New Popeye treat for us older folks

When I was just a young 'un and my folks would take me to the movies, I waited for the show to start, filled with anticipation for the first item on the agenda. The cartoon.

This was when a movie was preceded by a short film (usually a comedy or a travelog), "previews of coming attractions," animated dancing hot dogs urging us to visit the snack bar -- and a cartoon.

The cartoon was a big deal to a kid, and I couldn't wait to see what it would be. Tom and Jerry? Bugs Bunny? Woody Woodpecker?

And if that Paramount logo came up, with stars around a mountain, and then turned into the face of Popeye, tooting his pipe ... heaven.

I was a big Popeye fan -- and these were the later, color cartoons, which I thought were the best. Eventually, however, when I was introduced to the early black-and-white cartoons, I began to appreciate how much funnier Popeye was in his earliest incarnations.

Some of the comedy in these 'toons is broad and silly, but some of it is subtle and sly (as when Popeye mutters something under his breath in a higher tone than his normal gravelly voice).

There are wild sight gags galore, and it always ends with his popping open a can of spinach to gain enough strength to save the day -- and to save Olive Oyl, who is invariably in some kind of scrape, often with that brute Bluto.

But what distinguishes these earliest animated shorts is how wacky and surreal they are. And now the first 60 Popeye cartoons are available in the new DVD set "Popeye the Sailor, Volume One: 1933- 38" (Warner, four discs, $64.92).

This is the first "authorized" Popeye set (a number of miscellaneous cartoons are on public-domain discs), and each one looks amazingly sharp and clear, dubbed from the original masters.

Popeye began as a comic-strip character in 1929, part of the ensemble in Elzie Crisler Segar's "Thimble Theater." But it wasn't long before he dominated the strip and became its "star."

In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer approached Segar about turning Popeye into a cartoon character. The Fleischers had already had great success with Betty Boop, and later would be the first to bring Superman to the screen.

Still, it must have been a challenge to decide how to bring a quirky and already beloved character like Popeye to life. What kind of voice should he have? How much should he mangle the English language? How does he move with those massive forearms and that always-closed eye? And what about his interactions with Olive and the other characters from the strip?

The documentary featurettes included in this set go into these things and explain how the Fleischers developed Popeye's personality for the screen, as well as a history of the shorts, their evolution into color, changes in the cartoons' style, how they popularized spinach (yes my parents really told me I should eat my spinach because that's what Popeye does) and what happened when TV came around.

There's even an interview with Tom Hatten, who hosted the Popeye TV show in Los Angeles when I was a kid (and like one of the interviewees here, I learned to draw cartoons from watching Hatten).

The first Popeye cartoon is here, with a cameo by Betty Boop, and it's interesting to watch them in order and see the evolution of various aspects. The familiar music cue that starts up when Popeye opens a can of spinach. Taglines: "I Yam What I Yam," "Well, blow me down," "I'm strong to the finichcq 'cause I eats me spinach." Other characters, such as the hamburger-crazy Wimpy and Popeye's irascible pop, Poopdeck Pappy.

The black-and-white shorts are six or seven minutes each, and a pair of color long-form cartoons the Fleischers experimented with during this period are each 16 to 17 minutes -- "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves."

And there are other early Fleischer cartoons, including a few silents.

For those of us who are older and starting to feel it, here's something to make you feel young again.

Can't wait for "Volume Two."

E-mail: hicks@desnews.com

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