By the summer of 1933, the Fleischer brothers’ self-named animation studio was riding high. Based largely on the success of flapper dream girl Betty Boop, whose risqué series of cartoons became immensely popular in the early 30s, Max and Dave’s studio rivaled that of Walt Disney in popularity. And that July, the Fleischers inked the film debut of a character that would go on to effectively challenge Mickey Mouse for the title of the most popular animated figure in the world.

Popeye the Sailor Man was an unlikely hero. Born in the Sunday comics in 1929, Elzie Segar’s blustering nautical strongman was initially introduced as a supporting player in the cartoonist’s weekly Thimble Theater strip, but became so popular that the strip was eventually renamed and retooled to spotlight the character. The strip was so popular, in fact, that entire generations of comic strip artists have credited Segar as an influence on their own work, including the beloved creator of Peanuts, Charles Schulz. In 1932, the strip’s immense fame led Segar’s syndicate, King Features, to sign with the Fleischer Studios to bring Popeye to the big screen, and the cartoons, distributed through Paramount, became huge draws for audiences.

Popeye made his debut in what was ostensibly a Betty Boop cartoon (though Boop herself only appears briefly), 1933’s Popeye the Sailor. The short was deliberately billed as being part of the Boop canon in an attempt to gauge whether Popeye would attract a big enough audience to justify having his own series. But the studio needn’t have worried. Directed by Dave, produced by Max, and animated by Fleischer stalwarts Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandall, this first Popeye short was a smash hit, and led to a series of increasingly popular cartoons over the next twenty-five years.

This first Popeye cartoon establishes some of the most familiar tropes of the entire series: Popeye takes his paramour, Olive Oyl, out on a date, but brutish Bluto interferes and ruins all the fun (this time, by tying Olive to the railroad tracks). Popeye steps in to defend his sweetie (after a brief hula interlude with a topless Miss Betty), and with a can of his trusty spinach, Popeye puts the wallop on Bluto and saves the day. Popeye’s famed one-liners are present; indeed, his first line in the entire series (after he sings his own theme song, of course) is one of his most lauded: “Well, blow me down!”

Like the Boop cartoons, the Popeye shorts demonstrate the decided originality of the Fleischer brand of animation. The visuals are unique and astoundingly inventive: in the first Popeye short alone, the sailor punches a mounted fish, which then dissolves into a multitude of sardine cans; he yanks off the bearded lady’s facial hair and fashions it into a hula skirt; when he punches a tree, it transforms into an automatic coffin for the defeated Bluto. The frequency of the gags can be credited to Dave Fleischer’s insistence that every scene should have some sort of humorous visual element. With practically every frame of a Popeye short featuring some kind of hilarious gag, the cartoons have a sort of breakneck comic speed that rivals screwball comedy for sheer laughs-per-minute.


But the unique visuals are not the only hallmarks of the Fleischer animated ethos. The Popeye shorts revel in violence, with bodies flying everywhere and punches landing at will. Dialogue is almost an afterthought, as the true focus of the action is the visual humor, including metamorphic gags (in which inanimate objects become animated), cycles of action (in which certain movements are repeated multiple times), and chain-reaction gags (for instance, when Popeye hits one antagonist, knocking over the others like dominoes, as in the first official Popeye ‘toon, I Yam What I Yam). The characters are automatons, moving rather mechanically—this is especially notable in the way in which Popeye walks, with his arms swinging like pistons. Though the main characters are human, the supporting characters tend to be anthropomorphic animals such as pigs and birds. Animal abuse is played for laughs. Sexism is ever-present (with Bluto coming across as particularly rape-y). And, typical for the time period, casual racism is rampant (necessitating a warning on DVD releases of the original, uncut shorts).

Though dialogue is not a particular focus of the Popeye series, the voices of the characters are highly distinctive. Popeye was originally brought to vocal life by the gruff-voiced Billy Costello, but he was fired in 1935 and replaced by Jack Mercer, who voiced the sailor for the remainder of the series (though while Mercer was enlisted during World War II, Popeye’s voice was occasionally provided by Harry Welch). Mercer also provided the voices for the popular characters Wimpy, Poopdeck Pappy, and Popeye’s nephews (Peepeye, Pipeye, Poopeye, and Pupeye).

Mae Questel, who already worked for the Fleischers as the voice of Betty Boop, provided the voices of Olive Oyl and Swee’Pea until 1938, when the Fleischer studios temporarily moved to Miami for the production of the feature-length Gulliver’s Travels (Margie Hines, one-time wife of Popeye’s voice actor, Mercer, took over the roles of Betty and Olive until the studio returned to New York in the early 1940s). Questel’s vocal acrobatics were so well-tuned that she was even able to substitute for Mercer as Popeye in a couple of wartime Popeye shorts, and at one point both she and Mercer substituted as Bluto in several cartoons after the character’s voice actor, Gus Wickie, died in 1938.

As Betty Boop’s popularity waned in the wake of the Production Code’s stricter enforcement in 1934, Popeye took up the slack and became the Fleischer Studios’ biggest star, eventually starring in over one hundred shorts for the studio. The Popeye gang rivaled the Disney stable of animated personalities for popularity; in fact, by 1936, Popeye surpassed Disney’s Mickey as the most popular animated character in Hollywood. So great was Popeye’s fame in the 30s that the largely black-and-white character even received the Technicolor treatment in three lavish Arabian-themed two-reel adventures: 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 lost control of their animation studio to Paramount in 1941. The studio was rechristened Famous Studios, and the Popeye cartoons continued to be produced under the auspices of Paramount for another 125 shorts (most of those in color after 1943), until production was finally shuttered in 1957. By that time, the Popeye shorts had been leased to television, where the character once again reclaimed his popularity through rebroadcasts of the original cartoons.

In 2007, the Fleischer Popeye shorts began appearing on DVD (via Warner Home Video) in uncut, restored versions (all of which are available through ClassicFlix). Three volumes have now been released, comprising all 108 of the Fleischer shorts as well as the first fourteen cartoons under the Famous Studios banner. The DVDs feature numerous extras, including selected episode commentaries from animation scholars such as Jerry Beck and Michael Barrier; “Popumentaries” highlighting certain aspects of the character’s history and the shorts’ production; and “From the Vault” sections that include early Fleischer cartoons from the Out of the Inkwell series as well as other studios. The shorts are beautifully restored, and the special features give viewers an almost exhaustive understanding of the series and its importance in the animated canon.

Eighty years after Popeye’s theatrical debut, these iconic shorts remain some of the most inventive and entertaining cartoons to ever have emerged from Hollywood, with exceptionally creative animation that still amazes even today.

Brandie Ashe no longer eats cold cereal while wearing footy pajamas…but does maintain a love for all things animated. She is one of four passionate classic film authors at True Classics.