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If you want to hear an early version of Alan Young's voice for Scrooge -- MUCH earlier than the voice he used for MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL -- go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9miqKm0aB0
My understanding is that Young worked hard to eliminate his native accent after he emigrated to America and sought work in American radio and TV. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s, so, by the time Young "resurrected" a Scottish accent, he was probably a bit "out of practice." That could account for the "Scotch-lite" nature of Scrooge's voice on DT. That being said, I think the voice works wonderfully for the character, as does Russi Taylor's "quacky, but not TOO quacky" voice for the three Nephews.

Quote from user: Mike PerazaThe "official" reason was that Eisner and others in management at the time considered Donald part of Walt's original trio of stock along with Mickey and Goofy. Donald was to be a "big name" introduction for folks out there who were unfamiliar with Carl's world of Uncle Scrooge and then only make a cameo here and there if needed. It was also a concern that if the show was a failure they did not want to tarnish Donald's star image at the studio. Part of the mandate was that they wanted to have these "new" characters stand on their own without relying on old classic characters like Donald to draw all the interest and thus create a new fan base.

There has always on going concern about Donald's voice being hard to understand going back to "Wise Little Hen" but he was such a lovable hot head and the voice was such an individual display in the sea of so much relatable cartoon voice work that it was never changed.

Goofy went through the same discussions about using "Disney Stock" on a TV series when "Goof Troop" was brought up and it was only decided to go for it but only after much debate. Part of our argument for it was that Goofy had starred in plenty of made for TV episodes during the "World of Color" and so it was not that much of a reach to give it a try. Well. back to my pencils...
Ah, that's a bit of a shame, imo.

Just wondering, to what extent did you seek inspiration from Carl Barks' work? Was there a specific attempt to use the general idea of his stories, or was it more of a casual inspiration thing?

Quote from user: Baar Baar JinxQuote from user: Mike PerazaThe "official" reason was that Eisner and others in management at the time considered Donald part of Walt's original trio of stock along with Mickey and Goofy. Donald was to be a "big name" introduction for folks out there who were unfamiliar with Carl's world of Uncle Scrooge and then only make a cameo here and there if needed. It was also a concern that if the show was a failure they did not want to tarnish Donald's star image at the studio.
So it was the "overshadowing" concern, and not the "voice" concern, that was the mitigating factor. I'd always wondered. Thanks for clearing that up.

I guess by the time Quack Pack came along, Disney felt confident enough to let Donald sink or swim on his merits? Ironic, I guess, since Quack Pack never picked up the fan following that DuckTales did.

Quote from user: kimba_1962My understanding is that Young worked hard to eliminate his native accent after he emigrated to America and sought work in American radio and TV. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s, so, by the time Young "resurrected" a Scottish accent, he was probably a bit "out of practice." That could account for the "Scotch-lite" nature of Scrooge's voice on DT. That being said, I think the voice works wonderfully for the character, as does Russi Taylor's "quacky, but not TOO quacky" voice for the three Nephews.
Yes, I recall Young stating that he "fought to get rid of his accent" in an interview about Mickey's Christmas Carol, but that he could "easily get it back". But the relatively mild accent that Scrooge has does fit someone who's spent most of his life outside Scotland. That said, my experience has been that if someone doesn't make an effort to change it, their native accent gets firmly entrenched by the time they're ten, if not younger. I know people who have lived in the US for decades and who still sound like they just got off the plane from their native country.

Quote from user: Robb_KI have known many, many people who have found a way to mimic Donald's cartoon speech so well that they could speak that way as their own native tongue if it became necessary. Furthermore, it was fully intelligible. I contend that had producers wanted to, they could have advertised and found such a person or two or three, to handle ALL of the Duck-people (character's) voices. That would have been what I'd have liked.
Are you saying you would have liked all the duck characters to have Donald-like, quacky voices? I don't think I would. Donald owes his very existence to his voice (the story I've heard is that Walt Disney was so enamored of Clarence Nash's duck talk that he created a character to use it). The voice is part of his "species identity". But all the other characters, Scrooge, Daisy, the nephews, Gladstone et al. grew out of Donald with separate identities of their own. They don't need the "duck" voice to be relevant. It actually irritates me when they had the nephews speak with Donald's voice on "House of Mouse" shorts ... this is after DuckTales and Quack Pack! Why not use the wonderful, and more intelligible, Russi Taylor versions all the time? The nephews (and even Daisy very early on) spoke with Donald's voice in the shorts, but now that things are better established, I would rather that not happen any more. And while there were several cartoons in the 50s and the 60s that centered around Donald's voice being incomprehensible, I would have preferred it if they had left that aspect out of DuckTales (I refer to several characters finding him hard to understand, and his being calles "The Garbled One", etc.)

