Vegetable Magnetism

Vengeance is a tool for the powerless. 

And what better revenge could a 1930s movie-going public muster than the absurdist act of turning stars into nourishment?  Take that vision of hate and spittle, Ned Sparks, pulling faces never before seen on the front of a human head. Sparks was the Great Depression’s favorite specialty item: a purple carrot. 

Arguably a sweet onion, Frank McHugh had bone-weary audiences drooling in the aisles. 

John Litel made a fine rutabaga. 

Hand-carved parsnip, Edward Everett Horton, gave our pre-Code vegetable garden nuance.  But mainly we craved cartoon food – entertainment that mixed problem-solving and problem-salving for a seventy-five to eighty-minute span.  We liked excitable, doughy screen personas as stand-ins that brought our truth to new lows.

Coming Soon!

Pat O'Brien as Spud.

by Daniel Riccuito and David Cairns

Art by Tony Millionaire