Donald's Nephews(Movie, 1938)

Donald's Nephews is a 1938 Donald Duck animated cartoon which features Donald being visited by his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This cartoon is Huey, Dewey, and Louie's first appearance in animation. Al Taliaferro, the artist for the Silly Symphony comic strip, proposed the idea for the film, so that the studio would have duck counterparts to Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, the nephews of Mickey Mouse. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937 sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short. The memo indicated, "we have decided to actually put a story crew to work on Donald's Nephews". With the short already in production more than eight months before the boys' Donald Duck comic strip debut (on October 17, 1937), the animation studio's model sheet and storyline would have been Taliaferro and writer Ted Osborne's frame of reference for the comic strip. Because the strip was an adaptation of the animated shorts, it could utilize ideas from films still in production (DuckTales reversed this, being a TV adaptation of the comics). Similarly, Barks' Junior Woodchuck prototype, Good Scouts, was released three months after identical scouting uni... ()