CULT HERO: Jack Kerouac's favourite movie character began life as an "extra" in Elzie Segar's syndicated newspaper strip, Thimble Theater, in 1929, and was elevated to stardom by Max Fleischer in a brilliant series of cartoon shorts through the 1930s.
We're not talking here about the crudely-animated Popeye cartoons still being made for children's television; if a Popeye cartoon isn't in black and white, and doesn't open with those banging ship's doors, then it isn't worth watching. The old cartoons were often beautifully animated studies of urban decline. Popeye, Olive and the villainous Bluto (not Brutus, please!) lived in a world of run-down apartment blocks and littered pavements. The Fleischer brothers, Dave and Max, had a far grittier approach than Disney - while the boringly suburban Mickey Mouse was entertaining his nephews, and Minnie planning a picnic, Popeye and Bluto were usually scrapping over Olive, and Betty Boop (another Fleischer star) dancing on tables and showing her garters.
Those Popeye cartoons were also very witty, with lots of mumbled jokes through closed lips - voice-over actors Billy Costello and later Jack Mercer (Popeye), Mae Questell (Olive) and Gus Wickie (Bluto) were encouraged to improvise in the dubbing suite.
Popeye is an unlikely hero. Small and wiry, he is also middle-aged, bald and seemingly toothless. In many of the cartoons he has only one eye, and his arms are strangely deformed. Even in moments of intimacy with Olive, he rarely removes the pipe from his mouth. And what are we to make of an underdog who achieves superhuman powers through ingesting a substance (in this case spinach)? Or of someone whose catchphrase is "Well blow me down?" In a typical cartoon, the fickle Olive becomes entranced by the bristling beard and Manson-like gaze of the repellent Bluto, although sometimes she pretends to fancy Bluto just to annoy her lover. After a brief period of dejection, Popeye mutters "that's all I can stands, 'cos I can't stands no more" and out comes the spinach. Thus empowered, he proceeds to beat Bluto up.
At the start of the second World War, Popeye cartoons became a propaganda tool for the Allies, and the slow decline set in. He lost his tatty merchant seaman's uniform and joined the Marines. The dull Popeye of today is a kind of intergalactic do-gooder, fighting alien superslugs and the like. The old Popeye would have wanted to beat him up.
The original black and white cartoons still show up occasionally on television, taking us back to the days when Popeye could croak, with justifiable pride, "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam - I'm Popeye the Sailorman." Toot toot!
Stephen Dixon