Donald's Off Day (1944)

Directed by

Jack Hannah

Genre

comedy film

Country

United States

Runtime

7 min

Rated

NR

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 27 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Donald Duck's nephews convince him he is very sick. The nephews play tricks on Donald to keep up the prank, leading to a series of funny situations.

comedicmischievouslightheartedplayfulchaoticfast-pacedsilly

What happens

Donald's Off Day is a 1944 Walt Disney animated short by Jack Hannah starring Donald Duck and Huey, Louie and Dewey. It stars the nephews tricking Donald into thinking that he is seriously ill. This cartoon was Hannah's debut as an animation director. Veteran animator Jack King was slated to direct the short, but Hannah argued that King wasn't up to it: I got it filled with a lot of personality bits which I always believed were more important in a story than just a series of gags. I went to [head of Story Hal Adelquist] and said, "I'd just love to direct this." As much as I like Jack King, I can't see him directing these personality sequences. Carl [Barks] and I always were disturbed that King put one of our stories onto the screen without looking for further development in the personalities of the characters... The next thing I knew, Adelquist came up to me and told me Walt had said it was okay to pick up another story to direct. So I picked up another one, and ended up directing cartoons for Disney for the next seventeen years. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Plastics Inventor (1944)
• Trombone Trouble (1944)
• Donald Duck and the Gorilla (1944)
• The Hockey Champ (1939)
• The Flying Jalopy (1943)
• Sea Scouts (1939)
• Donald's Nephews (1938)
• Home Defense (1943)