The Popeye Show - 2/18/2002

[Dave Mackey]

Vim, Vigor And Vitaliky (fleischer)
Happy Birthdaze (famous)
Abusement Park (famous)

[Mibbitmaker]

Doin' the Happy Happy Joy Joy dance!

Other than seeing the redrawn by surprise on TNT a dozen years ago, it's like 30 years just washed away! Of course I'm talkin' about Vim Vigor and Vitaliky! :D

Naw... natcherly, I'm typing about Happy Birthdaze. That's a very funny cartoon. Sorely missed on TV, all due to a suicide theme. It's too bad the "vitaliky" of the animation and gags weren't maintained throughout the later Popeye series. One of my favorite parts (besides the long-loved "bitter end") was the second gun Shorty took out. That momma was huge!

Well worth the (unfortunate) wait, SIX presidents later!

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[DR. BELCH]

I actually laughed when I saw the ending uncut. Just couldn't help myself.

Odd note--the photographer in "Abusement Park" is the same redheaded dwarf who plays Little John in "Robin Hoodwinked" and is one of the dancehall customers in "Klondike Cassonova". He might have been in some other pictures as well. Might be interesting to do a trivia bit on him in a future show.

[Pietro]

I know that "Happy Birthdaze" aired earlier on CN in its redrawn, hand-colored print, but this is the first time I EVER saw the cartoon!:D It's probably the best "Famous Studios" Popeye I've seen yet! Not only was this the first time I saw it, but it was also the first time I ever saw "The Bitter Ending." Very well animated too, good timing on the gags, and a very nice musical score. One of the best gags is when Shorty leaves the water running and when Popeye opens the door, a flood of water comes out!

-Pietro:D

[Dave Mackey]

Which begs the question: what is Olive Oyl doing with a MEN'S room in her apartment?

[lislebartman]

What a dumbass I am!! I set my VCR wrong!!! wah!!!!!

[Argus Sventon]

I actually set mine this week. Not a bad episode. Great to see Happy Birthdaze shown uncut.

[Pilmedium]

This was a good show.

So, "Happy Birthdaze" was actually uncut. I watched it right after logging off. ;)

I don't like when they show 3 B&W cartoons on the Popeye Show, like what happened last week.

[Matthew Hunter]

I enjoyed that. This was my second time to tape and watch that show, I just saw it on the TV listing and said "oh, yeah" and taped it. I had never seen "Happy Birthdaze" in any form. I thought it was very funny, if not a little morbid. Kudos to CN for showing this, it probably took a fair amount of argument to get them to do so. I really like the ending....I guess Popeye WILL actually kill a guy if he gets mad enough. Also notice that Popeye does not use a can of spinach in this one.
-Matthew

[Thad Komorowski]

That was a great episode! I'll post some pictures from the ending tonight.


-Thad

[Thad Komorowski]

Well, I made the pics really fast, so here's what happened at the end of "Happy Birthdaze":

http://imagep.webphotos.iwon.com//1000013782/1000013782_218200215907PM0.114361.jpg


http://imagep.webphotos.iwon.com//1000013782/1000013782_218200215908PM0.4200512.jpg


http://imagep.webphotos.iwon.com//1000013782/1000013782_218200215909PM0.7782186.jpg


http://imagep.webphotos.iwon.com//1000013782/1000013782_218200215926PM0.3447077.jpg


-Thad

[Pietro]

Hey ya know Thad those are really great pictures. Maybe you should give them to Jon for his "Censored Paramount Cartoons" page.:)

-Pietro:D

[Nelson]

That was the first time I saw "Happy Birthdaze' in b&w last night and it was a very great show...I can't wait to see the new 13 episodes this spring...should be a good one

[Pilmedium]

I watched the redrawn color/edited version before, but never bothered to tape it.

I learned something new today. B&W Popeyes were also made at Famous Studios, not only Fleischer.


Originally posted by Matthew Hunter
I guess Popeye WILL actually kill a guy if he gets mad enough.
I don't think Popeye would have killed Shorty if Shorty didn't already attempt suicide.


