Proto-Donald Duck in 1924?

[drakeborough]

We all know that Donald Duck made his debut in the 1934 short "The Wise Little Hen", and many duck fans also know that Disney had already used the name "Donald Duck" in two illustrated books for children in 1931 and 1932. What is not well known is that in 2007 Italian comic book author and historian Alfredo Castelli found what seems to be a proto-Donald Duck from as early as 1924:

In this article it is said that the image in question is that of "The Lazy Duck", who is part of the cast of the non-Disney series "Uncle Wiggily", written by Howard Garis and drawn by Lansing Campbell. The pictures in the article are long gone, but I found the key picture in another website that also reported the news, and I posted it above. The image supposedly comes from the "weekly page" of May 11, 1924. I thught "weekly page" meant "Sunday page", and May 11, 1924 was a Sunday indeed, but Wikipedia says that Uncle Wiggily was a series of illustrated stories appeaing on the Newark News rather than a newspaper comic, and adds that "Garis penned an Uncle Wiggily story every day (except Sundays)". How confusing.

Anyway, if it wasn't a hoax, I find it strange that the news was briefly discussed ten years ago and then nothing came out of it, despite the fact that it would be an amazing discovery, not to mention that said discovery is credited to a famous author. It would be really interesting to try finding more info about this issue: in particular, checking the newspapers archives of Newark News (if available) with that date to see if the image above really comes from there, and then seeing if the character was a recurring one in that series.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 25, 2017 16:37:59 GMT drakeborough said:

We all know that Donald Duck made his debut in the 1934 short "The Wise Little Hen", and many duck fans also know that Disney had already used the name "Donald Duck" in two illustrated books for children in 1931 and 1932. What is not well known is that in 2007 Italian comic book author and historian Alfredo Castelli found what seems to be a proto-Donald Duck from as early as 1924:

In this article it is said that the image in question is that of "The Lazy Duck", who is part of the cast of the non-Disney series "Uncle Wiggily", written by Howard Garis and drawn by Lansing Campbell. The pictures in the article are long gone, but I found the key picture in another website that also reported the news, and I posted it above. The image supposedly comes from the "weekly page" of May 11, 1924. I thught "weekly page" meant "Sunday page", and May 11, 1924 was a Sunday indeed, but Wikipedia says that Uncle Wiggily was a series of illustrated stories appeaing on the Newark News rather than a newspaper comic, and adds that "Garis penned an Uncle Wiggily story every day (except Sundays)". How confusing.

Anyway, if it wasn't a hoax, I find it strange that the news was briefly discussed ten years ago and then nothing came out of it, despite the fact that it would be an amazing discovery, not to mention that said discovery is credited to a famous author. It would be really interesting to try finding more info about this issue: in particular, checking the newspapers archives of Newark News (if available) with that date to see if the image above really comes from there, and then seeing if the character was a recurring one in that series.

Quite fascinating. Not only does the image resemble Donald, but it's easy to imagine that, when they needed a "lazy duck who doesn't want to help Mother Hen" character for The Wise Little Hen, they'd lift this particular design of a characer who was outright called "Lazy Duck".

[Scrooge MacDuck]

After some quick research, I find that a 'Duck Lady' called Mrs Wibblewobble was a prominent character in Uncle Wiggly, and she looked similar enough to this 'Lazy Duck':



Here is the same Duck Lady on the cover of a Wiggly hardcover (on the far right), proving she was indeed a regular:



On the other hand, the only thing that could possibly be 'Lazy Duck' I could find is this obviously-not-by-Garis cover for another hardcover collection of Uncle Wiggly stories:



He looks much less like Donald, but he does have the flat red hat, so it's possible that this duck was based on the picture you already posted — providing secondhand evidence that it's probably not a hoax, or at least not entirely.

[sirredknee]

It's not a hoax, because a very similar looking Donald prototype could be seen on the Uncle Wiggily Sunday page of November 13th, 1921. It was an Easter quiz in the German Comicforum thirteen years ago, but sadly the picture with the duck has since been gone.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 25, 2017 17:43:56 GMT sirredknee said:

It's not a hoax, because a very similar looking Donald prototype could be seen on the Uncle Wiggily Sunday page of November 13th, 1921. It was an Easter quiz in the German Comicforum thirteen years ago, but sadly the picture with the duck has since been gone.

Interesting! Useful testimony indeed.

[drakeborough]

Jun 25, 2017 17:13:01 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Quite fascinating. Not only does the image resemble Donald, but it's easy to imagine that, when they needed a "lazy duck who doesn't want to help Mother Hen" character for The Wise Little Hen, they'd lift this particular design of a characer who was outright called "Lazy Duck".

It's quite possible that they did that. By the way, what do we know about Donald's creation? I often heard that he was created after Disney was fascinated by a radio actor (Clarence Nash) who performed a duck voice, but I haven't seen firsthand sources (like interviews to Disney/Nash/the authors of "The Wise Little Hen") for this story.

