Popeye the Sailor (film series)


Popeye the Sailor is an American animated series of comedy short films based on the titular 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 Popeye the Sailor 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.
The Fleischer cartoons, based out of New York City, proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and would remain a staple of Paramount's release schedule for nearly 25 years. Paramount would take control of the studio in 1941 and rename it Famous Studios, ousting the Fleischer brothers and continuing production. The theatrical Popeye cartoons began airing on television in an altered form in 1956, at which point the Popeye theatrical series was discontinued in 1957. Popeye the Sailor in all produced 231 short subjects that were broadcast on television for numerous years, garnering enormous popularity with new generations.
These cartoons are now owned by Warner Bros. through Turner Entertainment Co. After many years of negotiations, Warner Home Video reached an agreement with King Features Syndicate for an official DVD release of the series. Restored and unedited Popeye cartoons through 1943 were released on DVD in the late 2000s. The 1930s Popeye cartoons have been noted by historians for their urban feel, with the Fleischers pioneering an East Coast animation scene that differed highly from their counterparts. In addition to becoming iconic within mainstream public consciousness, the majority of Popeye short subjects are highly acclaimed by animation historians and fans.

Early history

Popeye the Sailor, created by E.C. Segar, debuted in his King Features-distributed comic strip, Thimble Theatre. The character was growing in popularity by the 1930s and there was "hardly a newspaper reader of the Great Depression that did not know his name." It was obvious, however, that stars of a larger magnitude were being launched from animated cartoons, with the success of Mickey Mouse. In November 1932, King Features signed an agreement with Fleischer Studios, run by producer Max Fleischer and his brother, director Dave Fleischer, to have Popeye and the other Thimble Theatre characters begin appearing in a series of animated cartoons. The first cartoon in the series was released in 1933, and Popeye cartoons, released by Paramount Pictures, would remain a staple of Paramount's release schedule for nearly 25 years.
One source of inspiration for the Fleischers were newspapers and comic strips, and they saw potential in Popeye as an animated star, thinking the humor would translate well onscreen. When the Fleischers needed more characters, they turned to Segar's strip: Wimpy debuted in the first regular Popeye cartoon, Swee'Pea, Poopdeck Pappy, the Goons and Eugene the Jeep arrived onscreen by the late 1930s. Popeye was also given more family exclusive to the shorts, specifically his look-alike nephews Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye. Spinach became a main component of the Popeye cartoons and were used for the energetic finale in each. Eventually, the Fleischers paired Popeye and spinach together far more than Segar ever did. In 1934, a statistic was released noting that spinach sales had increased 33% since the creation of the Popeye cartoons. Segar received crates of spinach at his home because of the Popeye association. The huge child following Popeye received eventually prompted Segar's boss, William Randolph Hearst, to order Segar to tone down the humor and violence. Segar was not ready to compromise, believing there would be "nothing funny about a sissy sailor."

Voice cast

Many voice artists worked on the Popeye shorts over the two decades of production; this list is based on the most comprehensive artists.
Popeye made his film debut in Popeye the Sailor, a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon. Although Betty Boop 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 quality as a result of Hays Code enforcement 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 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 Warner Bros. Cartoons. The Popeye series, like other cartoons produced by the Fleischers, had an urban feel, its manageable variations on a simple theme, and the characters' "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. Even after the Fleischers began pre-recording dialog for lip-sync shortly after moving to Miami, Mercer and the other voice actors would record ad-libbed lines while watching a finished copy of the cartoon. Popeye lives in a dilapidated apartment building in A Dream Walking, 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, with attempts to bring the character animation closer to a Disney style. 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, 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 Technicolor adaptations of stories from the Arabian Nights billed as "Popeye Color Features": Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.

Famous Studios

By the end of 1939, Max and Dave 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 Gulliver's Travels and Mister Bug Goes to Town were only moderate successes. In May 1941, Paramount Pictures assumed ownership of Fleischer Studios. Paramount fired the Fleischers and 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.
In 1941, with World War II becoming a greater concern in the United States, Popeye was enlisted into the U.S. Navy, as depicted in the 1941 short The Mighty Navy. His regular costume was changed from the dark blue shirt, red neckerchief and light blue jeans he wore in the original comics to an official white Navy sailor 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 continent 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 two-color processes like Cinecolor and Polacolor. Paramount had begun moving the studio back to New York that January, and Mae Questel reassumed 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. 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.

