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It's Donald Duck's birthday! A film historian charts his 90-year evolution

June 9 is Donald Duck's birthday. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with film historian J.B. Kaufman about how the Disney character has changed since his debut 90 years ago.

Donald Duck hatched from Walt Disney Studios on June 9, 1934, when he starred in the cartoon short, "The Wise Little Hen," and supposedly learned the value of hard work. RASCOE: The words that come to mind when people think of Donald Duck are angry, lazy, easily frustrated, and, of course, pretty hard to understand. And in fact, he'd already been doing freelance work for the Disney Studio, coming in to record bird calls and various animal sounds for the soundtracks of the cartoons, so much that he kind of developed a parlor trick of putting on this baby goat's voice and reciting "Mary Had A Little Lamb."

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