| BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS: |
The air delivery Messenger Stork has appeared in several Disney cartoons delivering babies to their new mothers. Voiced by Sterling Holloway he first appeared in "Dumbo" (1941) where he delivers Mrs. Jumbo's bouncing baby pachyderm whom she names "Jumbo Junior" only to be corrected by the gossipy elephant cows, Mrs. Jumbo's traveling/performing companions who share a coach with her, who call the infant "Dumbo" and a "freak" upon seeing his enormous ears. He is again seen in "Lambent, the Sheepish Lion" (1952) where he is busily delivering baby lambs to their waiting mothers, and mistakenly delivers a baby lion cub named "Lambert" to an anxious mother sheep. Wanting to retrieve the baby cub and correct the "administrative error," the mother insists on keeping it. The stork relents and takes off to continue his deliveries. Another stork named Fred, who may be one and the same with the Messenger Stork, appears in the Pluto cartoon "Cold Storage" (1951) where he is seeking shelter from a storm... in Pluto's doghouse. This, of course, does not sit well with the equally wet and cold dog. The messenger stork does resurface in the line of "Disney babies" where he is seen as the deliverer of the Babies in Disney merchandise. His comic book debut was probably in the adaptation of "Dumbo" in "Four Color: Dumbo" #668 (Dec. 1955, which may be a reprint of FC #234 from 1949), though I cannot be certain having not seen these books, but he definitely appears in "Silly Symphonies" #1 in "Lambert the Sheepish Lion" (Sep. 1952). |
Messenger Stork 