Popeye: Cartoon Icons of American TV

Created by American cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar, Popeye (also Popeye the Sailor) first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929, billed as a Betty Boop cartoon.  (According to the official Popeye website, Popeye is 34 years old and was born in a typhoon off Santa Monica, California.)  In 1933, Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre character and his cartoon buddies into a series of Popeye the Sailor animated shorts for Paramount Pictures shown in movie theaters.  These first Popeye shorts introduced the now-famous "I’m Popeye the Sailor Man,” song written by Sammy Lerner (loosely based on the "Pirate King" song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, that would eventually become Popeye’s theme song).  Read more . . .