Redartz: "Well, blow me down!" This week, way back in 1929, a monumental event was recorded in the newspapers of the day: the first appearance of a squinty-eyed, massively muscled, pipe smoking sailor named Popeye. He actually started as a bit player in a comic strip called "Thimble Theatre", but soon his popularity propelled him into a starring role. Popeye's creator was Elzie Segar, who told his tales until 1938, when Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf took the reins (upon Segar's passing). These tales were filled with humor and adventure, and with many odd characters. Among Popeye's acquaintances were Olive Oyl (his girlfriend, who actually preceded him in "Thimble Theatre"), her brother Castor ("Castor Oyl", get it?) and J. Wellington Wimpy (eternally in search of a free meal). His foes included Bluto and the Sea Hag. And then there were those characters less simple to categorize: remember Eugene the Jeep? Alice the Goon? And that's just the tiniest tip of the iceberg.
Many of us probably met these characters first in the Popeye cartoons that were omnipresent on Saturday mornings and afterschool afternoons. Whether the theatrical cartoons from Max Fleisher Studios...
Or the television cartoons from King Features...
...chances are every one of us could sing his theme song by heart. Certainly the melody will live eternally in our collective memories. As will the perfect voice characterizations: Jack Mercer's Popeye and Mae Questal's Olive Oyl. Those cartoons were definitely among my favorites; and I for one was very pleased to eventually learn that the spinach-munching hero was featured in print!
Our UK friends may have encountered Popeye in an Annual such as this one...
This brief overview is but a taste; a prompter for your memories and opinions. Let's discuss all things relevant to Popeye and his various "entertainminks"...
24 comments:
I mean, bless 'im for trying to get youngsters to favor the culinary horror that is (and especially at the time, WAS---) canned spinach. . .
. . . but ol' eternal Popeye just never, ever resonated with me, even in my earliest years of cartoon watching. Partly because it wasn't run regularly on any of our local channels. . . and I don't think it had a network Saturday morning slot that I can recall starting around, say, 1965.
I think. . . I think it was his voice (and Olive Oyl's) as much as anything. Much like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. . . the effort to make them "funny" in the extreme (to make them more interesting to children, I guess?) pushed them beyond the point of having any nuance whatsoever. And tho I were but a wee tyke of 4 or 5, I STILL wanted to be able to understand what the heck the characters were saying. I was character-driven even then. . .
But I do absolutely admire him as an endearing and enduring Comics institution that made the jump into pop-cultural/societal immortality. No hate on 'im from me at all on that score.
Quick question: Is he indeed supposed to be missing an eye? Or does his name refer to the fact that he always opens one eye VERY wide, while squinting with the other one? 'Cause I watched enough of his cartoons to see that they often made a bit out of him using one eye and then the other. . . but never both at once. . . What's the Real Story on that score??
HB
I did watch Popeye cartoons as a kid, but don't really remember much about them. The Robin Williams movie was terrible if I recall (though I'm not sure if I've actually seen it all the way through) and I never read any Popeye comics, so I guess I wouldn't really call myself a big fan.
Coincidentally, I just reviewed a comic (Action Comics #566) on my blog that's an homage (or rip-off) of Popeye, guest-starring Captain Strong as the Popeye analogue. There are versions of Olive Oyl, Wimpey, and the Sea Hag as well, but the story didn't impress me much, especially for 1985 ... it reads like something straight out of the Silver Age.
Yeah, I was never the biggest Popeye fan. Like HB, the cartoons never did much for me when I was little, and I was never interested in the comics, either (in newspaper or comic books). Later, though, in my late teens, I learned to appreciate the cartoons a little more, though, as I realized Popeye's sort of mumbling dialogue contained some funny lines. An example would one from the 1950s or earlier (it was black and white) in which he walks into a gym and sees a rather attractive woman exercising in it, and says, "Oh, what fine equipment they have here!" That would have flown right over my head when I was a kid.
I absolutely watched Popeye regularly after school hours. Then even into my early twenties, but it had to be those early B&W with his funny quips under his breath, or into the fifties before the animation took a crap like many others.
Nice cast of characters including Swee'Pea and Eugene the Jeep.
Line of demarcation for which episodes I'll watch; If it's Bluto good to go, if it's Brutus no go!
HB- regarding canned spinach, they actually hhave a "Popeye " brand, replete with his smiling face on the label. We generally use DelMonte, though.
As for the eye- very good question. It seems like I've seen images of him 'wide-eyed ', but nothing specific comes to mind. Trying to remember some of those cartoons...
Mike W- Captain Strong! Yes! Didn't he get his strength from some analogue to spinach? That cover with him squeezing the phone booth was rather amusing...
Edo- love that little quote. You're right, he often seemed to mutter things just on the edge of hearing. Makes you wonder just what he did say.
