Donald's Nephews
Donald's Nephews (1938) is a Donald Duck animated cartoon which features Donald being visited by his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This cartoon is Huey, Dewey, and Louie's very first appearance in animation. The short, and the three nephews, was the idea of Al Taliaferro, the artist for the "Silly Symphonies" comic strip, which featured Donald Duck. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short. Taliaferro subsequently introduced the nephews in his comic strip, which by this time had been renamed "Donald Duck", on Sunday, October 17, 1937, beating the theatrical release of "Donald's Nephews" by almost six months.
Duck family (Disney)
Della Duck (called Dumbella in "Donald's Nephews"; born 1920) is the mother of Huey, Dewey, and Louie. She was first described as Donald's cousin, but was later Donald's twin sister. She was first mentioned in a 1937 "Donald Duck" Sunday strip on October 17, 1937 in which she writes a letter explaining to Donald that she is sending her sons to stay with him. She appears as a child in "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" in which she and Donald are wearing identical sailor suits. Both she and Donald are linked to Scrooge McDuck in equal measure, and yet Donald is always referred to as Scrooge's closest living relative, suggesting she has disappeared or died. In the Don Rosa comic 'Super Snooper Strikes Again', Huey, Dewey and Louie refer to themselves as 'orphaned' suggesting that their parents had died.