Music and theme song

Popeye's signature theme song was composed by Sammy Lerner and premiered in the first Popeye cartoon in 1933. Cartoon music historian Daniel Goldmark notes that Popeye is one of few cartoon characters of the time to have a theme: Disney/Warner Bros. composer Carl Stalling and MGM's Scott Bradley disliked themes and phased them out quickly. For the first few cartoons, the opening-credits music consisted of an instrumental of "The Sailor's Hornpipe," followed by a vocal variation on "Strike Up the Band," substituting the words "for Popeye the Sailor" in the latter phrase. "I Yam What I Yam" was used as the theme song for further cartoons. Goldmark divides the Popeye theme into two parts: the sailor horn pipe and the lyrical portion. The opening horn pipe can be dated back to the 1700s and further as a traditional sea shanty. Winston Sharples and Sammy Timberg composed most of the music for Popeye shorts. Timberg composed the themes to the Fleischers' Betty Boop and Superman cartoons, but asked Lerner to write Popeye's theme song because he had a date that night.
The music of Popeye is described as a mix of "sunny show tunes and music from the street." Being located on Broadway, the Fleischers were well placed for popular music developments in the 1930s. Director Eric Goldberg notes a very urban feel to the music of Popeye, reflecting "the type of cartoons they were making." The Fleischers were big fans of jazz and would approach local jazz musicians to work on the cartoons, most of whom were more than happy to oblige. The use of jazz and very contemporary popular music highlighted how audiences were fascinated by new music. Tight on a budget, the producers took advantage of their free access to the Paramount music library, including hit songs that would be introduced in feature films. Many cartoons, such as It's the Natural Thing to Do, take their titles from popular songs of the time. Staff songwriters would also write original songs for the shorts, such as in 1936's Brotherly Love and I Wanna Be a Lifeguard; the studio would hire outside songwriters to compose originals in addition. With the onset of World War II, the music in Popeye became more lush, fully orchestrated and patriotic.
For generations, the iconic Popeye theme song became an instantly recognizable musical bookmark, further propelling the character's stardom.

Theatrical ''Popeye'' cartoons on television

The original 1932 agreement with the syndicate called for any films made within 10 years and any elements of them to be destroyed in 1942. This would have destroyed all of the Fleischer Popeye shorts. King was not sure what effect the cartoons would have on the strip; if the effect was very negative, King was very eager to erase any memory of the cartoons by destroying them. Paramount knew that the Popeye cartoons were among their best-selling and most popular, and they held them separately for future distribution, seeing television as a rising outlet.
In 1955, Paramount put their cartoon and shorts library up for television sale. U.M. & M. TV Corporation acquired the majority of all theatrical shorts. However, King Features put a high asking price on the Popeye cartoons. Interstate Television began negotiating with Paramount and King Features for the TV rights to the Popeye cartoons. Interstate was the TV subsidiary of Allied Artists at the time.
In June 1956, Paramount sold the black and white cartoons to television syndicator Associated Artists Productions, one of the biggest distributors of the time, for release to television stations, with the color cartoons being sold a year later. a.a.p. created their own openings for the cartoons, as they did with the pre-August 1948 Warner Bros. cartoons they were distributing. The color cartoons featured a similar open to the Warner Bros. cartoons, using a version of the Popeye theme song introduced in Olive Oyl For President in 1948. However, unlike the WB cartoons, a.a.p. was asked to remove the Paramount logos and "Paramount presents" title cards, yet Paramount's imprint was still noted in the a.a.p. prints, which referenced Fleischer and Famous Studios and left Paramount's credits and copyright tags intact. Once they began airing these cartoons were enormously popular. Jerry Beck likens Popeye television success to a "new lease on life," noting that the character had not been as popular since the 1930s. King Features realized the potential for success and began distributing Popeye-based merchandise, which in turn led to new Popeye TV productions. These productions were farmed out to numerous studios and were of very low quality, employing limited animation, and many artists were unhappy with the quality of such cartoons. Most cities of large size aired an "uncle show," in which a local weatherman or entertainer would host a children's show in the afternoon, and Popeye shorts became a huge component in the success of these.
By the 1970s, the original Fleischer and Famous Popeye cartoons were syndicated to various stations and channels across the globe. In the intervening years, however, Popeye cartoons slowly disappeared from the airwaves in favor of newer television editions. a.a.p. was sold to United Artists in 1958, which was absorbed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to create MGM/UA in 1981. Ted Turner purchased MGM/UA in 1986, gaining control of all Popeye shorts. After Kirk Kerkorian took back the company some months later, Turner retained the film catalog, giving him the rights to the theatrical Popeye library. After acquisition, the black-and-white Popeye shorts were shipped to South Korea, where artists retraced them into color. The process was intended to make the shorts more marketable in the modern television era, but prevented the viewers from seeing the original Fleischer pen-and-ink work, as well as the three-dimensional backgrounds created by Fleischer's "Stereoptical" process. Every other frame was traced, changing the animation from being "on ones" to being "on twos", and softening the pace of the films. These colorized shorts began airing on Superstation WTBS in 1986 during their Tom & Jerry and Friends 90-minute weekday morning and hour-long weekday afternoon shows. The retraced shorts were syndicated in 1987 on a barter basis, and remained available until the early 1990s. When the Cartoon Network began in 1992, they mostly ran cartoons from the MGM/UA library, which included Popeye. Turner Entertainment therefore currently controls the rights to the Popeye shorts.
For many decades, viewers could only see a majority of the classic Popeye cartoons with altered opening and closing credits. a.a.p. had, for the most part, replaced the original Paramount logos with their own. In 2001, the Cartoon Network, under the supervision of animation historian Jerry Beck, created a new incarnation of The Popeye Show. The show aired the Fleischer and Famous Studios Popeye shorts in versions approximating their original theatrical releases by editing copies of the original opening and closing credits onto the beginnings and ends of each cartoon, or in some cases, in their complete, uncut original theatrical versions direct from such prints that originally contained the front-and-end Paramount credits.
In the UK, Popeye aired on Cartoon Network from 1993 to 2001 and on Boomerang from 2000 to 2005.
The series, which aired 135 Popeye shorts over 45 episodes, also featured segments offering trivia about the characters, voice actors, and animators. The program aired without interruption until March 2004. The Popeye Show continued to air on Cartoon Network's spin-off network Boomerang. The restored Popeye Show versions of the shorts are sometimes seen at revival film houses for occasional festival screenings. The Popeye Show is currently airing on Cartoon Network in Pakistan as well as in India. A daily half-hour block of Popeye has been able to be seen on the Boomerang network in the past. However, the Fleischer Popeye shorts shown on this block are mostly the 1980s colorized versions, and most of the title cards thereof have been edited to the a.a.p. logo which replaces the original Paramount one. In 2012, Popeye reruns ceased until 2019, when Popeye cartoons returned to TV on Turner Classic Movies as single 7-minute shorts, usually shown on Saturday mornings.

