Herman the Bootle Beetle
Bootle Beetle
| GENUS PEDIGREE: | Anthropomorphized beetle | ||
| KNOWN ALIASES: | Herman (?) | ||
| KNOWN RELATIVES: | Ezra Beetle (grandson?); Bucky Bug ("grandson"). | ||
| KNOWN PETS: | unknown | ||
| CITIZENSHIP: | Junkville (a.k.a. Bugville), USA | ||
| KNOWN CONFIDANTS: | Donald Duck; Ludwig von Drake; Ezra Beetle, Bucky Bug. | ||
| KNOWN RIVALS: | unknown | ||
| PARAPHERNALIA: | unknown | ||
| 1st PRINT APPEARANCE: | "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories" #4 in the "Buckey Bug" (Jan. 1950). | ||
| 1st FILM APPEARANCE: | "Bootle Beetle" (Aug. 1, 1947 "Donald Duck" cartoon). | ||
| VOICE ACTOR: | Dink Trout | ||
| SIGNATURE: | unknown | ||
| BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS: | Appearing sometimes as a bespectacled old beetle and others as a younger version. This change of age is relative to whether he is relating a tale from the past to young Ezra, or whether he is portaying himself in that same past. Ironically the "past" in these tales is really the present, as he and Donald Duck, age accordingly since they are contemporaries. When Donald Duck is young (the way we know him), Bootle Beetle is young as well. When Donald is an old man, so is Bootle beetle. In essence, When Bootle appears as 'old,' these tales are then, really, set in the future. In comics he has appeared in some of Bucky Bug's tales (as does Jiminy Cricket). Since most of Bootle's appearances in film depict him as elderly, as is Donald, it is possible that Herman the Bootle Beetle companion of Professor Ludwig von Drake is the self-same beetle, only younger, but just as gullible. This is possible since the Professor appeared age-wise as a contemporary with the younger version of Donald typically seen. | ||
| HISTORICAL FACTS: | Bootle Beetles are supposedly mythical insects because one has never been found. In the Bootle Beetle's first appearance he encounters a young Bootle (Ezra) who is running away. He tells the young beetle of his own lust for adventure which lead to a dangerous encounter with the bug collecting Donald Duck. The Bootle Beetle appeared in four cartoons with Donald and occasionally with young Ezra, and another Bootle Beetle (possible the one-and-the-same in his younger, more gullible days) named Herman, is the pet and traveling companion of Professor Ludwig von Drake, and is responsible for manning the projector during Prof. von Drake's many lectures (first seen in the revamped-for-television version of "Mickey and the Beanstalk" when Disney added new animation to replace the original narration of Edgar Bergen with that of the Professor). Nowadays Bootle Beetle usually appears in his elderly form as a kindly old story-telling grandfather-type in the Buckey Bug comic strips, often found in "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories." | ||
| LITTLE KNOWN SECRETS: | The name Bootle Beetle, according to Jack Hannah, Bootle's director, was said to have been inspired by a race horse named "Beetle Bootle" in Pomona whom Jack's wife knew. | ||
| WORKING THEORIES: | none |