Originally posted by lislebartman
I set my VCR wrong!
Who wants only one episode of the Popeye Show anyway? You should set a weekly timer program.

[Geezil]

Originally posted by Mibbitmaker
It's too bad the "vitaliky" of the animation and gags weren't maintained throughout the later Popeye series.

Well ... thankfully, there were at least a few happy exceptions in later years to the following (maybe whenever Seymour Kneitel had his back turned[?]). But ... it always seemed to me that there was plenty of residual energy from the Fleischer studio to keep that "vitaliky" alive and flowing until Famous got the green light on higher budgets for a 100% color production schedule. From that point onward, the story department began to take things far too seriously, and the Popeye series became weighted down accordingly.

For instance, in both the Fleischer and Famous B&Ws, if Bluto was ever intended to come across as a murderous psycho (rather than a garden variety rival/bully who just kept going a step too far), the point was usually made between the lines. But later in the Famous color era, as pointed out by (among others) Pastor Steve on his Popeye website, once Bluto was rejected by Olive, all stops were out! Definitely not pleasant to watch during any Popeye video jag... :(

[J Lee]

Actually, Geezil, the energy in the Popeye series started to dissapate after the studio returned to New York, and really went into a tailspin after Jim Tyer left for Terrytoons.

Aside from being a major victory over facism, providing liberation for Western Europe and the Pacific Rim and defeating two of the main security threats to America, World War II was a fantastic boon to the Popeye series, because it demanded faster animation and liberated the Flesicher studio from the slow, deliberate pacing of the 1930s and early 40s. It also created new ways for the studio to use Bluto -- the Fleischers dropped him for nearly a year in 1938, then dropped the character for a year-and-a-half in 1940-41 in an attempt to find new ideas.

Look at the speed and the cutting on the late Fleischer and early Famous Studio cartoons, especailly the ones does by Dan Gordon and Sparber (who exercised less control over his head animators than Kneitel). Cartoons like "Happy Brithdaze," "Too Weak to Work," "A Jolly Good Furlough" and others are as fast as most of the stuff Warners was putting out in 1942-43, and faster than anything MGM was doing outside of the Avery unit. That's why it's so frustrating to see the slower pace they went back to by the later 1940s.

And as far as Bluto's "psycotic" nature, the irony there is if you go back and look at the Flesicher Popeyes done by the three main head animators/directors -- Kneitel, Willard Bowsky and Dave Tendlar -- Kneitel presents him as the least crazy of the three. Olive gets shaken up and thrown around pretty good by Bluto in most of the Bowsky Popeyes, while Kneietl (working with Dave Fleischer) gravitated towards more gag-oriented stories and change-of-pace themes like "Lets Celebrake," "Brotherly Love" and "Protekt th Weakerist" (Tendlar's Popeyes were somewhere in the middle).

You would have thought that once he was in charge of the studio, Kneitel would have gone more towards that, and for a while in the B&W Famous cartoons it looked that way -- "Cartoons Ain't Human" is his -- but apparently Bowsky's version of Bluto was more open to simple formula cartoons where the various story lines could just be plugged in. Plus, Paramount felt the same way as Warner Bros about remaking the B&W cartoons; they didn't care, so long as they were in color and stayed within budget (Warners at least tried to improve their B&W Looney Tunes the second time around and usually succeeded, but after the mid-1940s, the Famous color remaked of the B&W Popeyes were generally worse).

Take away "How Green Was My Spinach," "Taxi Turvy" and "Hillbilling and Cooing" and its hard to think of a Kneitel Popeye done after 1948 that managed to have both an original plot and good gags at the same time, and by then, the pacing had slowed down back towards the old Fleischer levels. That's too bad, because as the 1942-43 Famous B&W Popeyes show, they were capable of so much better.

[lislebartman]

Originally posted by Pilmedium
Who wants only one episode of the Popeye Show anyway? You should set a weekly timer program.

Actually, what I do is tape the show and then edit the cartoons together without all that filler onto another tape. All I want is the cartoons themselves...

Besides, I already have "Vim, Vigor & Vitaliky" and "Abusement Park" on tape...