The Three Caballeros

I have mentioned before that I have an abiding fondness for Latin American culture, and I think this partly stems from the presence in my childhood household of a 1945 children's book called Donald Duck Sees South America (along with a 1944 companion volume, Mickey Sees the U.S.A.). What fun to follow Donald on his journeys through all the then independent nations of South America! (As I recall, he skips the Guianas.) I was hooked from that time onward.

This book is contemporaneous with other Disney excursions into Latin America, which have an interesting political history. The U.S. State Department, as part of the manifestation of our "Good Neighbor Policy" during those troubled years of the early Forties, urged a Disney good-will tour of South America, intended to have a filmic result. In the event, it had several: the short compilation feature Saludos Amigos (1942), which combines travel footage with four cartoons; the more elaborated The Three Caballeros (1945), which unites Donald Duck, the Brazilian parrot Jo(s)e Carioca, and the Mexican rooster Panchito; and the related featurette South of the Border with Disney (1942), which also documents the good-will tour. They are all available on one DVD, along with two Latin-themed Donald Duck shorts, Don Donald and Contrary Condor.

Graphically, parts of The Three Caballeros in particular are as inventive as anything Disney was doing at that time. The travel footage in Saludos Amigos and South of the Border plays up the idea that the Disney artists were extremely stimulated by their journey, and I believe that is genuinely the case, because we can see the results. A number of the detachable cartoon segments in the two features ("Pedro," "The Cold-Blooded Penguin," "The Flying Gauchito") are charming in their own right, but the material becomes considerably wilder when it is not so tied down to storyline.

One oddity of The Three Caballeros is that, perhaps because of stereotypical notions of Latin American "hot-bloodedness," this is an amazingly sexual cartoon for Disney; the three gay caballeros sometimes really are pretty gay with each other (in passing, you've got to look quick) and Donald is one lascivious duck throughout (watch him on the beach at Acapulco!). One is not so surprised to encounter parallel material in Warner Brothers cartoons, but Disney is another matter.