This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.
Most Famous Role: Popeye the Sailor Man.
Other Notable Roles: Felix the Cat (and all major roles) in the 1959-1960 Felix the Cat cartoons, various supporting roles in the Popeye cartoons, various characters in other Max Fleischer cartoons like the Superman series and Gulliver's Travels.
What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Mercer started out as an apprentice animator at the Fleischer Studios, then switched to the writing/gag departments and did a lot of writing, both for cartoons featuring his voice and many that didn't.
Why He's On This List: Popeye is one of the five-or-so greatest cartoon characters of all time and his voice had an awful lot to do with that. Jack Mercer was neither the first voice of Popeye nor the last but the consensus seems darn near unanimous that he was the best. In the earlier cartoon, his muttered asides — mostly ad-libbed during recording sessions — were a special joy.
Fun Fact: In the early thirties Mercer was a gag 'n' storyman at Fleischer's and like others on the staff, he was occasionally tapped to do a few voices in a cartoon. In 1935, William "Red Pepper Sam" Costello was the voice of Popeye and more trouble than the Fleischers thought he was worth. When he was fired, the studio turned to Mercer, who'd been imitating the Popeye voice around the office. He had trouble at first but once he got the hang of it, he became the official voice of Popeye. Others did it while Mercer was away for military service and occasionally someone else did it for merchandise such as a kids' record…but Mercer was Popeye for just shy of half a century.
Additional Fun Fact: Mercer keeps getting credited for a voice in Disney's Pinocchio but it ain't him. The one cited — the Rough House attraction statue in the Pleasure Island sequence — was probably Clarence Nash. Mercer did voices for New York cartoons and during the years the Fleischer Studio relocated to Florida, he relocated with them, then moved back to New York when the studio did. But he never did a cartoon voice in Hollywood until 1979-1980 when Hanna-Barbera brought him out for a Popeye series that studio was producing for television. And he even did some of his work on that series from New York.