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Popeye Facts
Popeye the Sailor is a fictional hero famous for appearing in comic strips
and animated films as well as numerous TV shows. He was created by Elzie
Crisler Segar, and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip
Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929.
Although Segar's Thimble Theatre strip, first published on December 19,
1919, was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly
became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre became one of King
Features' most popular strips during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was
carried on after Segar's death in 1938 by several writers and artists,
including Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip, now titled Popeye,
continues to appear in first-run installments in Sunday papers, written
and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf
stories.
In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble
Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon
shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most
popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount's own Famous
Studios—continued production through 1957.
Since then, Popeye has appeared in comic books, television cartoons,
arcade and video games, hundreds of advertisements and peripheral
products, and including a 1980 live-action film (Popeye, directed by
Robert Altman) where he was played by
Robin Williams.
Popeye the Movie
Popeye the 1980 live-action film was directed by Robert Altman and
adapted from E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip. The screenplay by
Jules Feiffer was based directly on Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye the
Sailor, a hardcover reprint collection of 1936-37 Segar strips published
by Woody Gelman in 1971.
Marketed with the tagline, "The sailor man with the spinach can!", the
film is a musical, which was uncommon for the time. Songs by Harry Nilsson
are structured visually with much repetition and cross-cutting inside
songs to non-musical sequences. It starred Robin Williams (in his first
film role) as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl. cast
* Robin
Williams as Popeye the Sailor
* Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl
* Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy
* Paul L. Smith as Bluto
* Paul Dooley as J. Wellington Wimpy
* Richard Libertini as George W. Geezil
* Peter Bray as Oxblood Oxheart
* Linda Hunt as Mrs. Oxheart
* Donald Moffat as The Taxman
* MacIntyre Dixon as Cole Oyl
* Roberta Maxwell as Nana Oyl
* Donovan Scott as Castor Oyl
* Bill Irwin as Ham Gravy
* Wesley Ivan Hurt as Swee'Pea
* Dennis Franz as Spike (bully) Popeye was Robin Williams' film debut.
In interviews, referring jokingly to the perceived flop of the film, he
has spoken of his early struggles as a film actor as "the Popeye years."
Most of Robin Williams's muttered Popeye voice was discovered to be
inaudible once filming wrapped, and he had to re-dub much of the dialogue.
Box Office
The film earned $49,823,037 at the United States box office, more than
double the film's budget. Although the opening week saw respectable
box-office results, word-of-mouth and film critic reviews derided the
film's musical score as being "the only thing more unintelligible than
Williams' mumblings as Popeye", and the film quickly
disappeared from most theaters within a few weeks of release. Siskel and
Ebert were nearly alone in praising the film, while other critics, such as
Leonard Maltin, savaged it. Fan reception of the movie in later years
has become a lot more nice. Quite a few people now look back on the movie
with fondness.
Get movie at Amazon on DVD.
Fan reviews
Popeye Movie Poster
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