thecorrespondence1960s

Letter from April or May 1960, to John Spicer who wrote the first fan letter to Barks

...After eyeing your letter with dark suspicions for several weeks, I have decided to answer it on the assumption that it could be a genuine fan letter.
You see, I have a friend in Oceanside who just loves to play practical jokes, and writing phony letters to his chosen victims is one of his jokes...
...But, as I stated above, I'm going to write this letter on the assumption that John Spicer is a genuine, on-the-level young man with a better than average discerning eye for differences in art and writing styles. Ninety-nine readers out of a hundred think that Walt Disney writes and draws all those movies and comic books in between stints with his hammer and saw at Disneyland. It is a pleasure for us ghost writers and artists to meet an occasional sophisticated person who knows that he doesn't quite...
...You say you have all the Uncle Scrooges ever printed - good! Glad to meet a customer...

... Well, it was nice getting a fan letter. The front office tells me they get many letters, but over the past 17 years they have shown me only three. Two of which were pan letters that left me cringing for weeks. I suppose it's just as well I don't get much mail. Writing and drawing these comics is a full-time job 7 days a week. I would have little time to answer...
...I hope the stories you have read in the duck and Scrooge books have helped to give you a broader understanding of life, as well as entertainment. I've tried to keep off the shopworn cops-and-robbers kick that depraves so much of TV and other mediums these days. If more of my readers grow up to sit in the Senate chamber than to sit in the gas chamber, I'll have been richly rewarded for trying to turn out a good product...

Letter from June 2, 1960, to Malcolm Willits

...I enjoyed receiving your letter and would be pleased to have you call for a chinfest while you are in Southern Calif...
...It seems that I have spent 17 years wondering what the readers of my stuff really wanted. It would be an enlightening experience to meet and talk to one...
...My wife will answer the phone in the event you call. My hearing aids, which are okay for ordinary conversation, are too sputtery for telephone use.
Except for brief periods in the forenoon when we go shopping, we are at home almost hermitically...
...Will be seeing you perhaps...

Letter from October 19, 1960, to Joe Cowles

...In reply to your letter of the 13th. I must say I'm not sure my advice about cartooning would be very helpful, as I am pretty ignorant on the subject, myself. The Donald Duck comic book work is about the only experience I've had in the business, and I just feel my way along on that.
However, if you'd like to look at my work methods and see how I develop my ideas into plots and plots into drawings, you're welcome to pop in any day, afternoon or evenings. The wife and I always go shopping in the mornings...
...It would be a pleasure for me to meet a reader who digs comic books. Up here in the bible belt people only read the good book and the Walnut Growers' Nutshell News...

Letter from March 19, 1961, to Joe Cowles who was working temporarily as a peanut vendor in Disneyland, California

...It's the middle of March, and I'm just now getting around to answering last January's letters. I'm ashamed of myself. I noticed in your letter that you mentioned you and Dave would like to stop by again to see us, and I was going to write right away and say 'come on up.' (This being a higher elevation than Disneyland.) But some deadlines were pressing, causing me to delay a few days. The few days merged into the next month's deadline race, and so it went. You and Dave feel free to come by anytime you get the idea. My deadlines are very flexible things, and besides, I think I've got such things licked for quite a while into the future. Just drop a card to say when, so we won't be away on one of our rare outings.
Tomorrow we're taking a ten-page Donald into Beverly Hills. That's the first trip into the city this year. I ran completely out of paper; so we have to go. I'm going to ask for a big stack so it'll be possible to give you a few sheets to get the measurements from, and to try out for drawing 'feel.'
Thanks a lot for the foreign editions of the duck stories. I sure got a laugh out of the duck's dialogue balloons. Those jawbreaking words they use to express the simplest thoughts!...
...I'll make a note to do a drawing of the ducks for you when we get back from town. A duck peanut vendor, okay? Are you still at Disneyland? Remember to keep a list of the grievances that beset a peanut vendor. There may be possibilities there for a Donald story. My error! That should have been a popcorn vendor. (Barks used Cowles' story idea in WDCS263 - Editor's remark).
We hope to pay another visit to Disneyland before long. We have been there twice since it opened, and enjoyed ourselves a lot. I'd like to see that popcorn machine. Already scenes of Donald getting the kids' firecrackers mixed up in the popper are coming into focus...