Regarding the early toons- have you ever seen Popeye's film debut? It was in a Betty Boop feature. They screened it one year at the Chicago Comic Con during an evening cartoon festival. Rather odd seeing him dancing alongside Betty...
I know an obscene joke involving Popeye but I won't say it because this is a family blog ;)
I can't recall ever seeing any UK Popeye annuals but I definitely remember the cartoons and the theme tune.
Hiya,
I do remember being perturbed when the local CBS station switched out it's meager collection of Warner Bros. cartoons for an equally meager selection of Popeye's from the Forties and Fifties, well past the Fleischers time with the property. Not that these were necessarily bad, just not Daffy enough for me.
I remember one cartoon where it was heavily implied that Popeye shot his sidekick at the very end. That Was Dark.
I became more appreciative of the comic strip when I was able to get a look at some collections of early pieces, later Segar and Sagendorf. Might be heretical to suggest this, but I preferred Sagendorf's interpretation of the character. And this was before I had one of his assistants as an instructor at the Madison Area Technical College. God, I wish I could remember his name.
Really good teacher and used to work with Joe Sinnott on the Lone Ranger comic book.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
Red! I really dig the trip down the memory lane that zigzags around the "Big 2!"
This is awesome! It made my day.
Could the likes of Underdog? Speed Racer? Casper the Ghost? Sad Sack? be in our future??? Sure hope so!!!
In brief, my recollections of Popeye:
1) The whole school yard walked around imitating Wimpy's, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." for months and months.
2) The intro song was corrupted to "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, I live in a garbage can...." for months and years at the school yard. Oddly, my dad and uncles shared their version from the early 1940s, LOL. Seems the theme song was well known by earlier generations as well!
3) I was always confused why Brutus in the newer Popeye cartoons was originally Bluto in the original black and whites? Maybe Popeye taught the art of confusing kids to the Big 2, lol? (And IIRC, didn't Brutus even have a 3rd name? Or perhaps he had no name in the earliest episodes?)
4) Loved seeing the old B&W Popeyes when they were released on the kid's cartoon shows finally. They were the talk of the school yard with everyone trying to figure out what Popeye was always mumbling, LOL.
5) I did stumble across some Tijuana Bible comics of Popeye at a Chicago Comic Con. Rather... ummm... informative. Nuff said.
6) Lastly - I can't recall the shows that featured Popeye after school in Chicago Land? I have no recall of seeing them on Saturdays, just week days. Arghhh.... where is my memory?
7) Oh.... I did have Popeye comics and think I still have a few in the long boxes just for nostalgia! There's more to life than the Big 2, lol!
Thanks again Red! Much obliged!
Wow, Popeye, that's a blast from the past. Definitely how my parents got me to eat spinach, I can still hear my Dad telling me how it made Popeye "strong to the finish". Of course it's still one of my favorite veggies..
Yeah, I loved the cartoons, but got very confused when they started mixing the newer ones in with the old "who the heck is Brutus?", even at the young age I was at the time, I could tell there was a big drop off in quality. Probably why I stopped watching them.
The best part of the cartoons was voice actor Jack Mercer, his mumblings it what made the show so memorable, from what I recall reading, most of the stuff was ad-libbed, which made it quite unique and perhaps that's why some of the double-entendre stuff made it into the show.
I do have to admit I liked the movie, it doesn't follow the cartoons, it's closer to the newspaper strip. I thought the cast was good, Ray Walston was good an' salty as Poopdeck Pappy, Shelly Duvall seemed to be born to play Olive Oyl, I even liked Robin Williams as Popeye, his mugging for the camera worked well here. The songs were ok, not great, but seemed a good fit for the movie. It just took so darn long to get him to eat the spinach, lol.
Charlie, you were in Chicago, I'm from Jersey, but I know the reworked Popeye theme too, at the time it was right up there with "Jingle bells, Batmen smells" and the "Comet will make you vomit" songs, haha.
I don't recall having any Popeye comics though, which is weird, because I had ones from just about every cartoon that was out there, go figure.
Red, just to go back a post, here is the name of the Hembeck marvel book "The Marvel Universe According to Hembeck", and thanks for keeping the bronze age alive.
Red, the spinach substitute that Captain Strong used was called "sauncha"; I think it was originally supposed to be some kind of seaweed, but later it was said to have come from another planet ... like I said, pure Silver Age!
I forgot to mention another Popeye thing from my childhood, Popeye candy cigarettes. I'm not sure if those were ever sold in the United States, but here in Canada they were everywhere when I was a kid (late 70s/early 80s). Talk about getting kids started young ...
A Popeye story (sort of)...
My uncle was on Convoy PQ 17, the biggest convoy massacre in history, during WW2. July 1942.
