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Let's Sing with Popeye is a Fleischer Studios animated short featuring Popeye, presented as a sing-along cartoon, which was released in 1934. It was later re-released by Official Films in the 1950s.
The song featured in this cartoon was the Popeye theme song, "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man", written by Sammy Lerner. The animation for this film is taken from the first Popeye cartoon, Popeye the Sailor, which was originally presented as part of the Betty Boop series.
The entire cartoon is approximately 2 minutes long, with over half of that given to the credits and the bouncing ball. This shorter-than-normal cartoon was produced as a regular weekly feature for Paramount's Saturday morning matinee "Popeye Club".
Plot[]
An excerpt from Popeye the Sailor: Popeye is singing his theme song as he strolls along the deck of a sailing ship. He punctuates the lines of the song with three demonstrations of his strength. With a single punch, he reduces the ship's anchor to a pile of fishhooks. The large ship's clock meets a similar fate, ending as an assortment of watches and alarm clocks. Finally, a small mast is reduced to clothespins.
Then, after about 45 seconds, the animated portion ends and the rest of the cartoon presents the words of the song and the "famous bouncing ball", so that the audience can "sing with Popeye".
Notes[]
In 1935, Paramount added to Popeye's popularity by sponsoring the Popeye Club as part of their Saturday morning matinee program. Let's Sing With Popeye was a regular part of the weekly meetings, along with other cartoons, movies, prize giveaways and other activities. Paramount provided a manual to theater owners, telling them how to organize a Popeye Club, but the specific details were left to the local theater owners and varied from one theater to another.
Trivia[]
- This is considered to be Paramount's first cartoon using archive footage of previous ones. In this case, Let's Sing With Popeye features archive footage from Popeye the Sailor, released one year prior.
- First Popeye cartoon to fall into the public domain.
- Only Paramount sing-along cartoon owned by Warner Bros. Discovery under Turner Entertainment via Associated Artists Productions. The other Paramount sing-along cartoons are owned by Paramount Global under National Television Associates for the pre-1950 library and the Noveltoons cartoon Hobo's Holiday, and NBCUniversal under DreamWorks Animation via Harvey Entertainment for the 1950-1962 library.
- Only Paramount sing-along cartoon not part of either the Screen Songs, Noveltoons or Kartunes series.
- This and the Screen Songs cartoon Toys Will Be Toys mark Popeye's only appearances in a Paramount sing-along cartoon. In the former, Popeye is the star and in the latter, Popeye makes a cameo appearance as a toy.
- Only pre-1955 Popeye cartoon in which the Paramount Cartoons logo was not replaced by the a.a.p. logo. Instead, it was replaced by the Official Films logo.
- Due to the sing-along format, this is the only Popeye cartoon not considered to be part of the character's own series.
Availability[]
This cartoon with the original Paramount mountain logo opening title and the original Paramount inkwell closing title is available on DVD as a special feature on disc four of the DVD collection Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938.
External links[]
- Let's Sing with Popeye at the Internet Movie Database