Clarence Nash

Donald Duck had one voice for nearly fifty years and it belonged to a man from Watonga, Oklahoma, a town that eventually named a street after him. Clarence Nash, known as Ducky, was the original Donald.

The job was harder than the joke suggests. In shorts like Donald's Nephews, Trick or Treat and Donald's Snow Fight, Nash voiced Donald and Huey, Dewey and Louie, which means he argued with himself in four versions of a voice most people cannot hold for a single line without losing it. His credits here start at Flowers and Trees in 1932 and end at Mickey's Christmas Carol in 1983, with the odd archive appearance afterwards. Nearly five decades in a role that gave him no billing for years is a strange kind of career, and he seems to have simply kept turning up.

Not all of it was the duck. He is Dinah the cat in Alice in Wonderland, a bullfrog in Bambi, Ichabod's horse in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Mr. Bluebird in Song of the South, cat screeches in The Aristocats, and assorted uncredited animal noise across the studio's output. In The Reluctant Dragon he appears as himself as well as Donald.

The features are where the wartime studio shows up: Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, the studio's Latin American features, plus the propaganda short Der Fuehrer's Face, Fun and Fancy Free, Mickey and the Beanstalk, and the educational oddity Donald in Mathmagic Land. He was made a Disney Legend in 1993, eight years after his death.