1950s

 

  In June 1956, Western's publisher Craig Chase showed Barks a letter from a woman who criticized Barks' story WDCS186 'The Ice-Taxi' for being too violent (and for Donald snarling Shut up! in the last panel). Barks answered Chase with the letter shown below:
 

...Very well, I will avoid any more stories using conflict or rivalry between Don and the kids.

Seriously, I think the woman who wrote this letter and sent the marked pages of the comics is a neurotic and so is her sniffling son. When I worked in the Disney story department in the duck unit, the basic theme in a great number of the Donald Duck shorts was rivalry between the kids and Donald. Certainly the main body of the public didn't object to this theme, for during those years, Donald and his nephews overtook and passed Mickey Mouse and his nephews in box office popularity.
Now comes a neurotic female with a cramped, fault-finding mind and a cry-baby son, and proves all of those millions (well, dozens, at least) of boys and girls who have bought and read Disney comics over the years were and are sadists, masochists, murderers, lechers and worse!

From now on you will see changed stories coming from this former breeding place of vice. You will see stories that will cause (Mrs. X) to write another letter to say that she just loves the Donald Ducks. For every time she reads one to her little nose-picking cry-baby, he goes to sleep in the middle of the second page...

 

 

http://www.cbarks.dk/thecorrespondence1950s.htm   Date 2004-02-13