Donald Duck to get star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star will be unveiled on Monday, August 9, at 10:30 a.m. at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Disney Store/El Capitan Theatre. The Walt Disney Company has graciously offered to provide free popcorn and screen The Three Musketeers at the historic El Capitan Theatre for a limited number of fans attending the ceremony. To RSVP while supplies last, please call 818-560-2684 or DisneyRSVP2004@yahoo.com


Image is link to BBC news site. Mr. Duck's name and likeness is no doubt Copyrighted by the Walt Disney Corporation.

Turning 70 this year, Donald Duck made his debut in 1934 in a Disney Silly Symphony cartoon, The Wise Little Hen. Donald Duck will be the 2,257th star on the walk but he is not the first animated character to receive the honor; Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and the Simpsons have already claimed their stars.

Homework: Describe Donald's role in his Academy Award winning film.

P.S. Donald Duck turns 70 this year, while Mickey Mouse turns 75. Also honored with stars this year are Star Trek's James Doohan and The Fountainhead's Patricia Neal.

I believe the movie was "Donald in Mathmagic Land" which won an Oscar for best documentary in 1959. I still have vivid memories of the remarkable billiards sequence where it was explained how the mathematics of billiards is used to play it successfully. I was surprised recently when my 13 year old son explained that he had the same memory of that feature which he viewed in school. As I recall Donald serves as the on screen presence as a narrator does most of the explaining.

Good Try! Donald Duck has been in a number of Academy Award-nominated films including the wonderful Donald in Mathmagic Land, but that is not the now rarely-seen Academy Award-winning film being asked about.

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"One of the Disney animators who worked on the propaganda films is Joe Grant, now 96 years old and still a member of the team at Walt Disney Feature Animation. Before he was pulled into Disney's war effort, Grant was best known as the designer of the witch and queen characters in 1937's landmark Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and co-writer of Dumbo.


When the federal Office of War Information, Department of the Treasury and other agencies came calling in the wake of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Walt Disney was quick to offer his help. And for the next two years, his studio churned out hundreds of hours of material.


Grant and his frequent collaborator, the late Dick Huemer, contributed stories, gags and designs for many of the Disney war shorts, including Der Fuehrer's Face, Reason and Emotion and what many consider the most serious short the Disney studio ever created, Education for Death, which shows a boy growing up in Nazi Germany humiliated for having feelings of warmth and compassion and ultimately marching, and dying, with his fellow brainwashed soldiers.


Der Fuehrer's Face was inspired by the Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator, Grant says. "It was just plain, blatant criticism," he says, borrowing from both the Chaplin film's assembly line sequence as well as previous British attempts to ridicule the rigid marching of Hitler's troops. (MORE...)

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Adolph Hitler, Hirohito, and Benito Mussolini.



Oliver Wallace's title song from the movie...

When der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race"
We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face
Not to love Der Fuehrer is a great disgrace
So we HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face
When Herr G�bbels says, "We own der world und space"
We HEI[L! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Herr G�ring's face
When Herr G�ring says they'll never bomb this place
We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Herr G�ring's face

Are we not the supermen
Aryan pure supermen
Ja we ist der supermen
Super-duper supermen.

Ist this Nutzi land not good?
Would you leave it if you could?
Ja this Nutzi land is good!
Vee would leave it if we could

We bring the world to order
Heil Hitler's new world order
Everyone of foreign race will love der Fuehrer's face
When we bring to der world disorder

When der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race"
We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face
When Der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race"
We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuhrer's face



Homework: At the end of the film Donald is at what well-known (and easily seen in Keyhole) location on the east coast of the United States?