Donald’s Gold Mine 1942

In this animated misadventure, Donald Duck [Clarence Nash] works as a gold miner and finds himself in a playful, tit-for-tat clash with his stubborn donkey, Jenny the Burro [Clarence Nash]. The pair bumbles through a day of routine mining that grows into a humorous chase, as the two bicker, tease, and stumble through the rocky terrain and dusty air of the mine.

While the effort wears on, the head of Donald’s pickaxe gets hopelessly stuck on him. In the scramble to free the tool, he accidentally uncovers a rich vein of gold hidden beneath the rock. In his exhilaration, he hurls the glittering nuggets into the air; the gleam and clatter spook the donkey, sending the mounds of gold tumbling to the ground and sending both of them into a chaotic tumble. The donkey, though anxious, stubbornly keeps up the pace, dragging the minecart along behind them toward the entry chute of the nearby ore processor.

They are swept into a fully automatic processing facility where the rocks are ground, pulverized, and separated from the gold. Donald’s luck keeps him one step ahead of danger as the machine roars to life, washing, scrubbing, and shaking him about in a rapid, comic ballet. The sequence is a parade of mechanical mayhem, with pipes, belts, and grinders working in concert as Donald dodges the worst of it, all while the ever-watchful donkey follows the path of the machine with mounting worry.

At last, Donald is tipped into a gold bar-making machine, a moment that seems almost too dramatic for a routine day of mining. The donkey, anxious about his owner’s fate, follows the output conveyor belt to the end of the line. A gold bar emerges, crowned with Donald’s hat on top, leading the donkey to momentary despair that his friend may be dead. But—almost instantly—Donald surfaces, alive and well, though crusted in gold and clearly irritated by the whole escapade. The scene lands with a final comedic beat as the unlikely duo—one filled with gold and the other with stubborn resolve—carries on in their peculiar, gleaming world.