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1933 |
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Popeye the Sailor is an American animated series of short films based on the Popeye comic strip character created by E. C. Segar. In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted Segar's characters into a series of theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. The plotlines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler than those presented in the comic strips, and the characters slightly different. A villain, usually Bluto, makes a move on Popeye's "sweetie," Olive Oyl. The villain clobbers Popeye until he eats spinach, giving him superhuman strength. Thus empowered, Popeye the sailor makes short work of the villain. Warner Bros. currently owns these cartoons. Three two-reel color shorts under the title Popeye Color Specials.
Popeye made his film debut in Popeye the Sailor, a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon. Although Betty has a small cameo appearance, the cartoon mostly introduces the main characters: Popeye's coming to rescue Olive Oyl after being kidnapped by Bluto. The triangle between Popeye, Olive and Bluto was set up from the beginning and soon became the template for most Popeye productions that would follow. The cartoon opens with a newspaper headline announcing Popeye as a movie star, reflecting the transition into film. I Yam What I Yam became the first entry in the regular Popeye the Sailor series.
Thanks to the animated shorts, Popeye became even more of a sensation than he had been in comic strips. As Betty Boop gradually declined in popularity as a result of Hays Code censorship undermining her characterization in 1934, Popeye became the studio's star character by 1936. Popeye began to sell more tickets and became the most popular cartoon character in the country in the 1930s, surpassing Mickey Mouse. Paramount added to Popeye's profile by sponsoring the "Popeye Club" as part of their Saturday matinée program, in competition with Mickey Mouse Clubs. Popeye cartoons, including a sing-along special entitled Let's Sing with Popeye, were a regular part of the weekly meetings. For a 10-cent membership fee, club members were given a Popeye kazoo, a membership card, the chance to become elected as the Club's "Popeye" or "Olive Oyl", and the opportunity to win other gifts. Polls taken by theater owners proved Popeye more popular than Mickey, and Popeye upheld his position for the rest of the decade.
Fleischer cartoons differed highly from their counterparts at Walt Disney Productions and Leon Schlesinger Productions. The Popeye series, like other cartoons produced by the Fleischers, had a more urban feel (the Fleischers' studio was in Midtown Manhattan), had plots that were variations on a single simple formula, and featured the characters' (often improvised) under-the-breath mutterings. The voices for Fleischer cartoons produced during the early and mid-1930s were recorded after the animation was completed. The actors, Mercer in particular, would therefore improvise lines that were not on the storyboards or prepared for the lip-sync (generally word-play and clever puns). Popeye lives in a dilapidated apartment building in A Dream Walking (1934), reflecting the urban feel and Depression-era hardships.
The Fleischers moved their studio to Miami, Florida, in September 1938 in order to weaken union control and take advantage of tax breaks. The Popeye series continued production, although a marked change was seen in the Florida-produced shorts: they were brighter and less detailed in their artwork. Also, the Fleischers began pre-recording dialog for lip-sync shortly after moving to Miami, so Mercer and the other voice actors would record ad-libbed lines while watching a finished copy of the cartoon to add the improvisational touch in the prior cartoons. Mae Questel, who started a family, refused to move to Florida, and Margie Hines, the wife of Jack Mercer, voiced Olive Oyl through the end of 1943. Several voice actors, among them Pinto Colvig (better known as the voice of Disney's Goofy), succeeded Gus Wickie as the voice of Bluto between 1938 and 1940.
Fleischer Studios produced 108 Popeye cartoons, 105 of them in black-and-white. The remaining three were two-reel (double-length) Technicolor adaptations of stories from the Arabian Nights billed as "Popeye Color Features": 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).
By the end of 1939, Max and Dave Fleischer had stopped speaking to each other altogether, communicating solely by memo. In 1940, they found themselves at odds with Paramount over the control of their animation studio. The studio borrowed heavily from Paramount in order to move to Florida and expand into features, and while their first feature, Gulliver's Travels (1939), was fairly successful, their second, Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941) was not, and left the Fleischers in signing at debt to Paramount. In May 1941, Paramount assumed ownership of Fleischer Studios. The Fleischers left, and Paramount began reorganizing the studio, which they renamed Famous Studios. With Famous Studios headed by Sam Buchwald, Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber and Dan Gordon, production continued on the Popeye shorts.
With World War II becoming a greater concern in the United States, Popeye enlisted into the U.S. Navy, as depicted in the 1941 short The Mighty Navy. His regular outfit was changed from the dark blue shirt with red-trimmed sailor collar and light blue bell-bottomed dungarees he wore in the original comics to an official US Navy sailor's white uniform, which he retained until the 1970s. Popeye becomes an ordinary, downtrodden, naval seaman in the wartime entries, usually getting the blame for mishaps. Film historian Leonard Maltin notes that the studio did not intend to make light of the war, but instead make Popeye more relevant with the times and show him in action. The early Famous-era shorts were often World War II-themed, featuring Popeye fighting Nazis and Japanese soldiers, most notably the 1942 short You're a Sap, Mr. Jap. As Popeye was popular in South America, Famous Studios set the 1944 cartoon We're on our Way to Rio in Brazil, as part of a "good neighbor" policy between the U.S. government and the rest of the hemisphere during the war.
In late 1943, the Popeye series was moved to Technicolor production, beginning with Her Honor the Mare. Though these cartoons were produced in full color, some films in the late-1940s period were released in less-expensive processes like Cinecolor and Polacolor. Paramount had begun moving the studio back to New York that January, and Mae Questel re-assumed voice duties for Olive Oyl. Jack Mercer was drafted into the Navy during World War II, and scripts were stockpiled for Mercer to record when on leave. When Mercer was unavailable, Harry Welch stood in as the voice of Popeye (and Shape Ahoy had Mae Questel doing Popeye's voice as well as Olive's). New voice cast member Jackson Beck began voicing Bluto within a few years; he, Mercer, and Questel would continue to voice their respective characters into the 1960s. Over time, the Technicolor Famous shorts began to adhere even closer to the standard Popeye formula, and softened, rounder character designs – including an Olive Oyl design which gave the character high heels and an updated hairstyle – were evident by late 1946.
Many established Fleischer animators stayed with Famous Studios and produced these new Popeye cartoons, but the loss of the founders was evident. Throughout the 1940s, the production values on Popeye remained relatively high. Animation historian Jerry Beck notes that, however, the "gag sense and story sense fell into a bit of a rut." By the mid-50s, budgets at the studio became tight and staff downsized, while still producing the same number of cartoons per year. This was typical of most animation studios at the time, as many considered shutting their doors entirely due to the competition from television. Paramount renamed the studio Paramount Cartoon Studios in 1956 and continued the Popeye series for one more year, with Spooky Swabs, released in August 1957, being the last of the 125 Famous shorts in the series.