Man of Constant Leisure

"Cultivated leisure is the aim of man." ---Oscar Wilde

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Thalia and Popeye

One of the great blessings of attending college in New York City was, well, being a college student in New York City. College can be overwhelming and college students are not especially well equipped with perspective, so it's nice to be somewhere that encourages you to see your problems in their proper scale. Living in a city of 8 million gets the job done (especially when so many of those 8 million clearly have problems bigger than a late term paper).

New York in the early 1980s offered innumerable escapes from the college grind. My favorite was a dumpy movie theater called The Thalia, located on 95th Street just west of Broadway. The Thalia was a repertory revival house, meaning that it showed a different double feature of old movies almost every night of the week (occasionally a popular feature would run for two days). It was an extraordinarily poorly constructed space. The front half of the auditorium sloped away from the screen, meaning that someone sitting in this section had to be significantly taller than the person in front of him to have an unobstructed view. The seating sloped along a more conventional trajectory in the back half of the auditorium, which was also the smoking section. This is where I always sat. The whole place couldn't have seated more than 150. Ancient, decrepit, wired at the turn of the century, and with only one narrow exit, it was the sort of place you'd see illustrated in the dictionary next to the word 'firetrap.'

The Thalia is where I received my extracurricular education. I became something of a movie nut (I probably would have called myself a cinefile then, between puffs off a clove cigarette—ugh!), with a special affinity for pretentious foreign films, American film noir, silent comedies, and cartoons. In this last category I was especially lucky, as The Thalia regularly ran three-hour cartoon programs, all programmed by Greg Ford, a film historian who obviously knew his stuff. Programs were organized by main character, film studio, or theme (e.g. "Cartoonal Knowledge" for racy cartoons; there were also nights of appallingly racist cartoons, e.g. "Inky and the Mynah Bird"). A copy of Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic provided all the historical background necessary to achieve total cartoon geekdom.

It was during one of Ford's programs that I first realized the genius of Popeye. Like most folks my age, I'd grown up watching Popeye cartoons on television, but what I'd seen was a hodgepodge of 70 years of Popeye, most of them bland, unimaginative made-for-television cartoons. Ford showed only the cartoons created by the Fleischer Brothers Studio, the ones that begin with the title credits shown between slamming doors on a ship's deck. They are some of the best cartoons ever made, crammed to bursting with surreal gags, mumbled profanities, and a truly wonderful cast of lowlife characters: a one-eyed sailor, his weird beanpole girlfriend whom everyone inexplicably finds attractive, a big fat sociopath whom the beanpole inexplicably finds attractive, a hamburger-devouring mooch… it's a truly dysfunctional society, but one that makes complete sense, and is completely engaging, when taken on its own terms.

These cartoons made such an impression on me that, a decade after last seeing them regularly at The Thalia, I wrote a song about them:
If my life was a cartoon
I'd want to be Popeye the Sailor
I'd have a damsel in distress
And I would never fail her

I'd mutter something clever
Then I'd knock Bluto cold
I'd be a one-eyed mumbling crazy thug
With a heart of gold

And all my problems would be solved
Because I eat my greens
My life it would be measured out
In well-constructed scenes

I'd have drama without tragedy
Anger without pain
Love without loneliness
Hey, I would not complain

But I am what I am
And that's all I am
That's all I can stand
'Cause I can't stand no more

As a result of a rights dispute between various owners of different Popeye licenses, these cartoons existed in copyright limbo, with only a few that had crept into the public domain receiving DVD releases. The warring parties finally settled their differences last year, and today their truce bore its first fruit:Popeye the Sailor: 1933-1938, vol. 1, a four-disc collection of the first 60 Fleischer Brothers Popeye cartoons, in chronological order. It's a beautiful set with lots of great extras (lots of documentaries, a good sampling of Fleischer Brothers silents, including a few of their wonderful "Out of the Inkwell" cartoons); the folks at Warner Brothers should look at this set and hang their heads in shame, as it is everything their animation collections should be but aren't. I spent a good part of today reacquainting myself with these cartoons and I'm very pleased to report that they are at least as good as I remember. Go get it, you won't be sorry. You might want to prescreen it for your kids, though, as they are incredibly violent and not infrequently racist. But hey, we saw them when we were kids and they probably didn't do us much harm.

Right?

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3 Comments:

  • At 6:51 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Check this out -

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700716.html

     
  • At 8:24 AM , Blogger John Albin said...

    One of the great moments of my childhood was watching the one in which Olive and Bluto perform a sanitized version of "Barnacle Bill the Sailor". My father walked in in the middle and immediately taught my sister the original

    "Who's that knocking on my door? Who's that knocking on my door?
    Who's that knocking on my door?" said the fair Young Maiden....

    "Fuck, open the door, you pox-ridden whore!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "Fuck, open the door, you pox-ridden whore!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "What is your intention, sir? What is your intention, sir?
    What is your intention, sir?" said the fair Young Maiden.

    "Oh, off with your shirt, so you doesn't get hurt!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "Oh, off with your shirt, so you doesn't get hurt!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "Will you take me to the dance? Will you take me to the dance?
    Will you take me to the dance?" said the fair Young Maiden....

    "To Hell with the dance! Now, off with your pants!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "To Hell with the dance! Now, off with your pants!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "Will you vow to marry me? Will you vow to marry me?
    Will you vow to marry me?" said the fair Young Maiden....

    "Hell no, we won't wed. Getcher ass in yon bed!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "Hell no, we won't wed. Getcher ass in yon bed!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "What's that thing between your legs?" What's that thing between your legs?
    "What's that thing between your legs?" said the fair young maiden.

    "It is me pole to stick in your hole," says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "It is me pole to stick in your hole," says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "What if I should have a child? What if I should have a child?
    What if I should have a child?" said the fair Young Maiden.

    "I'll open your crack, and shove it right back!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "I'll open your crack, and shove it right back!" says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

    "What if you should go to jail? What if you should go to jail?
    What if you should go to jail?" said the fair young maiden.

    "I'll swing me big balls, and knock down the walls!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
    "I'll swing me big balls, and knock down the walls!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

     
  • At 7:59 PM , Blogger Jamie said...

    Thanks for the review. I just received a gift card from Target and was debating getting the Fleischer set. If only they also carried that new Droopy collection...

     

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