Popeye’s Show Business Adventures

Popeye and Olive Oyl, in the 1938 Fleischer Studios short A Date To Skate.

   Popeye is one of the most famous comic strip characters of all time — but he’s more remembered for his long and varied career in animated cartoons, which has lasted for most of his first eighty-plus years.  And yet, Popeye’s animation career has kept him in the spotlight far longer than other comic strip characters who have been faded into obscurity.  Thanks in part to his animated cartoons being repeatedly shown on TV, Popeye’s star has yet to fade, even in the age dominated by computer animation and Japanese Anime films and TV series.  Oh, yes — let’s not forget the fact that Popeye helped give prominence to his favorite food, spinach — the source of his extraordinary physical strength (just like the Biblical character Samson, whose hair contributed to his physique).

   But before there was a Popeye, there was Thimble Theater, created by cartoonist E.C. Segar in 1919 — the comic strip combined humor and satire, that helped paved the way for later comic strips like Li’l Abner and Doonesbury.  One of the characters who appeared in Thimble Theater from the very start was a thin, lanky woman named Olive Oyl, who would be destined to become a key figure in the Popeye mythos.

   On January 17, 1929, comic strip history was made when Popeye made his debut in Thimble Theater — when Olive’s brother Castor asked his sister’s future boyfriend, “Hey there! Are you a sailor?”, Popeye responded by saying, “Ja think I’m a cowboy?”  Popeye might have been an one-shot character in the overseas adventure that Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy (Olive’s original boyfriend when the strip began), if not for the fact that he won the hearts of millions of readers worldwide.  A year later, Ham Gravy vanished from the strip, and Popeye not only became the star of Thimble Theater — the strip was eventually renamed after him by the mid-1930’s.  Popeye was joined by other cast additions like hamburger moocher J. Wellington Wimpy, Swee’pea, and Eugene the Jeep (who would lend his name to not only the military vehicle that was first used during World War II, but eventually the automotive company that bears its name) as the decade progressed.