Popeye the Sailor is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar,[1] which first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. He also appeared in a number of animated cartoons in the cinema and on TV.
In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount's own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957. The cartoons are now owned by Turner Entertainment, a subsidiary of Time Warner, and distributed by sister company Warner Bros. Entertainment.
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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.
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, made a move on Popeye's "sweetie," Olive Oyl. The bad guy then clobbered Popeye until Popeye ate spinach, giving him superhuman strength. Thus empowered, the sailor made short work of the villain.
Many of the Thimble Theatre characters, including Wimpy, Poopdeck Pappy, and Eugene the Jeep, eventually made appearances in the Paramount cartoons, though appearances by Olive Oyl's extended family and Ham Gravy were notably absent. Popeye was also given more family exclusive to the shorts, specifically his look-alike nephews Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye.
Popeye made his film debut in Popeye the Sailor, a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon (Betty only makes a brief appearance, repeating her hula dance from Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle). It was for this short that Sammy Lerner wrote the song "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man". I Yam What I Yam became the first entry in the regular Popeye the Sailor series.
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 (Here Comes a Sailor)," substituting the words "for Popeye the Sailor" in the latter phrase. After that the "I Yam What I Yam" tune was used as the theme song. As Betty Boop gradually declined in quality as a result of the Hays Code being enforced in 1934, Popeye became the studio's star character by 1936.
The character of Popeye was originally voiced by William "Billy" Costello, also known as "Red Pepper Sam." When Costello's behavior became a problem he was replaced by former in-betweener animator Jack Mercer, beginning with King of the Mardi Gras in 1935.[2] Jack Mercer copied Costello's gravelly voice style familiar to audiences. Olive Oyl was voiced by a number of actresses, the most notable of which was Mae Questel, who also voiced Betty Boop. Questel eventually took over the part completely until 1938. William Pennell was the first to voice the Bluto character from 1933 to 1935's "The Hyp-Nut-Tist", after which Gus Wickie voiced Bluto until his death in 1938, his last work as the "Chief" in Big Chief Ugh-A-Mug-Ugh.
Thanks to the animated-short series, Popeye became even more of a sensation than he had been in comic strips. During the mid-1930s, polls taken by theater owners proved Popeye more popular than Mickey Mouse,[3][4] and by 1938, polls showed that the sailor was Hollywood's most popular cartoon character, leaving Mickey in a third place (The second place was taken over by Donald Duck). Despite this, Popeye would lose that place in the 1940s, when Bugs Bunny emerged and became even more popular than Popeye was. In 1935, as Popeye was able to surpass Mickey Mouse in popularity, Paramount added to Popeye's popularity 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.
The original 1932 agreement with the syndicate called for any films made within ten years and any elements of them, to be destroyed in 1942. This would have erased all Fleisher films, which are considered the best of the series. 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. However, the films were not destroyed, either through oversight or because of their success.
The Popeye series, like other cartoons produced by the Fleischers, was noted for its urban feel (the Fleischers operated in New York City, specifically in Broadway), its manageable variations on a simple theme (Popeye loses Olive to bully Bluto and must eat his spinach and defeat him), 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 (generally word-play and clever puns). 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.[5] 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).
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 (better known as the voice of Disney's Goofy), succeeded Gus Wickie as the voice of Bluto between 1938 and 1943.
In 1941, with World War II becoming more of a source of 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 suit, which Popeye continued to wear in animated cartoons until the 1970s. Popeye periodically appeared in his original costume when at home on shore leave, as in the 1942 entry Pip-Eye, Pup-Eye, Poop-Eye, An' Peep-Eye, which introduced his four identical nephews, and in the 1950 and 1952 Famous cartoons Popeye Makes a Movie and Big Bad Sindbad, which featured clips from 1937's Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves and 1936's Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor respectively. (See: List of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoons (Fleischer Studios).)
In May 1941, Paramount Pictures assumed ownership of Fleischer Studios, which had borrowed heavily from Paramount in order to move to Florida and expand into features (Gulliver's Travels and Mister Bug Goes to Town).[6] By the end of the year, Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer on speaking terms with each other, communicating solely by memo.[7] 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. 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 US 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 (usually) 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 whenever he was 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. (See List of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoons (Famous Studios).)
Famous/Paramount continued producing the Popeye series until 1957, with Spooky Swabs being the last of the 125 Famous shorts in the series. Paramount then sold the Popeye film catalog to Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.), which was bought out by United Artists in 1958 and later merged with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was itself purchased by Turner Entertainment in 1986. Turner sold off the production end of MGM/UA shortly after, but retained the film catalog, giving it the rights to the theatrical Popeye library.
The black-and-white Popeye shorts were shipped to South Korea in 1985, 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" (24 frame/s) to being "on twos" (12 frame/s), 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. Turner merged with Time Warner in 1996, and Warner Bros. (through its Turner subsidiary) 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. Associated Artists Productions 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 (taken or recreated from various sources) 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.
The series, which aired 135 Popeye shorts over forty-five 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. In the U.S., a daily half-hour block of Popeye can be seen on the Boomerang network from time to time; 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 hide the a.a.p. logo.
