scrooge's of sorts; I would not say that makes him a "prototype". At best it seems that Barks may have been channeling a memory of the short to some degree when he *designed* "Scrooge's stingy Scottish uncle" (and this is true regardless of the dubious claim that he personally worked on Spirit; he could very well have seen it either way!), but only in the same broad design sense that the Phantom Blot may have been inspired by the Mad Doctor; that doesn't make the Mad Doctor "a prototype of the Phantom Blot". (In in-universe terms, of course, I do believe that Donald's mental image of "a stingier version of myself" was influenced by his knowledge of Scrooge; but that's a purely Watsonian point).

And while I do think some vague inspiration is entirely plausible, it's just as plausible that this is just because a Scotsman with glasses and sideburns is a basic, trophy archetype, and when you combine it with the basic Donald Duck design you will always get pretty much the same result — so that Spirit and Barks could well have come to it independently. Look at how TVtropes illustrates the character archetype of the Thrifty Scot: cane, round spectacles, whiskers, it's all there.

[Ramapith]

Barks told my several of my colleagues, decades ago, that he'd had some peripheral involvement with the cartoon. His work on it, however, must have been minimal—his name isn't on the production materials, and none of the final storyboard drawings are obviously his.

In 1942, during the lead-up to the cartoon's release, a version of the name McDuck, rendered as "MacDuck," was registered by Disney together with a tartan (!) in a war bond publicity tie-up with the national government of Scotland. I can only imagine the idea was to use the name MacDuck for the proto-Scrooge character, but in promotion he ended up being called only "Scottie."

Still, the character resemblance is just too close for there to have been no influence, especially when Scrooge in "Bear Mountain" briefly wears a kilt while riding in his car.

A few months before "Bear Mountain," there is also the Barks Barney Bear story where Barney is trying to impress his rich, cranky Uncle Grizzly... and one where Barney faces off with a stingy Scottish golf course owner, whose surname is McDuff (a Shakespeare/golf pun, but similar in its sound...) and whom Barney refers to as an "old Scrooge."

So all of these elements were floating around...

[deb]

Thank you, Rampaith. This is the sort of stuff that is always interesting to discover. It helps to put otherwise missing pieces to the puzzle where they belong.

[juicymcduck]

May 4, 2023 1:41:43 GMT Ramapith said:

Still, the character resemblance is just too close for there to have been no influence, especially when Scrooge in "Bear Mountain" briefly wears a kilt while riding in his car.

It's just a minor point of detail, but I do think it's not a kilt he's wearing in this instance. It's just a blanket with a tartan pattern, which he uses to keep his legs warm while seated. That would better account for the fact that it only appears in one panel. (I seem to remember at least one Poirot episode in which the titular character used a blanket as a passenger on the rear seat of a car.)

[thorbjornmcduck]

Thanks for all the replies, it has been very interesting to read. Here is the film for anyone wondering:

[sim]

Well, I always thought that the cartoon design was too similar for being just a coincidence, but I remember vividly having read an interview in which Barks denied the source, even saying he was not sure if he knew the short.

[Ramapith]

That's interesting—I don't disbelieve this, actually, insofar as with one scholar friend Barks claimed at one point to have had involvement with the cartoon, and at another time not to remember it.

His involvement, if any, was small. But the resemblance is so close (apart from the Donald-like sailor suit, of course, as Scottie in the cartoon functions as Donald's conscience rather than as an independent character) that in hindsight, it seems self-evident that Barks dimly recalled it in some capacity, even if unconsciously at times.

[sim]

May 4, 2023 19:28:13 GMT Ramapith said:

That's interesting—I don't disbelieve this, actually, insofar as with one scholar friend Barks claimed at one point to have had involvement with the cartoon, and at another time not to remember it.

His involvement, if any, was small. But the resemblance is so close (apart from the Donald-like sailor suit, of course, as Scottie in the cartoon functions as Donald's conscience rather than as an independent character) that in hindsight, it seems self-evident that Barks dimly recalled it in some capacity, even if unconsciously at times.

I was trying to find the Barks' statement that I mentioned (I don't like saying such things without a source), but it seems to be harder than I thought. I must have read it no more than 1 or 2 years ago, but I can't recall if it was in a old fanzine or wherever else...

[sim]

I FOUND IT! It was in a Facebook post. Apparently, this is a 1976 correspondence between some fan named John (and then teaching art at the University of Connecticut), Carl Barks and archivist Dave Smith, and you can see that Barks himself denies having worked on the short or even having seen it.

[Ramapith]

That sounds pretty decisive—and yet later he purportedly claimed to have been involved with the thing, if only peripherally. I wonder whether he could have been *shown* the film at some later point, and whether that's what rang a bell in his brain...

[thadwell]

I love the thoroughness of the responses. Not just Barks', but Dave Smith gives an exceptionally detailed answer to what is a relatively unimportant inquiry. I can attest he did the same for me decades later. R.I.P.

Brigadoon, a highly popular Broadway show set in the Highlands, opened in 1947, and that may have been the Scottish influence for Barks when he made "Bear Mountain", and subsequently "The Old Castle's Secret". That was the same year Chuck Jones made the Bugs Bunny cartoon My Bunny Lies Over the Sea (released at the end of '48), with golfer Angus MacRory.