And no, I never had trouble understanding the Nash or Anselmo versions of Donald, but I can see how it might be hard to listen to that voice lecture Scrooge on the merits of ice cream sodas over hoarding money.

And as for Gyro's voice ... I think Will Ryan's try at it in "Soccermania" might have suited him more than Hal Smith's now better known DuckTales version. Does anyone else agree?
Yes, I would like ALL the Ducks to have quacky voices, and Gyro Gearloose (The big chicken) to have a squawky chicken voice.

It doesn't make sense for Donald to have a duck's voice, and the other ducks not. Most of the people I know who came from countries in which they spoke another language before the age of 13 or so, kept a heavy accent all their lives, which degraded slowly and relatively minutely over 30-4- 50 years, including my own grandparents and many uncles and aunts and many cousins. I wouldn't have expected Scrooge's strong and thick Scots brogue to have deteriorated enough to be so weak as I've heard in "Disney's Christmas Carol" and "Ducktales". Scrooge was too fixated on amassing large wealth in lands all over The Earth. He had to learn key words in many languages and was traveling much of the time. He would not devote much time to practicing diction in The Duckburg dialect (whether that be American English, Dutch, Danish, German or Italian-or whatever language a fan feels that they speak in Duckburg). People who work hard on removing an accent are generally actors or sales people (who will be speaking the local language in one place, or a "national speech" when traveling all over a single country -such as standard Hochdeutsch in Germany, "TV American" in USA, "BBC British", "CBC Canadian, Standard Dutch, etc.). Scrooge doesn't fit that category. He wouldn't bother putting energy into that activity that isn't going to help him amass wealth. Scrooge wasn't spending enough time in one place to pick up an accent the first 30-40 years after leaving The Highlands of Scotland. Even when he was roaming around the western USA and Canada, and even setting up his headquarters in Duckburg, Calisota and the rest of The West was filled with immigrants from all over The World. There was no Duckburg accent to "slide into" or affect his speech. Finally, after he was, perhaps 50 years old, and his adventure traveling slowed down enough for him to spend a lot of time in Duckburg, he was already too old for the speech around him to have a strong effect on his speech.

This kind of inconsistency of logic ruins the "integrity" and pseudo realism that could exist that would allow me to "accept" what is happening as real and not just a bunch of lines on papers being flashed across a screen. I feel the same way about researching history or geography in films. I can't stand when the "researchers of the films haven't done their jobs (especially historical films), or when an area with obvious Mediterranean vegetation is supposed to be a place in a clearly different climate zone, or I see a painting that's supposed to be an outside view, and the actors are obviously standing inside a building on a sound stage, and the nearby "trees" are made of plastic or some concoction of materials.

Quote from user: Dutch Duckfan Down UnderQuote from user: Robb_KI wouldn't have expected Scrooge's strong and thick Scots brogue to have deteriorated enough to be so weak as I've heard in "Disney's Christmas Carol" and "Ducktales". Scrooge was too fixated on amassing large wealth in lands all over The Earth. He had to learn key words in many languages and was traveling much of the time. He would not devote much time to practicing diction in The Duckburg dialect (whether that be American English, Dutch, Danish, German or Italian-or whatever language a fan feels that they speak in Duckburg).
Well, Scrooge is a big businessman, so maybe he deliberately toned his accent down over the years. He doesn't want to leave his roots, but assuming he was raised in a Scottish dialect only, he might've changed it because it was just easier to understand. Real English dialects are unintelligible for Americans, or so I heard. Alternatively, he might have learned English after he left Scotland because they didn't speak English there. It seems strange, but there are people in the area where I live that only speak the local dialect, and they're only 70 years old. And we all know how poor young Scrooge was. It seems unlikely that he ever went to school and learned English there.

