December 2 - Clarence Nash

On this day, in 1933, Clarence Charles Nash became the 125th employee of the Disney Studio. Born on December 7, 1904 in Watonga, Oklahoma (before it became a state), Ducky Nash, as he became know later in life for obvious reasons, grew up on a farm developing impressions of the animals around him. It became a tradition whenever school talent shows rolled around that Ducky would sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in his trademark billy goat voice. After high school, he hit the vaudeville circuit doing his impressions and playing the mandolin. By 1930, he'd secured a spot on The Merrymakers radio show on channel KHJ in Los Angeles. This led to a gig as Whistling Clarence the Adohr Bird Man, a promotional character for the Adohr Milk Company. Clarence would ride around on a milk wagon pulled by miniature horses and give treats out to the kids. One day, his route took him past a date with destiny.

As Whistling Clarence was trotting by the Disney Studio, he decided to stop in and drop off one of his publicity sheets. Because an episode of The Merrymakers had been rerun just a couple of days before, the owner of the studio recognized his name and set up a formal audition. When Clarence did his billy goat voice, the casting director immediately called Walt into the room saying "We've found our duck." Walt agreed and the voice of a new character, Donald Duck, was hired.

Image copyright Disney

A few words about that voice that Clarence originally thought sounded like a goat but was clearly a duck. It did not come from his throat as most people who try to imitate it seem to think. He produced that classic sound through a process called buccal speech. A pocket of air is trapped between the cheek and the jaw and is slowly squeezed past the teeth. It's generally a self taught kind of thing. When done well, about three quarters of the words spoken can be understood and singing can happen in up to a three octave range. And no one did it better than Ducky.

Clarence and Donald were together from the beginning. Starting with 1934's The Wise Little Hen, Clarence voiced his beloved duck for the next 50 years. A great thing about their relationship is that it was one of the few in the industry that truly spanned the globe. Because of the unique sound of Donald's voice, Clarence himself dubbed it in every language that Disney films ended up in basically using a phonetic alphabet (it helps that Donald is normally largely unintelligible). He once said that German, of all the languages, was the most difficult to "quack" in.

Image copyright Disney

 Donald became one of the world's biggest animated characters mostly because of Clarence's performances. In over 120 shorts, several features, television appearances, advertising, records and just about everything else you can think of, he perfected the duck that was destined to play second fiddle to Mickey Mouse. But that wasn't his only contribution to the studio. Clarence also voiced Donald nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie when they came along. And, believe it or not, he was the first voice of Donald's girlfriend, Daisy Duck. His talents can be heard as the Rough House statue in Pinocchio, a bullfrog in Bambi, Figaro the cat in shorts and some of the dogs in 101 Dalmatians. When Jiminy Cricket's original voice, Cliff Edwards, passed away in 1971, Clarence took over for a little while.

Image copyright Disney

Clarence's last performance as Donald Duck was for 1983's  Mickey's Christmas Carol. He was the only original performer for a character in the entire film. His 50 year career performing the same character puts him in a select group populated by only two other people: Mel Blanc for his Loony Tunes gigs and June Foray for Rocky and Bullwinkle. Near the end of his life, it became increasingly difficult to produce Donald's voice and Clarence limited his performances to the recording studio and entertaining kids. He could never pass up a chance to wow the kids. On February 20, 1985 Clarence passed away from leukemia in Burbank, California in the same hospital that his boss did nearly two decades before. His hometown of Watonga named a street after him and he was officially made a Disney Legend in 1993.