Popeye

This article is about the character. For the franchise as a whole, see Popeye franchise. For other meanings, see Popeye (disambiguation).

Popeye
Gender	Male
Eye colour	Blue
Hair colour	Auburn
Songs sung	I Yam What I Yam, Swee'Pea's Lullaby,Blow Me Down, Sailin', I'm Popeye The Sailor Man
Portrayed by	Robin Williams Jack Mercer (voice, 1935-1984)Maurice La Marche (voice, 1987)Billy West (voice, 2004)

Popeye is a sailor character and protagonist appearing in comics and animated cartoons, known for his squinting (or entirely missing) right eye, huge forearms, skinny upper arms, and corncob pipe. He can occasionally be seen smoking his pipe but usually he toots it like a tugboat and sometimes uses it as a weapon by blowing the smoke in his enemies faces. His strength varies among his portrayals: in some, he is always superhumanly strong and can lift massive objects, while in others he is much weaker in his normal state, yet is usually able to gain a boost in strength by eating spinach. He is known to mutter when he speaks and mangle the English language (e.g, he calls elephants and infants "elephinks" and "infinks", respectively). Popeye's creator, E. C. Segar, characterized him as violent and uncivilized yet introspective and with a high moral fiber.

During the World War II shorts, he was a member of the U. S. Navy and could occasionally be seen fighting the Germans and Japanese. The ones in which he did have sometimes been banned from television for being politically incorrect.

Character history

Popeye was created in 1929 by E. C. Segar in his comic strip Thimble Theatre (inspired by a local man, Frank "Rocky" Fiegel) and his popularity led him to be adapted into animation. In the various cartoons he would usually have to rescue his girlfriend Olive Oyl from Bluto/Brutus, his rival and sometimes friend. Some of the cartoons take a different approach, like him rescuing Olive from another threat, dealing with something alone, fighting a small enemy he cannot beat, or watching over his adopted son Swee'Pea.

During the WWII years, Popeye changed into a white Navy suit, continuing to look like this in animation from the 1940's through to the 1960's. Plots have changed as well. In 1940's shorts, Popeye gained four nephews named Pipeye, Peepeye, Poopeye, and Pupeye, whose exact relation to Popeye remains unclear. In the fifties, animation rights to Popeye were sold from Paramount studios to a.a.p. company. Animated shows were also made for television in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, and in 1980 a theatrical movie called Popeye was released and went on to gross $49,823,037; more than double the film's production budget. A more recent television movie called Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy was made in 2004, produced by Mainframe Entertainment for Lions Gate Entertainment and King Features Entertainment.

Urban legend

Rumor has it that in September 1938 head of Fleischer Studios Max Fleischer, as a thank-you to all artists who moved to his new animation studio in Florida, animated a graphic sexual encounter between his two stars, Betty Boop and Popeye. Reports on this supposed film, known as “Welcome to Miami,” range from it being 30 seconds of pencil drawings to a full-color short film.

Voiced/Portrayed by

Over the years, Popeye has been voiced by many different people: William Costello (a.k.a. Red Pepper Sam) from 1933 to 1935, Jack Mercer from 1935 until his death in 1984, Maurice LaMarche from 1985 to 1990 and Billy West in the 2004 telefilm. Additionally, he has been voiced by Harry Welch and Jackson Beck during the brief time Jack Mercer served in World War II, David Coulier in parody appearances on the animated show Robot Chicken and Jim Cummings on commercials. In the live-action movie he was portrayed by Robin Williams, with Popeye being the actor's first film role.

Gallery

External links

• Popeye | The Home of Popeye the Sailor Man website
• Don Markstein's Toonopedia Popeye page
• Popeye at the Internet Movie Database