He was stranded in a lifeboat with a dozen others for about a month, floating around the Arctic Circle well north of Norway. They survived on half a cup of water a day.
Eventually the U-Boat that sunk his ship picked them up and took them POW to Germany. On the U-Boat they were given scant rations, no fresh food of any type.
As he entered the POW camp in Germany, a brit who was tending a garden pulled out and threw him a head of lettuce saying "Here you go yank! You look like you need it!"
My uncle wolfed it down. He said, "Oh my god... I felt like Popeye eating a can of spinach!!! I could just feel the vitamins going through my whole body immediately!!!" He was so incredibly animated telling me that, lol. I mean, his eyes lit up!
Anyhow, it's cool how "comics" can create a common understanding like that. As a kid I immediately understood what he meant! And "Popeye" was exactly what he meant!
Without Popeye, I never would have eaten spinach. Loved it at a very young non-veggie-loving age because I just knew it would give me huge “musckles” just like Popeye. It’s one of the first cartoons I remember seeing.
Nothing to do with the topic but I've just been watching the Beatles film 'A Hard Day's Night' for the first time. I'll be kind and say it was tolerable...
Congratulations on getting a sensible president again but now that Trump has gone it means that our own dear Prime-Minister is officially the Western World's #1 idiot.
It's been a rough couple o' weeks round here, Colin-- no mistake. This was a much-needed good day. And the fact that the (confirmed) threats of violence didn't materialize was an enormous relief.
Sorry about Boris, tho. Yeesh. . .
On the subject of dodgy fascists, Mussolini banned comic strips in Italy but apparently had to allow Popeye - or rather Thimble Theatre as I suppose it would have been then - because it was so popular.
I recall Popeye cartoons on tv as a kid, but they were never a must see.
Later, in the early 80s Fantagraphics published a great magazine about old comic strips called Nemo - which introduced me to all sorts of wonderful things, from Krazy Kat to Alex Raymond's work - together with an associated book line.
On the strength of their enthusiasm for EC Segar as one of the greats, I tried one of their Thimble Theatre books reprinting some of the early strips. Sorry, but it didn't do it for me.
-sean
No love for the Robin Williams flick, Redartz?
-sean
HB, a couple of years ago Boris Johnson said that Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize but we had far worse Trump toadies than Boris. However, in the last few weeks it's been both amusing and pathetic to see our Conservative Party trying to distance themselves from Trump like rats deserting a sinking ship.
Apologies for the political stuff - OK, back to Popeye...
I earlier mentioned watching 'A Hard Day's Night' on TV (well, streamed to my laptop actually) and on the same day several other Beatles-connected coincidences occurred. I was in my local supermarket and I saw a book called "The Last Days Of John Lennon" and then as I was walking around the same supermarket they played the songs "Here Comes The Sun" by the Beatles and "My Guy" by Mary Wells. What has Mary Wells got to do with the Beatles you may ask. In 1964 "My Guy" was the song that ended the Beatles' 14-week run at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. And I got that fact from one of those Joel Whitburn books, Red :)
Flamekeeper- many thanks for the i.d. on the Hembeck book. Will look for that. And thanks also for the kind words! Hope you continue to enjoy our little meetings here!
Mike W- sauncha. Well, it starts with an 's'. Does have that Silver Age feel, as you say...
And Popeye candy cigarettes? Whoa....that's new to me. Shouldn't it have been candy corn cob pipes?
Charlie- great story about your uncle! His tale would make a good graphic novel...
And glad you liked the topic. Sad Sack? Hmm...could be.......more humor to come!
Sean- on the Robin Williams "Popeye" film- honestly, it's hard to recall much about it. Saw it when it debuted, but not since. Seems like it was enjoyable enough, but to be accurate it would be best to watch it again with these older eyes. What was your take on it?
Colin- Quite the Beatlish day there! So have you seen "Help!"? And if so, what did you think of that one (it's a favorite of my wife, btw).
Oh, and those Joel Whitburn books are a trove of trivia. And helpful when trying to pin down some old tunes...
Red, no I haven't seen Help! but if it comes on TV I'll watch it. I have seen Yellow Submarine though.
Red - As I've said before, Sad Sack is closer to the real military than any DC comic, lol.
But really, this was a great post. And the remarks show that Popeye's influence was well beyond the USA. He mad an impression far and wide with the Spinach thing.
Regarding Charlie's comment, I should mention that I've never tasted spinach, canned or otherwise, and I don't think I've even seen any spinach on sale in the shops. I'll look more closely next time I'm in the supermarket.
It's now three days later and yes my local supermarket does indeed sell spinach but only the fresh variety (sealed in plastic bags). Next time I'll buy some and make spinach sandwiches :)
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