Keskustelujen arkisto

This very odd article about Scrooge, Barks and Disney was published on Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat November 14.1964. Bold headline boasts:
I-S Reveals the Origin of Scrooge McDuck!

Text is filled with total inaccuracies but it is obviously written by Disney's PR office, I pressume, since it promotes Scrooge McDuck movie (though it did not premiere until 1967, but still). I guess it either is an actual press release, or is based on one.

http://www.perunamaa.net/ankistit/vanharoope_Iltis.gif

Shortly it goes like this:

"One bleak night December 1946 Walt Disney went for home from his Burbank studio. He was light and happy, since it was just few days to Christmas.

When he arrived home there were some carolers under his home window. "How wonderful Christmas time really is", he was thinking.

Disney had finished all the Christmas comics and other publications with his staff months ago. But he was already planning for the next Christmas. "Maybe we will use carolers". Then he thought about Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. "In there is that old miser Scrooge"

http://www.perunamaa.net/ankistit/vanharoope_Iltis2.gif

After Dinner Walt reads Dickens' book and decides to create Scrooge for the next year. First thing in the next morning he calls for his secretary and says: "Send in Carl Barks right away". Then he gives assignment to Barks to create Scrooge for the next Xmas. Few days later Barks comes back with sketches of Scrooge McDuck. Then article describes Scrooge's personality and tells how Christmas on Bear Mountain appeared in comic book 1947.

In the end it says:
"This year George Sherman, one of Disney's best cartoonists performs that story again in "Walt Disney's Christmas Parade". There have also been many plans to make Scrooge movies, but first film was not released until this year. Scrooge's voice is Bill Berg, and film is about money, Scrooge's favorite subject. 17 minute long movie will soon be shown in cinemas all over the world. "I will never forget the day Carl Barks came into my office with sketches of Scrooge", tells Disney. "It meant a birth of a new character."

Numerous inaccuracies includes (besides that Disney had nothing to do with creation of Scrooge) that George Sherman was not artist at all, but writer and Bill Berg was director of the movie, not Scrooge's voice (it was Bill Thompson). It's still quite odd to think that PR office would write something that has this amount of errors. Still I wonder if this very same article was published in other countries as well. And what in the dickens means that George Sherman was going to perform Christmas on Bear Mountain again in "Walt Disney's Christmas Parade"?? Huh?

Timo

Those are total bold-faced LIES!!! That was completely invented by Disney's publicity or another department. Carl Barks told me himself (as he did to Mike Barrier as well (and several others) that he invented Uncle Scrooge because he needed a rich, stingy old character for his 1947 Christmas story. He remembered Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", and that Dickens' Scrooge was the perfect character for him to model his rich old relative of Donald's, who could own a cabin in the mountains.
Carl Barks worked at home in his house in San Jacinto, in 1946, as a free lance writer/artist for Western Publishing Company. Walt Disney could NOT have "called him into his office". He would have had to notify The President of Western Publishing, who would have had to have ordered Doris Packer (Barks' story editor) to order Carl Barks to write such a story. Walt Disney didn't have time to worry about what was being printed in Western's Disney Comic books. Probably the only contact he had was with his Disney Co. contracts officer,- asking him if Western's overall production was adequately representing "The Disney Image". If NOT, they would have pulled the franchise away from Western. I doubt that Walt Disney ever read more than a story or two from one book, to check on the product.
Although Walt had worked closely with his animation writers when Carl worked for him, and he knew Carl Barks personally, i doubt that he would have telephoned him to write a specific story for him. I doubt that he even knew that Barks was the main , and by far the best Western "Duck artist", (although I'm sure that he was aware that Carl had started working for Western after leaving his studio.

I can only say that these articles were the Disneyway to re-write history. Have not seen the actual article (thanx Timo) but several simular stories in Disneybooks all over, so-called biographies keept the story (white lie?) going that Walt invented it all.

But this article is down right lying about history, in a way that one can only think that it is some local assistance journalist-assistant, filling up empty space in the newspaper !?!
Interesting, though, in 1964 !

I don't remember that article being printed in 1964 in The Netherlands. But, that was just when I was starting to lose interest, as the weekly was starting to print a lot of stories with not-so-nice art (late Strobl, Kay Wright and studio stories, and the like). But, I wouldn't be surprised if that article just had a Finnish origin. (What could they have been thinking???)

Robb:
I've never heard of Doris Packer. I thought Barks' editors were Eleanor Packer and then Chase Craig. Is that a typo on your side, or do you confirm the name "Doris Packer"?

BTW, the drawing on that article is by Tony Strobl. It seems it was taken from the Finnish weekly of the same week
http://coa.inducks.org/issue.php?c=fi/AA1964-45#a

It's still possible that some "journalist" in the Finnish weekly edited the text to suit the "idea" that Disney did all the comic stories?

Quote from user: timoroSure, it's possible. But the name of Barks definitely must have come from Disney, it wasn't common knowledge in 1964. At least not among faraway Finnish editors of newspapers.

Timo
Even Barks' name was not known then. In Norway many still thought Walt did all the stories himself. And I just di an interview with a norwegian cartoonist who did two stories for the Scandinavian Donald Duck comis in the late sixties - he told me there was only one reason why he did not sign a contract with Disney - he did not think he would ever be able to sign a single drawing again from that day on!

(",) Tor

This is for anybody who can help me out.
As a Carl Barks fan I am trying to complete my collection of his Disney comics and, of course, the pencil scripts (such as those of the Junior Woodchucks stories but also the others) are not around. Beside a couple that I found on internet (?Gold of the 49ers?? and ?Looters of the lake?? ) the others are nowhere to be found.
I would like to ask you if you know where it would be possible to find them or if any of you is willing to share them with me or if you are planning any posting of the other scripts somwhere.
I hope you find the time to answer this question and thanks for the nice job you are doing with this forum.
Andrea

http://www.cbarks.dk/THEFIRSTINTERVIEW.htm
Just found it! :)