Verdugo Views: Donald Duck and his brood nested in Glendale

Disney character Donald Duck celebrated his 50th birthday by riding the Glendale float in the 1985 Tournament of Roses Parade.

Donald Duck had close ties to this city, as he was drawn by Al Taliaferro and voiced by Clarence Nash, who were both local residents.

Taliaferro graduated from Glendale High in 1924 and attended art school before going to work as a designer for a lighting-fixture firm.

When a high school friend told him there was an opening at Disney, he applied, was hired and then assigned to inking Mickey Mouse comic strips.

Later, he did similar work on a brand-new Sunday comic strip “Silly Symphonies,” in which Donald Duck first appeared.

Although he did not create Donald, he did create Donald’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, who first appeared in 1937, according to mouseplanet.com.

The next year, Taliaferro began drawing a strip featuring Donald Duck and he continued doing so until 1969, according to Wikipedia.

Nash, meanwhile, was becoming well known as an impressionist on a radio show called “The Merrymakers,” on KHJ. Then Adohr Milk Co. hired him to ride down residential streets with a team of miniature horses, while whistling a special tune and giving treats to young onlookers, as detailed on disney.wikia.com.

One day in 1932, his route took him near the Disney Studio, so he left his resume with the receptionist. As his name was known because of his radio work, he was invited to make an informal audition.

Nash went through his repertoire of voices, including his impersonation of a family of ducks. Disney decided Nash would be just the right person to provide the voice for a talking duck in their new animated short “The Wise Little Hen.”

As we all know, the duck was Donald Duck and Nash voiced him for more than 50 years, again, according to disney.wikia.com.

Together, these two creative men brought Donald Duck to life, but sadly neither one was on the float when Donald celebrated 50 years.

Taliaferro had died in 1969 at the age of 63. Nash, who was 80 years old in 1985, was invited to ride on the float along with a Disney employee wearing a Donald Duck suit. They were to be the only two humans on the float, which was covered with thousands of yellow, white, blue and red flowers, according to the Glendale News-Press, Nov. 15, 1984.

Titled “Happy Birthday Donald Duck - 50 Years of American Spirit” and built by C.E. Bent, the float depicted Donald and guests at his birthday party.

Nash was scheduled to speak to the parade audience in Donald’s voice, via an audio system, as noted in the News-Press, Dec. 12, 1984.

Sadly, he fell ill as the floats were being judged and was rushed to the emergency room. Instead of riding the float, Nash watched the parade from his hospital bed at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. He died just a few weeks later.

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Readers Write:

Stuart Byles, a founding member of the Stone Barn Vineyard Conservancy, which promotes the history of local winemakers, will talk about his new book, “Los Angeles Wine, A History from the Mission Era to the Present,” at 7 p.m. next Thursday at the Glendale Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St.

In a recent email, Byles said that the more he researched the state’s wine history, the more he realized the importance of its beginnings right here in Los Angeles, the center of the state’s population — and of wine making — in the Spanish and Mexican periods.

“At statehood in 1850, the local wine business was far more advanced than in all of the San Francisco Bay area, and it continued to dominate until the late 19th century,” he wrote.

Most of this Los Angeles wine history is known to scholars and wine aficionados, Byles wrote.

“But it is written about in a larger historical narrative that tends to minimize its importance,” he added.

Byles decided to write his own book, focusing solely on Los Angeles and its environs.

“It is a process of piecing it all together from many different sources, old newspaper articles, etc., finding leads in obscure or oblique publications. It still is ongoing,” he wrote.

One source was the Special Collections room at the Glendale Public Library.

“They have been a big help,” he wrote.

Others were the “fine document and photo collections of the Los Angeles Public Library, Pasadena Museum of History and the spectacular wine history collections of the library at Cal Poly Pomona, to name just a few of many,” he added.

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KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at KatherineYamada@gmail.com or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.