"Pirate Gold"

[Trumpet Joe]

One of my favorite Disney characters is the Aracuan Bird. That's why I was interested to hear that in the 1940's, another short that was to feature him (called "Pirate Gold") was planned, but ultimately scrapped. Does anyone know why it was scrapped?

[Elladorine]

Hmm, the production I'm thinking of was a story by Carl Barks. I'd heard that was actually supposed to be a full-length feature starring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy and was also known as Pieces of Eight. It seems like a version starring Donald was printed as comic book story.

I'm not sure, maybe we're not talking about the same thing?

[Goliath]

The only film project from the 1940's called 'Pirates gold' I know of, was a shelved feauture-lenght animated film initially starring Mickey, Donald, Goofy (and some accounts say Pluto) and a new star, a parrot called Yellow Beak. After it was reworked a couple of time with different titles, it was 'put on the shelve'. Bob Karp (who also wrote the daily Donald Duck newspaper comic for Al Taliaferro) turned it into a comic book script, replacing Mickey, Goofy (and Pluto) with Huey, Duey and Louie, and shrinking Yellow Beak's role. The script was drawn by Jack Hannah and Carl Barks, who worked at the Disney studio in the story department. Not long after, Barks would leave the studio and become the most famous and beloved author of Disney comics of all time.

[Elladorine]

Cool, so that was the connection with Carl Barks. It seems my memory was a little hazy there.