Wrong Popeye?

[Daniel P]

I tuned in late, but when they were supposed to be showing "Customers Wanted" they were showing some thing about Popeye and Bluto watching movies of them playing baseball at a fair, and then get mad at each other and fight. Wimpy takes advantage and charges people 10 cents to see the "Fight of the Century."

What happened?

[Dave Mackey]

The cartoon was a "cheater" of footage from other cartoons, such as "The Twisker Pitcher" (hence the baseball footage) framed around Popeye and Bluto as competing arcade owners trying to woo customer Wimpy with penny movie machines. Later the two went to fisticuffs and Wimpy wound up charging for the "fight of the century" and making more than Popeye and Bluto ever dreamed.

The idea was reworked by Paramount for a 1955 cartoon called "Penny Antics".

[Emmanuel Cruz]

About 2-4 years ago, I was at my grandma's house staying over for the night. That night was the first time I saw LNB&W. I think the first cartoon I saw on that show was "Customers Wanted." Little off-topic, but I wanted to add that.

-Emmanuel:bosko:

[cabe624]

- Somewhat off topic - When I watched "The Dance Contest" (for the first time) last night, I'm pretty sure Popeye said "I geuss I have no sex appeal" or something like that. Is that what he really said?

[J Lee]

Yes, that's what he said. Given the sexual innuendo in the Betty Boop cartoons before then, and the even more overt stuff Paramount was putting into its Mae West feature films coming out at the same time, Popeye's lamenting about his apparent sexual unattractiveness was fairly tame, though if the cartoon had been made a year or two later, even that might have gotten Xed out by the Hays Office, which was set up primarily in response to the stuff going on at the Gower Street lot (and on the north side of Times Square, since the Hays office also helped bring us Pudgy and pretty much sent the Boop series into a five year death spiral).