In 1960, King Features Syndicate commissioned a new series of cartoons entitled Popeye the Sailor, but this time for television syndication. Al Brodax served as executive producer of the cartoons for King Features. Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, and Jackson Beck returned for this series, which was produced by a number of companies, including Jack Kinney Productions, Rembrandt Films (William L. Snyder and Gene Deitch), Larry Harmon Productions, Halas and Batchelor, Paramount Cartoon Studios (formerly Famous Studios), and Southern Star Entertainment (formerly Southern Star Productions). The artwork was streamlined and simplified for the television budgets, and 220 cartoons were produced in only two years, with the first set of them premiering in the autumn of 1960, and the last of them debuting during the 1961–1962 television season. Since King Features had exclusive rights to these Popeye cartoons, 85 of them were released on DVD as a 75th anniversary Popeye boxed set in 2004.
For these cartoons, Bluto's name was changed to "Brutus," as King Features believed at the time that Paramount owned the rights to the name "Bluto." Many of the cartoons made by Paramount used plots and storylines taken directly from the comic strip sequences-as well as characters like King Blozo and the Sea Hag.[8] The 1960s cartoons have been issued on both VHS and DVD.
On September 9, 1978, The All-New Popeye Hour debuted on the CBS Saturday morning lineup. It was an hour-long animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, which tried its best to retain the style of the original comic strip (Popeye returned to his original costume and Brutus to his original name of Bluto), while complying with the prevailing content restrictions on violence. In addition to providing many of the cartoon scripts, Mercer continued to voice Popeye, while Marilyn Schreffler and Allan Melvin became the new voices of Olive Oyl and Bluto, respectively. (Mae Questel actually auditioned for Hanna-Barbera to recreate Olive Oyl, but was rejected in favor of Schreffler.) The All-New Popeye Hour ran on CBS until September 1981, when it was cut to a half-hour and retitled The Popeye and Olive Show. It was removed from the CBS lineup in September 1983, the year before Jack Mercer's death. These cartoons have also been released on VHS and DVD. During the time these cartoons were in production, CBS aired The Popeye Valentine's Day Special – Sweethearts at Sea on February 14 (St. Valentine's Day, of course), 1979. In the UK, the BBC aired a half-hour version of The All-New Popeye Show, from the early-1980s to 2004.
Popeye briefly returned to CBS in 1987 for Popeye and Son, another Hanna-Barbera series, which featured Popeye and Olive as a married couple with a son named Popeye Jr., who hates the taste of spinach but eats it to boost his strength. Maurice LaMarche performed Popeye's voice; Mercer had died in 1984. The show lasted for one season.
In 2004, Lions Gate Entertainment produced a computer-animated television special, Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy, which was made to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Popeye. Billy West performed the voice of Popeye; after the first day of recording, his throat was so sore he had to return to his hotel room and drink honey. The uncut version was released on DVD on November 9, 2004; and was aired in a re-edited version on Fox on December 17, 2004 and again on December 30, 2005. Its style was influenced by the 1930s Fleischer cartoons, and featured Swee'Pea, Wimpy, Bluto (who is Popeye's friend in this version), Olive Oyl, Poopdeck Pappy and the Sea Hag as its characters. On November 6, 2007, Lionsgate Entertainment re-released Popeye’s Voyage on DVD with redesigned cover art.
Popeye has made brief parody appearances in modern animated productions, including:
These cartoons were originally produced by Fleischer Studios (by arrangement with Elzie Segar and King Features Syndicate) and distributed to theaters by Paramount Pictures. In 1942, Paramount took over Fleischer Studios and the animation studio was reorganized into Famous Studios which took over the Popeye series.
In 1956, Paramount sold the black and white cartoons to television syndicator Associated Artists Productions for release to television stations. Shown with a.a.p. logos replacing the Paramount logos (with one Paramount reference in the copyright line remaining), these cartoons were enormously popular.[1] The color Popeye cartoons were sold to a.a.p. in 1957 at which point the theatrical Popeye series was discontinued. In 1958, a.a.p. was sold to United Artists. UA was absorbed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to create MGM/UA in 1981.
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.[2] After Ted Turner's unsuccessful attempt in 1986 to absorb MGM/UA, Turner sold the production and distribution operations and kept the MGM film library including the a.a.p. library. Time Warner bought Turner in 1996. While King Features owned the rights, material, comics, and merchandizing to the character, King Features did not have ownership to the cartoons themselves.
A clause in the original contract between the film studios and King Features Syndicate stated that after ten years, all of the original negatives and prints of the King Features cartoons were to be destroyed. Popeye was never enforced to that clause.[3]
While most of the Paramount Popeye catalog remained unavailable on VHS tape, a handful of those cartoons have fallen into the public domain and were found on numerous low-budget VHS tapes and DVDs. Those cartoons were however in poor of quality (because the prints used were original a.a.p. prints from the 1950s, many badly faded colors were shown). These cartoons were a handful of 1930s and 1940s cartoons, the Famous studios cartoons (many of which fell to the public domain after the MGM/UA merger), and all three Popeye specials.
