Donald's Snow Fight

Donald's Snow Fight is an animated short film featuring classic cartoon character Donald Duck in a civil war-esque snowball fight with his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie.[1] It was released in 1942 by Walt Disney Productions.[2]

Donald's Snow Fight
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJack King
Produced byWalt Disney
Story byCarl Barks
Harry Reeves
StarringClarence Nash
Music byOliver Wallace
Animation byLee J. Ames
Jim Armstrong
Walt Clinton
Jack Hannah
Hal King
Ed Love
Lee Morehouse
Ray Patin
Retta Scott
Don Towsley
Judge Whitaker
Layouts byBill Herwig
Production
company
Distributed byRKO Radio Pictures
Release date
April 10, 1942
Running time
7 minutes
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The short begins with Donald wiping the fog off his glass door, excited to see the snow. Wearing a fur overcoat, Donald goes out to play with a sled while singing "Jingle Bells". When Donald reaches the top of the hill, he notices his nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, at the bottom, building a snowman while singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". Tempted, Donald crashes his sled into their snowman and thus his nephews, resulting each of them to "wear" a part of their snowman. Donald laughs himself silly afterwards, which prompted the angry trio to plot revenge.

The nephews plot their revenge by creating a giant snowman version on Donald on a boulder before calling out to him on it. Donald attempts to crash the snowman, only for the shockwaves from the crash to destroy his sled and shake off all of the furs on his overcoat, save for one, that Donald touches with his finger to stop its shaking and pulls out. The nephews happily laugh themselves silly, prompting an angry Donald to chase after them. Eventually, the nephews escape into an ice fortress and crash into ice like cage and he cover of snow like a rhino that they made before singing "London Bridge", prompting Donald to declare war on them by building himself a snow battleship.

Donald starts off a small barrage of snowballs, which results the nephews into becoming like bowling pins, and Donald uses a bowling ball-like snowball to strike them out. Donald then pulls out a bucket of water, dips a snow chunk in it, and creates an ice ammunition (called "Big Bertha" by Donald.) He launches it and it splits his nephews' flagpole in three spots, "spanking" all three of them. Despite the pain they endured, the nephews angrily refuse to surrender to Donald and instead started creating snow chunks of their own while getting three other objects: a picnic basket, some rope, and some mouse traps. They place the mouse traps in rocket-shaped components and stick them in the picnic basket now with the string tied to it. Huey, Dewey, and Louie soon launch the basket and release the missiles, with Donald getting hit by several of them sending him into his usual tantrum. With Huey commanding them with a wooden sword, Louie and Dewey started launching snowballs from a catapult, much to Donald's frustration. ("That's unconstitutional," quacks the duck angrily.)

The nephews then spear hot coal onto arrows (albeit while singing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic") and launch them into the top of the battleship, creating a skull-like structure. As a final attack, they launch a flaming snowball into a part of Donald's ship, which causes the ship to start melting and end up with Donald frozen in a palm tree-shaped prison of ice. To celebrate their victory, the triplets perform a (stereotypical) ceremonious Native American dance around the icicle (this latter performance was edited out of later broadcasts of the clip, due to perceived political incorrectness).

This short was featured as part of the edited collection, Donald and His Duckling Gang, from 1979, and is featured in From All of Us to All of You which is shown on TV every Christmas in the Scandinavian countries. This short was one of the many featured in Donald Duck's 50th Birthday. The short aired as part of the original Broadcast TV airing of Mickey's Christmas Carol but was replaced on the 35th anniversary edition home media release with "The Hockey Champ."

Voice cast

References
  1. Crump, William D. (2019). Happy Holidays—Animated! A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year's Cartoons on Television and Film. McFarland & Co. p. 90. ISBN 9781476672939.
  2. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 74-76. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
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