Popeye
Entry updated 27 May 2024. Tagged: Character, Film, TV.
Popeye was created by Elzie Crisler Segar (1894-1938) for Thimble Theatre – his syndicated newspaper comic strip that began in 1919 – first appearing in the strip for 17 January 1929: the character's popularity led to its being renamed Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye a couple of years later. He subsequently featured in Comic books, animated cartoons, 1930s Radio shows and the live action movie Popeye (1980) starring Robin Williams. It is the animated shorts that have proven most enduring, Popeye being more popular than Mickey Mouse (see the Walt Disney Company) for much of the 1930s.
Fleischer Studios (see Max Fleischer) produced 109 Popeye films between 1933-1943, all 6-10 minutes and in black and white, save for three longer films (16-21 minutes) in colour: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936), Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937) and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1939). After the failure of the Fleischer's feature length film Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941) Paramount Pictures took over Fleischer Studios, renaming it Famous Studios, with the Fleischer Brothers departing. Famous Studios produced 122 Popeye shorts of 6-10 minutes between 1942 and 1957: 14 in black and white, the rest in colour. These 231 works were all originally intended to be part of a film programme at a movie theatre, but in 1960 King Features Syndicate commissioned 220 new shorts for Television syndication, rapidly produced over a two-year period and aired as Popeye the Sailor (1960-1963). Aside from occasional one-offs, other television shows have been The All New Popeye Hour (1978-1983, 56 episodes; later shortened and retitled The Popeye and Olive Comedy Show) and Popeye and Son (1987, 13 episodes), both produced by Hanna-Barbera. There has also been a web series, Popeye's Island Adventures (2018, 25 episodes).
Popeye was usually voiced by William "Billy" Costello (1933-1935) and Jack Mercer (1935-1984); the other main characters being Olive Oyl, initially voiced by Bonnie Poe, then Mae Questel (1933-1938, 1943-1957) and Margie Hines (1938-1943); and Bluto (renamed Brutus for the first television shorts), usually voiced by William Pennell (1933-1935), Gus Wickie (1935-1938), then several actors until Jackson Beck (1944-1962). Other regulars were the hamburger-focused Wimpy (full name J Wellington Wimpy) – mainly voiced by Lou Fleischer (1934-1940) and Jack Mercer (1960-1972) – and the baby, Sweet Pea.
This entry concentrates on the Fleischer Studios animated shorts. The main animators during this era were Willard Bowsky, Roland Crandall, William Henning, Seymour Kneitel and David Tendlar. Most stories revolved around the love triangle of Popeye, a sailor man – pipe smoker, strong, somewhat rough-edged, but good-hearted; Bluto, a large bearded and immensely strong bully; and Olive Oyl, tall, lanky and a little dizzy. Olive's relationship with the other two varies depending on the story: sometimes she is Popeye's girlfriend, sometimes saved by Popeye from the other's unwelcome advances, or at other times wondering which of her two competing beaux to choose. Typically, these or other circumstances lead to conflict between Popeye and Bluto: the latter wins the early rounds, but then Popeye whips out and devours a can of spinach, enabling him to defeat Bluto with humiliating ease. The spinach gives him Superpowers, predominantly super strength but others too – for example, in Bridge Ahoy (1936) he is able to Magnetize and control iron. A great deal of imagination as shown in the variations of this simple formula, which would also be sent up on occasion – such as when Popeye turns to the audience and asks for a can of spinach (fortunately one member is able to oblige). Though usually a damsel in distress for Popeye to rescue (see Women in SF, Feminism), Olive was frequently an active participant in events, her long rubbery limbs and body being ideal for slapstick – a contrast to the more passive roles of most animated (and non-animated) actresses of that era; in Shoein' Hosses (1934) she is a blacksmith. The Humour is both visual and verbal, the former involving heavy doses of cartoon physics; the latter including Popeye's semi-improvised mutterings – which Olive and Bluto would also engage in. Bluto is absent from several shorts, and occasionally Olive is too.
Apart from Popeye's superpowers and the cartoon physics, the plots tend to be mundane – but there are exceptions, the most obvious being the three colour films (see below). There is also Shiver Me Timbers! (1934), with a ghost ship inhabited by ghosts and living skeletons (see Supernatural Creatures). In Goonland (1938) Popeye is looking for his Pappy, finding him on an island inhabited by the Goons, who are giants (see Great and Small) with proboscis noses, their bodies skinny, save for overdeveloped upper bodies. The fight scene ends with the film reel tearing and all the Goons falling off, but with Popeye and Pappy clinging to the torn edge as live action hands repair it with a safety pin (see Absurdist SF). The Goons had first appeared in Thimble Theatre: cartoonist Bud Sagendorf, assistant to Segar and involved with Popeye (but not the animations) until 1986, said the Goons were originally from the Moon, making them Aliens, rather than a Lost Race. In this short a sign reads "Goon Island, humans keep off". Spike Milligan adopted the name for The Goon Show (1951-1960). Ghosks Is the Bunk (1939) has paint that turns whatever it covers Invisible.
Also of note is the excellent A Dream Walking (1934), where Olive is sleepwalking across the city, with Popeye and Bluto each trying to save her and stop the other from doing so: the core scene being her wandering over a construction site whose metal structures resemble an M C Escher landscape; at one point Popeye and Bluto are briefly unconscious, joining her sleepwalk. Olive, having fortuitously and gracefully avoided all dangers, makes it back to her bedroom, where photos of Popeye and Bluto hang on each side of the bed. There is a dizzyingly high, architecturally impossible roller coaster in King of the Mardi Gras (1935); whilst Lost and Foundry (1937) has Sweet Pea playing on the implausible machinery (see Machines) at the Useless Machine Works.
The trilogy of colour films all drew inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights (see Arabic SF). Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936) begins with Sinbad (that is, Bluto), who lives "on an island on the back of a whale", boasting in song about his exploits: though we are shown the chest of diamonds he took from the "valley of serpents", we mainly see the beasts he has captured and chained on the island, which include dragons, a two-headed giant, a Roc and enormous snakes. He is interrupted by a singing Popeye as he passes the island on his boat, with Olive and Wimpy as passengers. On Sinbad's orders the Roc wrecks the ship and bring him Olive: so Popeye swims to the island to rescue her; Wimpy is more interested in turning a duck into a meal. After dealing with the two-headed giant and the Roc, Popeye squares up to Sinbad and – aided by spinach – defeats him. The film still impresses, being visually inventive and lively, with the Fleischer's "Stereoptical Camera" (that is, a multiplane camera) giving a surreal 3D effect: Ray Harryhausen stated that Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor was an important influence on his The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958).
Next came Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937); this has the same trio in a boat that can convert into an aeroplane, as they look for Abu Hassan (Bluto) and his forty thieves: eventually Olive is captured and Popeye rescues her by defeating Abu Hassan. At one point his pipe (unaided by spinach) turns into an oxyacetylene torch. The film is enjoyable, but not as good as its predecessor. Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1939) opens with Olive as a scriptwriter at a film studio coming up with the ideas for a story: an inept Villain attempts to get a Magic lamp using Aladdin (Popeye), but it is the latter who gets the lamp, using it to court a princess (Olive has cast herself in this role). After the villain recovers the lamp there is a battle between him, with the power of the lamp, and Popeye, with the power of spinach: spinach wins. Olive's story gets her the sack. Bluto and Wimpy – and the Stereoptical Camera – do not appear. Again, not at the level of the first, but fun. [SP]
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