A recently issued stamp from the U.S. postal service paid tribute to the classic comic character.

Betty Introduces Popeye to the Big Screen
The production of the first Popeye film took place in secrecy. Veteran animator Roland Crandall was given space apart from the rest of the studio. There, he single-handedly animated the entire cartoon, aided only by the inclusion of some Shamus Culhane animation recycled from the earlier Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle (1932). The results were so satisfying that even before the film was released, the Fleischers and King Features amended the agreement granting the studio the right to produce and release animated cartoons featuring Popeye for a five year period.

Crandall's film Betty Boop Presents Popeye The Sailor opened in the summer of 1933 as part of the "Betty Boop" series. After a prologue in which newspapers herald the sailor's film debut, and Popeye sings "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man," the film featured what was to be the standard "Popeye" series plot, re-enacted with variations by the Fleischers for the next decade. Olive waits for Popeye to disembark from his ship at the dock. Bluto follows the couple to a fairground, where the two sailors compete for Olive's attentions through feats of strength. Bluto abducts Olive and ties her to a train track. As the locomotive approaches, Popeye and Bluto fight. Popeye defeats Bluto, and, through the magical powers of spinach, is able to stop the train and save Olive Oyl. Here, we see the essential difference between the Segar and Fleischer sense of narrative. Segar reveled in picaresque plots that coursed in unexpected directions for up to two years, exploring every novel twist and nuance of narrative. In anticipation of post-modernism, the very concept of plot was old-fashioned to the Fleischers. Hackneyed and ritualized story conventions were torn apart, recombined in odd juxtapositions, and satirized in endless variations.

The Fleischer Popeye cartoons were an instant success. "It might have been just a fluke, a lucky break, that the Segar characters fit the Fleischer style so well," recalls former Popeye animator Myron Waldman. "The animation of Olive Oyl in the mid-1930s was perfect. It fit her. The character had no elbows and the most prominent knees. When she spoke, the voice fit too. This was character. That's what made her so good."

Popeye's new sweetheart? From The All New Popeye animated series currently in production.Photo courtesy of The Locomotion Channel. © King Features Syndicate Division.

Step Aside, Mickey
Segar's characters were not the only things consistent with the Fleischer style. Both Segar and the Fleischer staff shared a fondness for a poetically improvisational language. When Popeye's original voice artist, William "Red Pepper Sam" Costello, left after the first few pictures, he was replaced by a studio in-betweener named Jack Mercer. Much of the dialogue of the Popeye cartoons was post-synched with little attention to synchronized mouth action. Mercer, Mae Questel (Olive's voice, except for the 1938-41 period, when Margie Hines was the voice artist) and William Penell or Gus Wickie, who voiced Bluto, often ad-libbed dialogue during recording sessions, particularly Popeye's "asides" and pun-filled conversations. Added to this was a progressive softening and increased complexity of Popeye's character, paralleling changes in the strip. Popeye cartoons became the Fleischers' leading attraction. By 1938, Popeye replaced Mickey Mouse as the most popular cartoon character in America.

The Fleischers rummaged through the Segar strip for supporting characters. Bluto, the animated series' antagonist, was a minor character in the Segar strip, appearing only in 1933's "The Eighth Sea." Longer-lived strip characters that joined Popeye on the screen included hamburger maven J. Wellington Wimpy, Swee'pea, Eugene the Jeep and Poopdeck Pappy. While in the comic strip, Popeye gained his great strength from rubbing the Whiffle Hen, the Fleischers added the gimmick of Popeye's power being largely dependent on the ingestion of spinach. Farmers in America's self-styled "spinach capital" of Crystal City, Texas set up a statue of Popeye in gratitude for the publicity.