Little Audrey (above) was created in-house when Famous decided it was cheaper than paying for the rights to Little Lulu based on Marge Buell Henderson's comic strip character.

What is there to be gleaned from the wreckage of various Famous cartoons, Noveltoons, HarveyToons and Modern Madcaps? According to animation author and cartoon buff Jerry Beck, plenty. "Keep in mind," Jerry Beck observed, "the Paramount cartoons, like Warner, Disney and MGM, were made by an "A" studio and that these were "A" cartoons. It came down to budget, and Paramount had high budgets and a first-class operation. The animation is superb, and you can see that. Paramount cartoons had good art, good design and good animation. They are definitely worthy of study."

Jerry Beck further notes that "The studio really kick-started for a brief time in late 1957 (when the UPA influence finally began to make inroads). You begin to see really cool backgrounds and stylized character designs. It was a short-lived renaissance, but they were as good as any other studio's at that point. Occasionally they did experimental things. Take a look at Bouncing Benny (1960); it's actually cutout animation, just like South Park." Jerry Beck's observations can also be borne out with a look at Okey-Dokey Donkey (1958) and its startling graphic take on Spunky, or the sophisticated backgrounds in the Casper cartoon Spooking About Africa (1957) among others.

Besides, added Jerry Beck, "They're fun, like sitting down with a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a bag of chips! I love listening to Sid Raymond's voice. I love Arnold Stang. They are doing real acting and performing in these cartoons, and they created great vocal characters. Baby Huey and Katnip are very funny characters. There are some good stories in some of the Little Audreys, and there are some great Caspers. There's an art and professionalism to most of the HarveyToons. Don't forget, these were essentially the same guys who worked on Gulliver's Travels. There's gold to be mined -- even if you have to pan a lot of fool's gold first."

Animator Marty Taras contributed the dopey star Baby Huey, who is best described as the Incredible Hulk among his fellow ducks.

Very good points, indeed. For my own part, I saw perhaps all of the cartoons on these discs at one time or another while I was growing up, particularly when the HarveyToons were regularly featured on television. Even then, it struck me that I was looking at shorts that were almost reductive in nature, as if they had been produced by people who understood what cartoons were and what they were supposed to do, but for some reason could not match up the ingredients in the correct order or amounts. They are, rather, quasi-cartoons, especially some of the Modern Madcaps and Noveltoons. They are animated, they have characters, but there is an unsettling emptiness that runs through many of them. For all their production quality, these cartoons are eerily generic.

Jerry Beck, in pondering this phenomenon, related to me that, "Famous had what I call, 'The Shemp Effect.' By the time Shemp joined the Three Stooges in the 1950s, the Stooges had forgotten what made slapstick humor so funny, like it was with Curly in the '40s. When Shemp joined, the poking and hitting became violent. It became more cruel than humorous, and it wasn't as funny anymore. There was just something weird about the violence. That's Herman and Katnip. The guys at Famous studios in New York City could only go to the theaters and see these successful Tom and Jerry cartoons and try to figure out what was so funny. They saw that people got a laugh when Tom was hit with an iron and his face came out shaped like one, but it was more than that. It's the way it was done, the timing and direction, and the Famous crew didn't get that. So they put in all these incredibly violent gags and they just don't play."

After our conversation, it came together for me, especially why these cartoons looked so different then and still do today. I now realize why HarveyToons matter and why any serious animation fan should buy and review everything in the set: The HarveyToons are a stark template for the rules of American theatrical animation, with its most simple conventions nakedly on display. They are six minutes of basic, generic, Hollywood cartooning, stripped-down skeletons compared to the more sophisticated cartoons produced at other studios during the same period. The HarveyToons do, however, have production values that keep them from being the visual equivalent of their writing and direction, and thus one's attention is held despite the many conceptual flaws on display.

Herman the mouse starred in an early series as pal to a henpecked rooster, but when he was paired with a vicious, stupid feline named Katnip (above), both characters became popular mainstays.

In short, the HarveyToons are what cartoons from 1950-60 are in their most elemental forms. Occasionally they may surprise and give more, but mostly they give less. They are not truly weak imitations of Disney, Warner, or MGM cartoons. It would be closer to the truth to say that the HarveyToons are lesser representations of them with equal budgets. There is something sweetly sad about the Famous cartoons; like their star, Casper. They were cute, friendly and worked hard to be accepted, but they were ghosts of what real cartoons would have been at the other A-budget studios.

Because of this, they are invaluable. If you were a kid and you were watching these HarveyToons in any given order, without any thought to direction, pace, story, or timing, you would be getting an education in the basic language of the American theatrical cartoon. If you were to further your growth as an animation aficionado, scholar, or critic, you would begin with this collection; in order to appreciate the most significant work created at Disney, UPA, MGM or Warner, you would first watch and analyze the Famous output. Consider that the writers on The Simpsons have acknowledged that their inspiration for Itchy and Scratchy, the most reductive and violent chase cartoon ever conceived, was Herman and Katnip cartoons.

The day of the theatrical cartoon is long over. Nearly everyone who labored on the HarveyToons has passed on. Paramount closed its animation studio in 1967. Harvey Comics, the last home of many Famous characters, is likewise defunct, although the indefatigable Casper marches on in various media. The HarveyToons collection, in fact, was carelessly tossed out into the market without extras, commentaries, or even so much as an episode guide.

As Jerry Beck ruefully commented, "It's as if the customer is Mom, going to Wal Mart, picking it up and saying, 'Oh, here's a big collection of cartoons! I'll just bring it home, put it on, and let the kids watch it all afternoon while I'm busy making the turkey.' With no care and no love for what the product is. It seems like it was just designed to be a babysitter."

Jerry Beck is right; in truth, the HarveyToons collection is a lost opportunity.

Unless someday one of those kids in front of the TV begins to muse, "I've never seen these cartoons before! I wonder who made them..."

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.