Harvey Toons Again
did one of these involve an inamate man stuck a bar, and the bartender telling the story of how he got there, and how the bartender now must force-feed the frozen man beer and pretzels to keep him alive? disturbed me as a kid. i've see the cannibal cartoon, and i recall this frozen-bar-guy cartoon having similiar animation
The "frozen man" was a skid-row bum who found a singing flea. Most of the cartoon had him chasing the flea across town as it hitched rides on assorted canine butts. He finally catches it, and, certain it will fetch him fame and fortune, he shows it to his pal, the bartender -- who instantly swats the nasty insect. Boing! The unfortunate fellow turns into a catatonic statue. The bartender tells this all in flashback to a new customer who is understandably curious about the disheveled, raggedly-whiskered man staring into space. (The barkeep feels obligated to force-feed the catatonic fellow beer and pretzels -- I remember wondering, "What about 'tother end?" as a child.) Besides being disturbed that a human being could be reduced to such a state, I don't think I've ever seen a seven-minute cartoon with more cigarettes and alcohol in it -- and some of the songs the flea sang were rather risque . . .
The more I think of them, the more Harvey toons return to haunt me. One had a boy who liked dressing as a spaceman, with a plastic spacesuit, fishbowl helmet that revealed only his eyes, and a plastic raygun. He rolls off on a scooter -- and an actual alien, dressed exactly the same, lands in his backyard. The boy's mother drags the alien off on a shopping trip, and the bemused extraterrestrial causes havoc that the mother manages never to see, levitating cars and people, disintegrating things, etc. Most grotesque scene: A mastiff-like dog next door keeps barking at the alien. Mother says, "I wish that dog would shut up!" The obliging little spaceman fires his raygun at it. The dog is reduced to a skeleton -- that still stands, strains against its leash, and works its jaw as if barking -- but there's no noise.
Another toon was a silly travelogue of Italy. The narrator mentions that modern/ abstract art is big in Italy. We see a shapely female model, back to the audience, and an artist painting her portrait. "I am finished, Senhorita!" he cries, revealing the portrait: The hair, shoulders and body of the woman are natural enough, but her face is a blue-green cubistic nightmare with ears and eyes placed randomly, like a Shoggoth sculpted of Lego blocks. The model rises, picks up her purse, turns, and walks away -- and we see that she has the same face!! Hated approaching women from behind for a long time, in case they turned and revealed . . .
Then there was a "new car" cartoon, with the usual gags, like driving out of the showroom with a new auto and having it fall to pieces within seconds. At one point the narrator advises drivers to be careful at railway crossings. We see an anthropomorphic dog stop at a crossing, look both ways -- we see nothing out to the horizon in both directions -- then he putters across. A train explodes out of nowhere and smashes the car (and presumably the dog) into a million bits.
Well, the same happens to Wile E. Coyote frequently. But this epic cuts to the engineer, an ugly anthropomorphic pig, who looks back at the accident, pulls out a rubber stamp, and stamps a car silhouette on the side of the locomotive, amongst many other silhouettes. And he rears back and gives out the craziest laugh I ever heard.
As strange as these toons were, it seems stranger in retrospect that they were packaged for pre-schoolers! The Warner and Popeye cartoons came on in the afternoon, but the Harveys were shown when anyone over the age of six would be gone to school. So all these disturbing images were crammed into my head by the time I was in Kindergarten. That's why today I sit in the corner and gibber quietly to myself.
