Unknown director ("E. Hardon") | Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure / c. 1929

the woody pecker

by Douglas Messerli

 

“E. Hardon” (director) Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure / c. 1929

 

It’s somewhat odd that in the same year that the supposed first gay porno film was made, the first porno cartoon was released. Something was in the air in 1929 or late 1928 when a group of animators, evidently from different studios, got together to create a collation of coarse sexual jokes and pornographic tropes they put them into cartoon form. According to the Disney animator Ward Kimball, the collaboration included Raoul Barré, Max Fleischer, and Paul Terry’s studio, but others suggest that Walter Lantz, George Canata, George Vernon Stallings, and Rudy Zamora St. were also involved. The raunchy cartoon was in rumored to have been created in celebration for Disney cartoonist Winsor McCay.

     Evidently, they could find no one to print it in the US, so they sent it off to Cuba for the job, which explains its possible 1928 date of creation and its 1929 release.

     Eveready Harton wakes up with a woody, on the top of which he spots a fly which he sprays with some sort of bug repellent, his cock taking off to hide behind a nearby rock. Harton lovingly entices it back into its proper place.

     Somehow in the process, his schlong has gotten even longer. He takes out a pair of binoculars to observe nature engaging in which everybody does, a pup fucking a large dog attended by excited voyeur pups, two snakes engaged in the act; even the birds do it. And in the process his own snake seems to be lengthening. He spots a woman, wide open, enjoying herself with a dildo she implants in every orifice possible. Pointing his now engorged penis in the right direction, he takes out a little cart to wheel his member over to engage with his newfound lady friend.

      She’s more than a little willing, pointing him to her nipples before her clitoris pulls in his cock. Since he’s asked the lovely maid if she’ll share his treasure, we can even describe it as consensual sex. But he finds in her difficult to penetrate. Since this is the crudest of sexual jokes, the animators make it clear that her previous amours have left a few trinkets behind: a clock, a shoe, and, alas, a crab that walks off with Eveready’s balls and cock, sending him on a run after it.

      Finally, after it tosses the crab off, he meets up again with his meat.

    Now, a little alarmed, so the intertitle tells us, “Eveready looks for a safe place and discovers a subterranean passage.” Meaning, he spots a damsel on the beach with a large pile of sand over her body, and he takes a dive into the mound of sand only to find a man at the other end of his cock, who has evidently been doing his work undercover, so to speak.

    Presumably because of the tightness of the man’s butt, he has great difficulty in disengaging, dragging his unintended victim for quite a way before finally being able, with great effort, to jerk himself free.

 

     Giving up on folks, our unrelieved hero comes across a farmer giving great pleasure to a donkey, and waits for a few moments for him to finish. But when he continues, he suggests he might move aside for him to allow the donkey his treasure instead. The two end up in a sort of duel of swords with Harton biting the tip of his competitor’s tadger, which makes it go limp. But when he turns toward the still-waiting ass, it hurries off, leaving behind a cactus into which Eveready’s prick falls, leaving a great many little pins in his penis for him to pull out.

     The intertitles tell us: “Discouraged and disheartened Eveready decides to blow the whole thing.” Spotting a wall with small gloryhole in it, he sticks it through and allows a cow to lick it off.

      So ended the second decade of the 20th century, with two pornographic works depicting same gender sex. The next decade would see nothing so naughty—or nice, depending upon your point view about the open depiction of sex. The 20s were over and the Depression brought on a lot of twittering over gay sissy boys and severely dressed dykes until finally even that was almost completely silenced as if sex of any sort were no longer a proper subject to project onto the screen of our dreams.

  

Los Angeles, May 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).