My TiVo, which now knows what I want to watch better than I do, took it upon itself to record the Cartoon Network Popeye show today. As a result, I just got through watching the 1933 "I Yam What I Yam," the first official Popeye cartoon. Mr. Segar's squinty sailor had previously appeared in a Betty Boop cartoon, then soloed (along with Olive Oyl and Wimpy) in this one…which, by the way, the title card above is not from. You forget how clever some of those Popeye cartoons could be, especially before they fell into the formula of Bluto wooing and/or wronging Olive until Popeye finally, at long last, hauls out the can of green stuff. This one was interesting because it was the only cartoon in the series that did not open with the well-known Popeye theme song. It's heard as underscore…and so is "I'm Against It," the song Groucho sang in Horse Feathers (previous year, same distribution company). But the opening song here was some tremulous bass voice singing, "Strike up the band for Popeye the Sailor." It was also interesting to hear William Costello, the first voice of Popeye, in the role that didn't make him famous.
I keep hearing we're about to get a major DVD release of the Fleischer Popeyes but I'll believe it when I can click on an Amazon link. There's a DVD coming out in April called Popeye – 75th Anniversary Collectors Edition but it's all cartoons from the sixties TV version, and all the others out seem to be bad copies of public domain stuff or the Hanna-Barbera version. So don't be fooled.