Clarence Nash

**Clarence "Ducky" Nash** was an American actor and performer who was born December 7, 1904 in Watonga, Oklahoma and died on February 20, 1985 in Glendale, California. Nash is the creator of Donald Duck's voice, who he played for over fifty years. He also doubled as the voices of Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck.

## Biography

Clarence Nash was born in 1904, a few years after Walt Disney, in Watonga. A small country town in Oklahoma, USA. He grew up among farm animals that he imitated for fun. In the 1920s, Clarence Nash traveled to the Midwest where he played mandolin and painted animals at Redpath Chautauqua and Lyceum Vaudeville . The Chautauqua movement was essentially an American cultural movement, popular in rural areas in the early 20th century focused on adult education.

The Chautauquas traveled on a tour where the traveling troupe travels from city to city and produces shows, debates or performances composed of future intellectuals, writers, artists or film actors, imitators and singers who meet. Alongside the young Clarence Nash, there were future American actors like Edgar Bergen who was the first to go to Chautauqua, then hired on the radio and found a place in the cinema.

In 1923 Clarence was hired by the Chicago chapter of Redpath Chautauqua as an imitator. Among other representations to the young and adult audiences, Nash imitated the voice of a duck for the childish song Mary Had a Little Lamb . Was Donald's so special voice born? Be that as it may, Clarence left the Redpath circuit in 1926 and left for Los Angeles where he continued his career as an impersonator on KHJ radio on The Merrymakers .

It was in 1933 that Walt Disney remarked on the radio, where Clarence imitated as usual the voice of the duck. The Disney studio notices it and Walt Disney chooses it for a first imitation of the Donald Duck duck in Orphan's Benefit ( The Orphan's Gala ) in 1934, where the duck tries to do the recital of Mary Had in Little Lamb , despite the noise that make the children. But it's officially the end of Clarence is the official voice of Donald Duck in The Wise Little Hen ( The Wise Little Hen ).

A long career began for Clarence who essentially doubled Donald for nearly fifty years until the 1980s, but also some voices of Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie. His boundless talent makes him realize Donald's original voice in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese or Japanese, which is difficult to understand even in the French language, in a language that Clarence Nash called Duckspeak . In addition, Nash makes some appearances in Disney feature films, including the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio (originally to be made by Cliff Edwards) or the voice of a frog in Bambi . He also appears personally in The Reluctant Dragon of 1941.

It was in the years 1955 that Clarence Nash participates less in months to double the voice of Donald Duck, since the series begins to run out of steam.He doubles Donald's voice for the last time in Mickey's Christmas in 1983.

On May 21, 1984, Nash signed the block of cement in which Donald Duck left his footprints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theater and even made an appearance at the Oscars of cinema the same year for the fifty years of Donald Duck's character. . He died of leukemia on February 20, 1985 in Glendale, California at the age of eighty. He is buried at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills in the San Fernando Valley of the City of Los Angeles.