Besides, Barks' Scrooge doesn't have a phonetic accent either. Y'know, like th' ones they used in them early Mickey Mouse newspaper comics. Plus, and I quote:
"They speak Earth language 623X with a slight 737K accent!" (Martians, Lost Beneath the Sea, p16 panel 4)
They only heard Scrooge speak, so my guess is that 623X is American English-Calisota and 737X is British English - Glasgow accent. Only a slight accent.

Quote from user: Robb_KThis kind of inconsistency of logic ruins the "integrity" and pseudo realism that could exist that would allow me to "accept" what is happening as real and not just a bunch of lines on papers being flashed across a screen.
I think you might be exaggerating here. First of all, there's no inconsistency of logic. Second, don't you think that researching Scrooge's past to get his accent right is going a bit too far? I thought it was just fine, and I still do. Making TV is still just work for most people, and many don't care about getting continuity or all that right. As long as they churn out 26 episodes per season, they're fine. Unfortunately, not everyone cares that much about his own work.
Plus, you can't accept Scrooge's wrong accent, despite the fact that he's a talking duck?
How do you feel about Ratatouille, then? Linguini and Remy talk in American English, but the others talk with a French accent. Is that inconsistency, and bad?
(On the same subject, I saw a bit of a Disney Channel series this week. There was this character who was supposed to be British, I think. Not really sure. He was wearing what looked like Medivalish clothing and spoke in antiquated linguistics with a strange accent. Seemed to me the Hollywood stereotype of a Brit. One problem: despite all efforts, his accent was still obviously American. Yeah. So there are worse things than getting the amount of Scottish in an accent right.)
I think you are confusing Scotland with Ireland regarding native Gaelic speakers that speak NO English. I don't believe there are ANY Scottish residents who speak Gaelic and that don't also speak and understand English. There are a few small pockets of people all probably above 80 years old (now) in the west of Ireland that speak only Gaelic. But as soon as they die out, that will exist no more.

I saw the film "Ratatouille". The rats live in Paris. I assume that they should speak French. If some speak American English, we should have found out that they migrated there from USA.

I'm not blaming scriptwriters for paintings being used as backgrounds in films. I'm just pointing out that it ruins the "realism" for me. If I constantly notice that situations in a film are inconsistent, or unrealistic, I can't "believe" the story or "live in the film situation". It's the same with a comic book story. If the story has inconsistencies, I am constantly taken out of the action flow of the story, paying attention to details that seem "wrong". I can suspend my knowledge of reality to "believe" that "Duck People" can talk and act like humans. But if the producers make only ONE of these Duck-people speak with a quacking sound of a duck, but not the others, that only brings my attention to that inconsistency. If the writers use actual human history as a basis, but use only some parts exactly as they occurred in human history, but change other aspects, that is only confusing, and draws attention to the anomaly.

Dutch Duckfan brings up quite a few good points the least of which is how the budget figured into Ducktales. MANY times I would read the new script in the morning, do about a half dozen thumbs before the crew showed up and then distribute those and my notes on the visuals. Sometimes we had to work on multiple shows on the same day. Luckily we had the benefit of a very talented staff and management that supported the show.
I have to chuckle at the dialog on here concerning Allen's Scottish accent as it is not only accepted by most Ducktales fans but Mickey's Christmas Carol followers also and I personally think he did a great job. That in itself may be the point, it is simply a personal opinion and everyone is entitled to like or dislike his or her own interpretation. We have fans of the show that don't like the comics (especially the later ones Carl didn't do) and vice versa, as well as those who can enjoy both worlds. In the end this show was intended to be enjoyed by a wide audience around the world and it accomplished that. Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved? Of course. Did we do our best at the time? I truly think we all did exactly that.