Donald's character profile in the second volume of the Italian Barks Library says that he was created as a new interpretation of the duck present in the original tale, "The Little Red Hen". Wikipedia's article about it says that "A Disney-produced Silly Symphony called The Wise Little Hen uses this tale as its basis. This version features Peter Pig and Donald Duck (in his debut), instead of the cat and the frog from the folk version, as the ones who decline to participate in the preparation of the bread". However, it seems the tale (which has many variants) it's not always about a cat and a frog: the same article also says "In the tale, the little red hen finds a grain of wheat and asks for help from the other farmyard animals (most adaptations feature three animals, a pig, a cat, and a rat, duck, goose, dog, or goat [1]) to plant it, but they all decline".

At any rate, the 1931 version of Donald Duck doesn't look like the definitive version at all, and it seems it's just a coincidence that the two characters have the same name. On the other hand, the 1924 version is practically identical to the version we see in "The Wise Little Hen", except for the hands/wings that were replaced by real hands. And even about that, it should be noted that even "our" Donald occasionally had hands/wings in his early days, like in this 1935 poster for the Silly Simphonies:

Jun 25, 2017 17:43:56 GMT sirredknee said:

It's not a hoax, because a very similar looking Donald prototype could be seen on the Uncle Wiggily Sunday page of November 13th, 1921. It was an Easter quiz in the German Comicforum thirteen years ago, but sadly the picture with the duck has since been gone.

So someone one of the German forum discovered this proto-Donald three years before Castelli did it? It's interesting, though I wonder why every time someone discovers this the discovery is quickly forgotten as if it were a minor thing, while I think the news should make it into book about the history of animation and comics.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 25, 2017 21:52:29 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 25, 2017 17:43:56 GMT sirredknee said:

It's not a hoax, because a very similar looking Donald prototype could be seen on the Uncle Wiggily Sunday page of November 13th, 1921. It was an Easter quiz in the German Comicforum thirteen years ago, but sadly the picture with the duck has since been gone.

So someone one of the German forum discovered this proto-Donald three years before Castelli did it? It's interesting, though I wonder why every time someone discovers this the discovery is quickly forgotten as if it were a minor thing, while I think the news should make it into book about the history of animation and comics.

Maybe because they got stuck like us with the inability to locate more than a single scan of the dang bird? It doesn't look like Uncle Wiggily strips are widely available, and they had to be evene less so thirteen and ten years ago when the Internet still didn't have that much in the way of scans.

[drakeborough]

Jun 26, 2017 8:25:46 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 25, 2017 21:52:29 GMT drakeborough said:

So someone one of the German forum discovered this proto-Donald three years before Castelli did it? It's interesting, though I wonder why every time someone discovers this the discovery is quickly forgotten as if it were a minor thing, while I think the news should make it into book about the history of animation and comics.

Maybe because they got stuck like us with the inability to locate more than a single scan of the dang bird? It doesn't look like Uncle Wiggily strips are widely available, and they had to be evene less so thirteen and ten years ago when the Internet still didn't have that much in the way of scans.

I thought about the same thing even though the Uncle Wiggily series doesn't seem that obscure: I hadn't heard about it until a few days ago, it's true, but I see that a 1990's rock band and a chain of ice cream shops were both named after it, there was a song about it, a book of the series was mentioned on "Late Night" and another book was seen in a film as famous as "Forrest Gump".

Of course, knowing about a series doesn't mean that having access to its old stories is easy, especially if it was published in a single newspaper, which doesn't seem to have an online archive. Well, I hope that this time we can find more info despite all of the limitations.

My surprise was caused by the fact that the person who seemed to have made the discovery (even though we saw how someone on the German forum already knew that three years before) is Alfredo Castelli, a big name in the comic book industry (by the way, he turns 70 today). I would have guessed that a news comic from such a famous author and historian would have had a bigger follow up, especially considering that he introduced the news by saying that he discovered a case of plagiarism (unless that word was used by the people who reported the news). Since Castelli has a big collection of comic archives, he probably could have shown more images than just that one, either on his choice or because other people asked him for more info; the same thing is true for the German user who posted another image, unless that was the only one he/she could find.

At any rate, the archives of that newspaper must be available somewhere (even if not online), so I guess that if the news becomes big someone will eventually do a research.

[sirredknee]

Looky here, that series did have a kind of Uncle Scrooge predecessor as well, although he went by the name of Gander!

www.google.de/search?q=wiggily+gander&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJpZO3o9vUAhVBDxoKHZQbBlUQ_AUICygC&biw=800&bih=447

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 26, 2017 10:17:39 GMT sirredknee said:

Looky here, that series did have a kind of Uncle Scrooge predecessor as well, although he went by the name of Gander!

www.google.de/search?q=wiggily+gander&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJpZO3o9vUAhVBDxoKHZQbBlUQ_AUICygC&biw=800&bih=447

That's probably just coincidence, but, nonetheless interesting.