Letter from March 22, 1961, to Ron Goulart

...thank you for your interest in my work...
...My original comic book material, which no doubt you'd prefer, goes to the printing plants, and I never see it again. It is kept around back there, I think. (No, it was burnt after scanning!!! - Editor's remark)...
...I do not know how the publisher's policy of non-credit for comic book authors and artists came about, but it's general throughout the industry. I imagine, though, that it comes from the complexities of keeping all the contributors bits separated. Few comic book artists do both script and art, as I do, and even fewer have the stuff go through the editorial offices unchanged. Most of the title panels of comic stories would carry several contributor's names. A not unusual one might read:
'Halp! Halp! My scalp!'
Story suggestion by Oliver Oldhat
Story script by Bleakwhistle J. Morningfog
Pencil roughs by Smearcase Smudgefinger
Dialogue lettering by Grimlips Firmhand
Pen inking by Scratchmore Vividly
Brush inking by Eustace B. Sloppy.
After this monumental title would follow four panels of pratfalls by Pinhead Pigeon. I doubt that the public would know which of the formidable array of contributors most deserved an accolade of whatever was handy...

Letter from October 21, 1961, to Craig Hayes

...Your opinion of my work is very flattering. I try to write stories that I would be willing to buy myself. 10 cent is a lot of moola to ask a kid to lay out for a few minutes of reading matter. It is the duty of us writers and artists to do our best. At 15 cents, the present price, we should attach a carrot, or something, to each magazine to beef up the value...

Letter from March 27, 1966, to Michael Barrier

...You ask about which Uncle Scrooge comic book story will be my last. I'll do three more between now and the end of June, which should keep the presses running until sometime in '67 (They were U$69, 70, and 71 of which the latter was inked by Tony Strobl - Editor's remark)...
...About my more recent Scrooge stories. I know he's gotten younger or something, but in the desperate grind of keeping up a flow of stories year after year the old thinker gets to slipping its gears. Besides, I get hedged in by taboos and the ever-diminishing supply of interesting locales and plot gimmicks. What Scrooge really needs is a whole new set of writers and artists with fresh viewpoints to bring him up to date...

Letter from June 9, 1966, to Michael Barrier

...I did deliberately shorten the duck's beak around 1949 when my slow wits finally awoke to the fact that I'd been drawing them too long. Mellowing Uncle Scrooge's personality came about gradually, but was partly deliberate...
...About modernizing Uncle Scrooge. I hope somebody does it. The new generation of writers have a way of slanting material to the present-day scene ... Some newer writer will undoubtedly create a whole new wealth-personality to replace Scrooge entirely. Characters like Uncle Scrooge, Barney Google, Popeye, Pogo, etc. seldom stay popular more than a few years...

Letter from December 18, 1966, to Michael Barrier

...You ask what's my opinion of other funny-animal comic books. I usually thought their stories were weak or monotonously formulated or both. Woody Woodpecker I liked. Porky Pig I detested, probably because of his stutter. Bugs Bunny was often very funny in a slapstick sort of way. Actually I read very few comic books of any kind. I was afraid the formats might be catching to the extent that my own stuff would start following the same patterns...

Letter from January 14, 1967, to Michael Barrier

...Your curiosity about how scripts are written, pages drawn, etc. makes me fear you might end up in a comic book career. Plumbing pays more money and the hours are shorter.
My writing procedures have usually been:
1. Get an idea for a story gimmick...
2. Plan the locale...
3. Figure out some business for the gimmick...
4. Figure out how to involve the ducks in the business.
5. Get a plausible reason for the ducks' involvement and spring it early in the story.
6. Figure out a surprise ending. This part usually comes to mind after three or four days of writing gags for the script.
7. The foregoing should fill a page or two of longhand note jotting. Now try to think of as many gags as possibly can be related to the planned business. Fear gags, cold gags, spooky gags, stingy gags (for Uncle Scrooge), gags using Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook, etc. etc.
8. Among those gags will be several that suggest lengthy pieces of business. Start the story with the weaker ones and polish the dialogue with lots of shortening and rewriting...
9. Start drawing when a script is broken down into panels and pages. I drew direct onto the drawing paper with a Scripto light blue pencil, and inked with a 356 Esterbrook pen. My wife inked the dialogue with an A-5 or B-6 speedball, and blacked the solid areas with a #2 sable brush. I seldom made preliminary sketches on other sheets of paper, except for model drawings of a new character or prop or special costume.