Quote from user: Robb_KI think you are confusing Scotland with Ireland regarding native Gaelic speakers that speak NO English. I don't believe there are ANY Scottish residents who speak Gaelic and that don't also speak and understand English. There are a few small pockets of people all probably above 80 years old (now) in the west of Ireland that speak only Gaelic. But as soon as they die out, that will exist no more.
Well, I did make a bit of an unfair comparison. In the area where I live, there are people who speak the local dialect everywhere, whether or not the other person speaks it. These people are often over 70. Because they don't speak Dutch, I assumed they don't know any. (Which may be a bit silly.) Still, the Scrooge point sort of stands, since language standardisation is a relatively recent thing. Especially in small villages, where people can understand each other's dialect, so there's no need to speak in the country's main language. I don't know much about Victorian Scotland, but if Scrooge grew up in a small village, he may have only known a very Scottisized version of English.
Once in America, Scrooge learned real US English. Which reminds me, is there any flashback with Scrooge with an accent? Even Back to the Klondike shows Scrooge talking in "BBC English". On second thought, I don't think that's a good example. Even young Scrooge in "The Invisible Intruder" speaks English. I guess that either Barks didn't want to give Scrooge a phonetic accent, or he played it safe for the editors at Western. Personally, I think it's the first one.
Whatever it is, we can assume Scrooge never had more than a slight accent, because we've never seen/heard him with one. So Alan Young does it just fine.

Quote from user: Robb_KI saw the film "Ratatouille". The rats live in Paris. I assume that they should speak French. If some speak American English, we should have found out that they migrated there from USA.
I think Pixar just wanted to play it safe with their main characters. Who wants to see a movie with people with only stupid French accents? The film Hugo (which I really recommend, it's a family film for cinema buffs) just replaced French with British English, except for the words monsieur and madame. It's a bit odd, but it's consistent. I think the way Ratatouille does it is fine as well.

Quote from user: Robb_KI'm not blaming scriptwriters for paintings being used as backgrounds in films. I'm just pointing out that it ruins the "realism" for me. If I constantly notice that situations in a film are inconsistent, or unrealistic, I can't "believe" the story or "live in the film situation". It's the same with a comic book story. If the story has inconsistencies, I am constantly taken out of the action flow of the story, paying attention to details that seem "wrong". I can suspend my knowledge of reality to "believe" that "Duck People" can talk and act like humans. But if the producers make only ONE of these Duck-people speak with a quacking sound of a duck, but not the others, that only brings my attention to that inconsistency. If the writers use actual human history as a basis, but use only some parts exactly as they occurred in human history, but change other aspects, that is only confusing, and draws attention to the anomaly.
Yes. But the inconsistencies are usually not too jarring, I think. Except for The Flintstones, but that's not history anymore.

Quote from user: Mike PerazaI have to chuckle at the dialog on here concerning Allen's Scottish accent as it is not only accepted by most Ducktales fans but Mickey's Christmas Carol followers also and I personally think he did a great job. That in itself may be the point, it is simply a personal opinion and everyone is entitled to like or dislike his or her own interpretation. We have fans of the show that don't like the comics (especially the later ones Carl didn't do) and vice versa, as well as those who can enjoy both worlds. In the end this show was intended to be enjoyed by a wide audience around the world and it accomplished that. Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved? Of course. Did we do our best at the time? I truly think we all did exactly that.
That sums it up perfectly. I think the accent is fine. Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved? Of course. But it does its job well.

Yes Carl did enjoy the first season of DuckTales. I had the honor of meeting him through a mutual "Duck man" by the name of Jack Hannah who was a close friend and the original head of the Disney Program at Cal Arts. Also had a chance to work with Ducky Nash on a project for the parks and "Christmas Carol." I was "in-ducked" into their little group which was a treat. Jack and Carl worked together on the Duck shorts in their early days so they were a quack pack from back when. Ducky was a real gentleman and he had this unique ventriloquist dummy of Donald he would bring into my room and do a bit of business with that was priceless. Really miss all those guys. Too often you don't realize how lucky you are to be around talent like that until they're gone.
Sorry I didn't get back Street, I've been busy painting two illustrations for projects due tomorrow that I finished about an hour ago. Yes I will do a piece on behind the scenes of Talespin sometime when I get a chance, thanks for asking.

Quote from user: Mike PerazaSorry I didn't get back Street, I've been busy painting two illustrations for projects due tomorrow that I finished about an hour ago. Yes I will do a piece on behind the scenes of Talespin sometime when I get a chance, thanks for asking.
Ok, sorry to bother, and that's awesome, looking forward to it! :)