Donald Duck hit peak popularity during his horny era

As a company and a concept, Disney is synonymous with being family-friendly. A Disney movie can be animated or live-action, fantastical or realistic. But even in 2023, the assumption is that if the Walt Disney Pictures logo is slapped on the front, the film that follows won’t be edgy, salacious, or sexual. Disney entities are sexless by design.

And yet, let us consider Donald Duck — and not just to dredge up the long-standing question of why he wears a shirt and no pants. The Donald Duck of today is irascible, but also buttoned-down enough to have a girlfriend, Daisy, with whom he shares nothing more than the occasional chaste kiss that sends him reeling. But there was once a time when Donald Duck was not only very popular, but also very single — and occasionally, extremely and obviously horny.

Though Daisy made a couple sporadic appearances in Donald Duck shorts dating back to 1940, she wasn’t his girlfriend on the regular until the back half of the decade. There was a time when Donald was just a freewheeling duck in a sailor suit who went on shore leave down south. As Disney celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2023, it will also hit the 80th anniversary of one of its “package” animated features, Saludos Amigos. Both Saludos Amigos and its sibling film, The Three Caballeros from 1945, had more than just the cultural throughline of being focused on Latin America: They each explored what it was like for Donald to be a lusty duck drooling over feminine curves.

Saludos Amigos only scratches the surface of Donald’s particular itch. The Three Caballeros, released in America in February 1945, pushes him even closer to the brink of sexual mania. Showing Donald as sex-crazed was meant to make America come across as a good neighbor, fairly literally. Both these package films, composed of interrelated short films, were the most notable examples of propaganda that Disney made as part of the U.S. government’s Good Neighbor policy during World War II. (Disney historian J.B. Kaufman’s South of the Border With Disney is an invaluable — and officially sanctioned — resource if you want to learn more about Disney’s WWII propaganda effort.)

Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios

Donald Duck, who the Walt Disney Family Museum says has never been more popular than he was between 1941 and 1945 — was the American face of Disney’s WWII effort through appearances in films like Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, as well as the infamous short Der Fuehrer’s Face. (That’s the one where Donald hallucinates being a Nazi grunt, then wakes up relieved and grateful that he’s an American citizen. Fun fact: That Oscar-winning short turned 80 on New Year’s Day.) Throughout the course of 11 combined segments, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros depict the various cultural differences and unique qualities of Latin American nations such as Brazil, Peru, and Argentina. Each film uses Donald as an American avatar learning about those cultures, embracing them during a time of world war.

Saludos Amigos barely counts as a feature film: At 42 minutes, it’s the shortest feature in Disney’s official animated canon, and just barely longer than the 40-minute minimum established by the Academy for Oscar consideration. And it’s an appetizer in terms of watching Donald go gaga around beautiful women. The film consists of four shorts, and in the last of them, Aquarela do Brasil, Donald meets the second of the Three Caballeros, Brazilian parrot José Carioca. As Donald becomes more accostomed to Brazilian culture, he winds up dancing the samba (in silhouette) with an animated woman. But the real eye-opening feast for horny-Donald fans arrives in The Three Caballeros, as it becomes clear that Donald is a hornduck for human ladies.

José Carioca shows up again in The Three Caballeros to give Donald some South American-themed birthday presents, and then takes our aroused hero to a storybook version of Bahia, Brazil. That’s the setting for an extended musical number, “Os Quindins de Yayá,” sung by chanteuse Aurora Miranda, who appears in live-action footage. Upon seeing Miranda, dressed up to sell cookies in an approximation of a quaint Brazilian village, Donald’s heart all but bursts out of his chest as he’s sent literally flying in the air at her beauty. He tails her throughout the song, but fails to make good on his lusty efforts. (“This Donald! Did you ever see such a fast work?” José asks us, raising his eyebrows at the camera as Donald puckers up his lips and tries to kiss Miranda. He later declares to Donald, “You are a wolf!”)

Considering that this is Disney fare, the sexual energy throughout the sequence is surprisingly potent. At one point, Miranda dances toward a live-action trumpeter whose hat rises in the air at the sight of her. Later, two human male dancers transform in the same shot into animated roosters circling each other as they essentially fight over the singer, in a both symbolic and literal, ahem, cockfight.

Donald’s sex obsession continues throughout The Three Caballeros. Once the third caballero, Mexican rooster Panchito Pistoles, is introduced, they sing the title song. One lyric sets Donald’s heart aflame: “When some Latin baby / Says yes, no, or maybe / Each man is for himself.” At the sight of a silhouetted woman, Donald’s eyes widen and turn neon blue. It’s as close as Disney comes to approaching Tex Avery’s infamous animated wolf, whose eyes bulge out at the sight of beautiful women.

Then Panchito takes José and Donald on a trip through his homeland, via a magical flying serape. Specifically, Panchito brings Donald to the beaches of Acapulco, and to lots of lithe young women in bathing suits. Or, as Panchito dubs them upon handing Donald a telescope, they are “the hot stuff.” When Donald realizes how many attractive women are on the beach, he not only shouts, “Whoa, the hot stuff!” — the telescope also grows considerably and bounces around a bit. Again… ahem.

Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios

Upon landing on the beach, Donald starts flirting with “my sweet little bathing beauties,” playing a blindfold game with a number of women. Panchito dubs him “a wolf in duck’s clothing.” After Donald is dragged away from the beach, clawing and screaming, Panchito and José lure him in a new direction by asking, “You like pretty girls, huh?” This leads to a wild 10-minute finale in which singer Dora Luz performs “You Belong to My Heart.” During the climax, Donald spirals into a “surreal reverie,” beginning with a series of kisses that sends him shooting into the sky like a rocket. He then lands in a series of blooming flower petals. The sequence concludes with Donald playing the bull in a mock bullfight with his friends, where he attacks them for having gotten in his way with the various “pretty girls.” Finally, he explodes into fireworks. Once more… ahem.

Both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are fascinating cultural artifacts; The Three Caballeros vastly outpaces its sibling film in terms of quality, even though they share the similarity of Donald being nakedly aroused at women. (And also the broader and intentional effort of making American audiences of the 1940s more accepting of other cultures.) Though Disney has acknowledged certain aspects of its 1940s propaganda projects — for example, the Mexico pavilion at Epcot has a Three Caballeros-themed boat ride — the company may not be as full-throated in commemorating the 80-year anniversary of things like Saludos Amigos or Der Fuehrer’s Face this calendar year.

Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros have the advantage of including a familiar, popular character who, even while sexualized, is still fairly innocent. Arguably, Donald’s place as an iconically familiar part of Disney history is why these films get away with focusing on a duck looking to get his groove quack — er, back. Sexualizing South American countries might have been a retrograde, exploitative way to get Americans to accept their cultures and support them during World War II. But in the process, these films humanize Donald in a most surprising way.