Home video

Background

There were legal problems between King Features Syndicate and United Artists in the early 1980s regarding the availability of Popeye on home video. United Artists had television rights, but King Features disputed whether that included home video distribution. In 1983, MGM/UA Home Video attempted to release a collection of Popeye cartoons on Betamax and VHS tapes titled The Best of Popeye, Vol. 1, but the release was canceled after MGM/UA received a cease and desist letter from King Features Syndicate, which claimed that they only had the legal rights to release the collection on video. While King Features owned the rights, material, comics, and merchandizing to Popeye's character, King Features did not have ownership to the cartoons themselves.
Throughout the years, there have been many bootleg VHS cassettes and DVDs featuring public domain Popeye cartoons, where the copyright had lapsed. While most of the Paramount Popeye catalog remained unavailable on VHS tape, a handful of shorts fell into the public domain and were found on numerous low-budget VHS tapes and DVDs. Most used a.a.p. prints from the 1950s, which were in very poor shape, thus resulting in very poor image quality. These cartoons were seven B&W 1930s and 1940s cartoons, 24 Famous Studios cartoons from the 1950s, and all three Popeye color specials.
In 1997, home video rights to the MGM film library were reassigned from MGM/UA Home Video to Warner Home Video. It was reported in 2002 that WB/Turner and King Features parent Hearst Corporation were working on a deal to release Popeye's cartoons on home video. Over 1,000 people signed an online petition asking WB and King Features to release the theatrical Popeye cartoons on DVDs.
Popeye cartoons were never officially released in any form until the late 2000s. In 2006, Warner Home Video and King Features Syndicate along with KFS' parent company Hearst Entertainment finally reached agreement allowing for the release of the theatrical Popeye cartoons on home video. The original Paramount logos appear on these cartoons because Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures cross-licensed each other's logos in a deal which also involved Paramount-distributed John Wayne movies originally released by WB, and therefore preserving the artistic integrity of the original theatrical releases. Three volumes were produced between 2007 and 2008, released in the order the cartoons were released to theaters. The first of WB’s Popeye DVD sets, covering the cartoons released from 1933 until early 1938, was released on July 31, 2007. ', a four-disc collector’s edition DVD, contains the first 60 Fleischer Popeye cartoons, including the color specials Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves. Volume One and Three of the series had the "Intended For Adult Collector And May Not Be Suitable For Children" advisory warning. Historians supervised the release as consultants, assuring no colorized versions of unrestored prints were used.
Restoration timelines caused WB to re-imagine the Popeye DVD sets as a series of two-disc sets. ' was released on June 17, 2008, and includes the final color Popeye special Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. was released on November 4, 2008, and includes Popeye's three seldom shown wartime cartoons: You're a Sap, Mr. Jap, Scrap the Japs, and Seein' Red, White 'N' Blue.
The first volume was included, either erroneously or through somewhat fraudulent means, in a batch of boxed sets sold in discount outlets for $3 or less in the summer of 2009.

DVD collections