The Walt Disney Family Album - Clarence "Ducky" Nash & Donald Duck (1984)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This debut episode centers on Clarence Ducky Nash who was the original Donald Duck. It premiered on the Disney Channel on Donald Duck's 50th birthday. There are several versions on how Clarence Nash was cast as Donald Duck. Besides the version told here, another account is that when Nash was a milk man, he stopped at the Walt Disney Studios during his route to apply for a job and Walt hired him. It's agreed that the voice that became Donald started out as a goat.

Nash was sort of the Disney answer to Mel Blanc in that he provided several voices for the studio. Besides Donald, he was the original voice for Daisy, Huey, Dewy, & Louie, Figaro, and various other animals. When Cliff Edwards passed away in 1971, he also took over for a time as Jiminy Cricket.

Throughout the episode you'll see cameos of many Disney legends such as Frank Thomas, Joe Ranft, Dave Smith, Jack Hannah, and others. We also get to see Nash performing with one of the Donald Duck ventriloquist dummies that the Studio Character Model Dept built for him. Nash would travel making personal appearances with this dummy but the design was later updated. Nash's final appearance as Donald Duck was in Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Not only is there a focus in this episode on the careers of Nash and Donald Duck but Donald's upcoming 50th Birthday. Nash passed away the following year so it's a tremendous gift that he got to have this experience before the Lord called him home.

In 1993 Clarence Nash was named a Disney Legend.

Original air date June 9, 1984

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.