[drakeborough]

Jun 26, 2017 10:17:39 GMT sirredknee said:

Looky here, that series did have a kind of Uncle Scrooge predecessor as well, although he went by the name of Gander!

www.google.de/search?q=wiggily+gander&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJpZO3o9vUAhVBDxoKHZQbBlUQ_AUICygC&biw=800&bih=447

I agree with Scrooge MacDuck that it's just a coincidence (there are much less similarities compared with proto-Donald and Donald), but it's still an amusing piece of trivia.

By the way, I see that Corriere della Sera (Italy's main newspaper) hosted an imaginary interview to Donald Duck written by Castelli in the edition of June 8, 2014 (that is, the eve of Donald's 80th anniversary), and the interview also mentions "Lazy Duck" from Uncle Wiggy, which Donald describes an an early role in which he acted before being discovered by Walt Disney; there are no new info about the whole matter of proto-Donald, though. The interview is on page 23 and is also advertised on the front page.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 26, 2017 13:14:29 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 26, 2017 10:17:39 GMT sirredknee said:

Looky here, that series did have a kind of Uncle Scrooge predecessor as well, although he went by the name of Gander!

www.google.de/search?q=wiggily+gander&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJpZO3o9vUAhVBDxoKHZQbBlUQ_AUICygC&biw=800&bih=447

I agree with Scrooge MacDuck that it's just a coincidence (there are much less similarities compared with proto-Donald and Donald), but it's still an amusing piece of trivia.

By the way, I see that Corriere della Sera (Italy's main newspaper) hosted an imaginary interview to Donald Duck written by Castelli in the edition of June 8, 2014 (that is, the eve of Donald's 80th anniversary), and the interview also mentions "Lazy Duck" from Uncle Wiggy, which Donald describes an an early role in which he acted before being discovered by Walt Disney; there are no new info about the whole matter of proto-Donald, though. The interview is on page 23 and is also advertised on the front page.

Funny idea, that.

[The KKM]

It's worth mentioning that the whole joke with Donald's design (sailor suits were a common posh kid's outfit at the time, ducks are in water, young duck in sailor suit to show youth and being a bit of a brat) is obvious enough for the time that this might entirely be a coincidence. Still neat.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

By the way, we often see repeated the idea that the animators gave Donald a sailor suit because "he was a duck, and ducks like water". This was consistent with his living in a boathouse in Wise Little Hen. Moreover, others suggested it was instead not a sailor suit at all, but a fauntleroy suit, in keeping with Donald's youthful character (which would explain his middle-name's origin, too). However, both these theories fall short if Donald's design was stolen wholesale from a duck who already did wear a sailor suit…

[drakeborough]

Jun 26, 2017 13:28:40 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 26, 2017 13:14:29 GMT drakeborough said:

I agree with Scrooge MacDuck that it's just a coincidence (there are much less similarities compared with proto-Donald and Donald), but it's still an amusing piece of trivia.

By the way, I see that Corriere della Sera (Italy's main newspaper) hosted an imaginary interview to Donald Duck written by Castelli in the edition of June 8, 2014 (that is, the eve of Donald's 80th anniversary), and the interview also mentions "Lazy Duck" from Uncle Wiggy, which Donald describes an an early role in which he acted before being discovered by Walt Disney; there are no new info about the whole matter of proto-Donald, though. The interview is on page 23 and is also advertised on the front page.

Funny idea, that.

You mean that the idea of an imaginary interview to Donald is funny, or is it the idea that "Lazy Duck" was a pre-Disney role played by Donald that is funny? By the way, the interview is full of tongue-in-cheek claims, like that Donald and Daisy were secretly married but are now divoreced and Daisy remarried with Fethry, or HDL being Donald's and Daisy's adopted sons, with the first two of them being now fathers, or Scrooge's money being just a scene prop etc.

Jun 26, 2017 18:44:51 GMT The KKM said:

It's worth mentioning that the whole joke with Donald's design (sailor suits were a common posh kid's outfit at the time, ducks are in water, young duck in sailor suit to show youth and being a bit of a brat) is obvious enough for the time that this might entirely be a coincidence. Still neat.

It is possible that it is a coincidence, but I guess that the more appearances "Lazy Duck" made, the less probable the "coincidence theory" becomes. So far, we know that the image from the German forum (which is now lost) is  from November 13, 1921, while the image from the Italian article that I included in the opening post is from May 11, 1924: this means that the character was part of that series for at least two years and half, though we don't know how frequent his appearances in that series were.

Jun 26, 2017 18:45:44 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

By the way, we often see repeated the idea that the animators gave Donald a sailor suit because "he was a duck, and ducks like water". This was consistent with his living in a boathouse in Wise Little Hen. Moreover, others suggested it was instead not a sailor suit at all, but a fauntleroy suit, in keeping with Donald's youthful character (which would explain his middle-name's origin, too). However, both these theories fall short if Donald's design was stolen wholesale from a duck who already did wear a sailor suit…

I googled a few images of "fauntleroy suit", but they don't seem that similar to Donald's suit.