Obituaries - July 6, 1994

Alfred Harvey; Firm’s Comics Included Casper, Sad Sack

Alfred Harvey, 80, who founded the company that marketed Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich and other comics. Harvey set up Harvey World Famous Comics in 1940 when he was 26. Its first offering was a magazine called Pocket Comics. Over the years, Harvey gave the world comic books, film and television cartoons of Casper, Richie Rich the Poor Little Rich Boy, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Baby Huey, Little Audrey, Little Dot and the military comic strip Sad Sack. The company’s library of 248 cartoons shown with feature films included sing-along musical shorts that urged audiences to “follow the bouncing ball” as words appeared on the screen. The top-selling comics company in its heyday, Harvey had slipped to fourth place by 1977 when its founder retired. The Harvey company was sold in 1989 to the Los Angeles-based HMH Communications. On Monday in Larchmont, N.Y.