You ask if I took into account the fact that color would fill out my drawings. Yes, but after years of doing ducks in outline with little inked shading the bare formula became second nature. When I knew a one-strip gag would be printed in black & white I usually shaded them a little...
...The top sales figure for Walt Disney Comics was above 3,000,000 in its heyday...

Letter from April 17, 1967, to Michael Barrier

...I ordinarily worked on only one story at a time. Never could comfortably mix them up or start a new one while one was still unfinished. The stories were a continuous chain-of-thought thing with me. They grew and were subject to change right up to the inking of the last panel. Besides, I liked a little mental rest after finishing a story.
Fan letters had very little to do with my choice of stories until the very late years...

Letter from July 14, 1967, to Michael Barrier

...I usually changed locales and formulas to avoid boredom to myself, and I hoped the readers would like the variety of plots and the switching around of roles (characterizations) of Don and the other ducks. Also there was the necessity to change formulas at times because of criticism from the office, such as toning down of conflict between Don and the kids...

Letter from August 22, 1967, to Steve Eng

...I've very much lost interest in comic books since retiring a year ago. My wife is quite an accomplished artist in oils, and I get much pleasure out of pushing her career. We take her paintings around to galleries in Laguna Beach, Palm Springs, and nearer places to replace those that sell...
...We've just returned from a weekend in Santa Barbara, where we showed on the Beachwalk at their Arts Fiesta. Garé (my wife) was probably the biggest seller of the show. Certainly she had the highest-priced paintings...

Letter from January 9, 1968, to Carlo Chendi (Italy)

...When I retired in 1966 one of the editors in the Los Angeles office got me a few pages of originals from some of the last few stories. Up until that time I had never been able to get anything back...
...I don't know the main line of prices per page paid for art and stories by Western Printing and Litho. The price varies according to the type of subject matter. Tarzan stories, for instance, I'm sure get higher prices than duck work. My payment for the last several years was $11.50 a page for stories, $34 a page for art. Cover ideas were $20. Cover art $50. I've been told that some other publishers paid higher rates. I didn't feel cheated, however, because I was a regular employee after 1953, and as such I got free medical and life insurance, bonuses twice a year and a company-paid trust fund that built up into quite a figure by 1966. I had no rights, however, on anything published...
...My wife's paintings, landscapes with deer and birds, etc., sell very well, but my paintings stack up in towering piles. I like to paint pictures of people in slightly satirical situations. They are fun to do and the public stands around and admires them, but they don't sell worth a damn...

Letter from January 23, 1968, to Michael Barrier

...I get anti-nostalgia every time I approach my files of old D.D. comics. There's so little about my years of comic book work that I care to remember that I shudder when I pick up a stack of comics and become snowed under with recollections...
...Man! How I feel about a kid who yearns to make a career of writing and drawing comics - better, I say, he should take up something exalting and invigorating like sewer engineering...
...Back to the rocking chair. (To hell with painting until tomorrow.)

Letter from March 8, 1968, to Dick Blackburn

...I conceived of Uncle Scrooge as an old-fashioned plutocrat of the Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller vintage. He was given the name Scrooge to relate to the Dickens character. That name having become a noun-adjective synonymous with miser. I had no idea he would become a popular character in the Donald Duck stories. My intention was to use him on rare occasions when an eccentric foil was needed for a gimmick...
...Some Uncle Scrooge fans have complained that in the late years I turned the Uncle Scrooge stories into mere adventure strips. They are right. I was afraid to keep repeating money and miser gags over and over...
...Frankly, I was incapable of writing much in the way of hidden 'messages' into my stories. In personal background I am a backwoods bumpkin. My education consists of eight grades in a one-room Oregon schoolhouse. My art training was part of a course from the Landon Correspondence School about 1916. I learned mostly by imitating the styles of published cartoonists...
...On the physical plane, however, my experience during my early years when I worked as a farm hand, muleskinner, pseudo-cowboy, and steelworker, always terribly inefficiently, gave me practical knowledge for complicating many of Donald Duck's problems...
...In my own sphere, I was a loner, working in a small town far from any contacts with other comic bookers...
...My wife was my expert helper during the most of the last dozen years. She inked the dialogue, drew backgrounds such as countless vats of diamonds and bins of money, and did all the solid blacks and shading...