How Donald Duck Once Sparked A Logistical Argument With Disney About Life Preservers

Henry Gilroy probably wrote your childhood. As a film and television screenwriter, Gilroy's credits include "Batman: The Animated Series," "Jackie Chan Adventures," "Justice League Unlimited," and ""Ultimate Spider-Man." He also wrote for almost every animated series based on a movie, "Lilo & Stitch: The Series" and "DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms," not to mention an extended relationship with the animated "Star Wars" stories. The point is, Gilroy probably knows what he's doing, right? There are simply too many well known credits attached to his name for the guy to be bad at his job. 

And yet, even he struggles with studio interference. That's the fun part of the artistic process — where the people in charge dissect the script and then take away a third of the cool stuff, maybe more. Sometimes it's justified; other times, it's just plain silly. Want to hear a silly one? Here's the story of how Disney insisted that ducks couldn't swim, as shared by Gilroy. 

During an exclusive interview with our very own Rafael Motamayor, Henry Gilroy vented about the outlandish studio interference he experienced while working for Disney. Perhaps unsurprising, the Mouse House is harshly protective of its property, especially the mascot characters like Donald Duck. While writing for productions such as "House of Mouse" and "Mickey Mouse Works," Gilroy attempted to write a sequence in which Donald fell out of a canoe. The intent was for him to pinball between a series of rocks while trying to stay afloat in the rapids, but Disney had other ideas.

As Gilroy puts it, "They said, 'Well, if he's going to be in the canoe, he has to have a life preserver on,' and I was arguing that, 'Yeah, but he's a duck ... if he has a light preserver on, it's not as funny if his face flattens into a rock, and then he spins around and then flattens into another rock' ... even if he is a 'human duck' or a duck with anthropomorphic [features], he doesn't swim the same way. The life vest, the life preserver is clunky, it's square. It messes up his design. It's not as cool."

Now, Disney is no stranger to steamrolling its artists. "Gravity Falls" creator Alex Hirsch had to defend benign language like "poop face" as being appropriate for a children's show, and "Owl House" creator Dana Terrace faced aggressive backlash from executives for writing LGBTQIA+ characters into her series, but it's particularly amusing to know that Disney fought Gilroy over Donald's perceived safety, because no one is meaner to Donald than Disney. 

Notice the image above this slide, the one that has a certain duck sticking a knife into a toaster? That's from "How to Have an Accident in the Home," a 1956 Disney animated short that watches like a Wiki How page for homebrew torture. There's even a spot where the narrator character rewinds the scene so that Donald is more properly assaulted. 

And let's not forget everything else Disney has done to Donald. Aside from throwing him into the Nazi regime in "Der Fuehrer's Face," Disney seems to think it's thoroughly within reason for his nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) and his girlfriend (Daisy Duck) to emotionally and physically abuse him. That's not referring to old cartoons, either, Donald's family is still evil in modern depictions. But the line is drawn at swimming without a life preserver? Sure, Disney. Sure.