Last week we featured some interview pieces with the great Jackson Beck, who was the voice of Bluto in the Famous Studios Popeye cartoons as well as the King Features cartoons in the early 60s. Since I was on a scanning trip this weekend, I brought with me a King Features Popeye to scan for this week’s post.
Super Duper Market (1960) is pretty typical for one of the Popeyes that the Jack Kinney Studio did for the series. They’re often the simplest in layout and animation.
The story is simple: Popeye, Olive and Wimpy go shopping. Brutus is running the store’s ultra modern systems, and decides to make life hard for Popeye and Wimpy by throwing them in a freezer and, in the process, making a pass at Olive, then throwing her in a cart and hauling her around. The real hero of the story is a patron who’s been lost in the store for 15 years! That’s easily the best gag in the film.
Of course, the better reason to watch (and listen) to these is to hear Mercer, Questel and Beck doing the voices. Since they recorded something like 220 of these, hearing how they ended up recording many at a time out a suggestion these seasoned voice actors made was really fun. They likely did one take of this recording. On occasion the ad libbing is these is pretty fun; this one doesn’t have too much in that department.
Enjoy the voices, and I hope your super market experience in the coming days is better than theirs! I bet Brutus got fired.
Next week I’ll be sharing something non-Popeye related – and pretty fun. As we’re approaching summer I’m looking forward to sharing the things we’ve been working on at Thunderbean.
Have a good week all!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
The King Features entries were the first Popeye cartoons I ever saw, so I have a soft spot for them.
And as you probably already know, Kinney was one of SIX(!) studios that made the cartoons for KF.
The rest are Larry Harmon Productions, Gerald Ray, Halas & Bachelor, Gene Deitch, and of course Paramount Cartoons, the latter of who I feel did the best of the bunch. The Paramount entries are probably the closest thing to how the Popeye cartoons would have looked if they were still being made for theaters.
The Gerald Ray cartoons were actually animated at TV Spots or Creston Studios, which also did the color Crusader Rabbit and the earliest episodes of The King & Odie. Tom McDonald and Bob Bemiller (who worked on Popeye in Miami) were the directors.
I don’t think Brutus could get fired, as he apparently owns the supermarket. If Popeye, Olive, or the grizzled wanderer of the aisles ever took legal action against him, he’d probably try to pin the blame for any wrongdoing on Clerk X-9, who was innocently stocking the shelves with Gently Packed Pickled Platypus Eggs the whole time.
What do you mean, this cartoon doesn’t have much in the ad libbing department?
“We’re gonna have a party! A real happy party!”
“With delicious hamburgers and onions — galore!”
“Pudding, cake, and candy! Yum! Yum! And more!”
“With me fav’rite spinach more! Ug ug ug ug! “L’amour!”
“We’re gonna have a party! A party! A party!
We’re gonna have a party! Root dee doody doo!”
“We’re gonna have a party! A party! A party!
We’re gonna have a party! Skibba dee dibba dee doo!”
Don’t tell me that was scripted! Shiver me timbers, but we’ve come a long way from “Brotherly Love”.
Here in Chicago, the KFS Popeye shorts & the Fleischer/Famous Popeye shorts were on separate stations in the 1970s – WSNS-44 (then over to WGN-9) and WFLD-32 respectively. At one point they were scheduled against one another in the afternoons.
when i first saw them, during THAT year, i was never so grossed out in my life! (And, rmbr, I was only 7!) When u were brought up with the REAL films, these films are just beyonnnnnd horrendous, and nothing-but-unwatchable!!
This is one of the better Jack Kinney cartoons in terms of animation.
If there was any of the KFS Popeyes that oozed of ad libbing, it would be “Jeopardy Sheriff” with the fairy story Popeye reads to Swee’Pea.
“Once upon a time there were three bears–Moe, Sam, Lefty and George. Now you may not believe that, but those are the bear facts. Anyway, these three bears, of which there was four, lived in a motel.”
Mighty Mouse’s origin aside, the Super Market — especially as developed in the postwar suburbs — was still a comic novelty. MAD Magazine mocked their scale, Bob Hope fumbled through one in “Bachelor in Paradise” (that whole movie views suburbia as an exotic fad), and there was a TV game show, “Supermarket Sweep”, about competitors rushing to fill their carts for the highest total cost.
And there’s this late-period Paramount:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9-eDnXx2pA
I like these Popeyes for the fun voice work and characters like Alice the Goon and King Blozo not previously animated.
You can’t tell me “Tom Hix” is a real name instead of someone too embarrassed (or under contract elsewhere) to put his actual name on this cartoon.
I remember this cartoon among the many KFS ones seen in the 1980’s on New York’s channel 5 (Metromedia-owned WNEW-TV/Fox-owned WNYW). And sometimes the Famous Studios color cartoons (with and without AAP plastering) were mixed in. The KFS ones had their charm about them aside from Jack Mercer and Mae Questel voicing Popeye and Olive, and Jackson Beck as Bluto, uh, pardon me, Brutus. There was one black and white Fleischer cartoon 5 aired, with AAP plastering of course, “Seasin’s Greetinks”, aired at Christmas time after the airing I think Alastair Sim’s classic 1951 film “Scrooge.”
Before that I remember hearing about WPIX channel 11 airing Popeye cartoons in the 1960’s, maybe the KFS one(?) with the late Jack McCarthy AKA Captain Jack. He also hosted the St. Patrick’s Day Parade when PIX aired that.
the kfs cartoons were on in boston even into the 90s