Oil Can Harry

Oil Can Harry's actual first appearance was in The Banker's Daughter, which Terrytoons released on June 25, 1933. He was the most prominent and most memorable character in that film, but he was neither the star nor the hero. The former was Fanny Zilch, the titular daughter herself — young, beautiful, and perennially in distress from Harry's depredations. The latter was J. Leffingwell Strongheart - stalwart, handsome, big-chinned, Fanny's lover and constant rescuer. Fanny, Strongheart and Harry bore the same relationship to one another as Rosamond, Claude Eclair and Desperate Desmond, and with good reason. Both took their cues from the same old-time music hall melodramas — still a viable genre when the early silent movie serials were made, but an object of widespread parody by the 1930s. The three cavorted through a landscape that included sawmills, railroad tracks and other staples of the old-time serials. Harry (who, by the way, was said in that first outing to be Fanny's "third husband by a former mariage") was the most interesting because the villain usually is.