In 1999, home video rights to the Turner film library were reassigned from MGM/UA Home Video to Warner Home Video. Through the years, both Turner and Warner were unsuccessful in convincing King Features to allow the cartoons to be issued on home video.[4] It was reported in 2002 that Warner and King Features parent Hearst Corporation were working on a deal to release the Popeye cartoons on home video.[5] Over 1,000 people signed an online petition asking Warner and King Features to release the theatrical Popeye cartoons on DVDs.[6]
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.[7] The original Paramount logos appear on these cartoons because Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures cross-licensed each others' logos in a deal which also involved Paramount-distributed John Wayne movies originally released by Warner Bros., and therefore preserving the artistic integrity of the original theatrical releases.[8]
The DVD volumes are being released in the order the cartoons were released to theaters.
While Volume One is a four-disc set, Warner Home Video has 'retooled' its release schedule so subsequent releases are two-disc sets beginning with Volume Two. The reason speculated was that the restoration of the later black-and-white cartoons was taking longer than expected.[9]
Volume One of the series had the "Intended For Adult Collector And May Not Be Suitable For Children" advisory warning, which was exactly the same disclaimer the "Golden Collection" Looney Tunes had on volumes 3-6. Volume Two didn't have that disclaimer, but Volume Three, featuring three banned Popeye wartime cartoons, has a written disclaimer similar to the one on Volume One.
CBS/Fox Video (under license of MGM/UA) had planned a VHS and Beta release of the Fleischer and Famous Studios cartoons in 1983. However, UA was informed by King Features Syndicate that only King Features had the legal right to release Popeye cartoons on video. United Artists did not challenge King Features' claim, and the release was canceled. While King Features owns the rights to the Popeye characters, and licensed the characters to appear in the Fleischer/Famous cartoons, King Features does not have any ownership in the films themselves.
A clause in the original contract between Paramount Pictures and King Features stated that after ten years, the prints and negatives of the Popeye cartoons were to be destroyed,[9] a clause the syndicate had for all of its licensed properties. The clause was never enforced for Popeye.
While many of the Paramount Popeye cartoons remained unavailable on video, a handful of those cartoons had fallen into public domain and were found on numerous low budget VHS tapes and later DVDs. Among these cartoons are a handful of the Fleischer black-and-whites, several 1950s Famous shorts (many of which went public domain after the MGM/UA merger), and all three Popeye Color Specials. When Turner Entertainment acquired the cartoons in 1986, a long and laborious legal struggle with King Features kept the majority of the original Popeye shorts from official video releases for more than 20 years. King Features instead opted to release a DVD boxed set of the 1960s made-for-television Popeye cartoons, which it retained the rights to, in 2004. In the meantime, home video rights to the a.a.p. library were transferred from CBS/Fox Video to MGM/UA Home Video in 1986, and eventually to Warner Home Video in 1999.
In 2006, Warner Bros. finally reached an agreement with King Features Syndicate and its parent company Hearst Corporation. Warner Home Video announced it would release all of the Popeye cartoons produced for theatrical release between 1933 and 1957 on DVD, restored and uncut. The studio also plans to release DVD sets of the Popeye cartoons made for television in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the rights to which are controlled by Hearst Entertainment.[10] This is similar in most respects to the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets also released by Warner, except the Popeye shorts will be released in chronological order.
The first of Warner's Popeye DVD sets, covering the cartoons released from 1933 until early 1938, was released on July 31, 2007. Popeye the Sailor: 1933-1938, Volume 1, 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. Restoration timelines caused Warners to re-imagine the Popeye DVD sets as a series of two-disc sets. This DVD set was included, either erroneously or through fraud, in a batch of boxed sets sold in discount outlets for $3 or less in the summer of 2009.[1]
A second volume of Popeye cartoons from Warner Home Video, Popeye the Sailor: 1938-1940, Volume 2 was released on June 17, 2008.[11] It includes the final color Popeye special Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp.[12] Warner also released Popeye & Friends, Volume One, a single DVD featuring eight color Popeye cartoons from Hanna-Barbera's 1978 TV series The All-New Popeye Hour, on the same day (Hanna-Barbera is also a division of WB).[13]
Popeye the Sailor: 1941-1943, Volume 3 was released on November 4, 2008.[14] It includes three seldom shown wartime Popeye cartoons: You're A Sap, Mister Jap (1942), Scrap The Japs (1942), and Seein' Red, White, and Blue (1943). A second single-disc volume of H-B produced Popeye TV cartoons was also scheduled for release titled Popeye & Friends, Volume Two,[15] but Warner decided to cancel the release of this DVD.[16]
Famous Studios (renamed Paramount Cartoon Studios in 1956) produced 108 color Popeye cartoons from 1943 to 1957 which means there may be either three or four additional volumes of Popeye 2-disc DVD sets released in the future. As of November 11, 2009, during a broadcast of Stu's Show on Shokus Internet Radio, it has been announced by animation historian and DVD production consultant Jerry Beck that due to the present state of the United States economy, and the high costs involved for restoring the remaining Popeye cartoons, there were no new DVD releases in 2010.
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