A Song In Columbus Dark

 

Where Cartoons Go To Please Anew

Couple of weeks ago, I experienced a MMM at Columbus. Not Mary Miles Minter, but a Magic Movie Moment like we seek from watching what is old and evocative of happiest days. It was their yearly hour (Saturday morning per custom) of pick from animated rarities private collectors protect on 16mm, a chance to see things that for whatever reason elude us otherwise. Ten cartoons might exhaust me had they less variety than laid before attendees at “The Columbus Moving Picture Show” (formerly Cinevent). The happening, I’ll say “Happening,” was #3 of the bunch called You Try Somebody Else (1932), a Fleischer “Screen Song” of that series where live-cast stars comport with drawn oddities from Max-Dave menagerie, the on-screen singer inviting us to join in reprise, a bouncing ball over lyrics for assist. You Try Somebody Else was performed by Ethel Merman, looking barely as Ethel Merman later would, torchy over swain who gave her the go-by. Kate Smith, Rudy Vallee, Connie Boswell, others, recorded the song before or contemporaneous with Merman. The tune was new to me and likely so for many Columbus attendees, upshot and pay-off our getting to sing with Ethel … spanning bridge of ninety years to sing with Ethel, me included, happily if not lustily. You Try Somebody Else was highlight of the hour, maybe the entire trip, for what is mere reading about singalongs at 30’s theatres we never experienced … or joined? There’s no knowing it, feeling it, until you see/hear, and participate. I grew up impatient with bounce-ball cartoons as part of TV ritual, songs slowing action to a crawl, but as of May 30 in a hotel ballroom at Columbus, Ohio, my attitude has changed.

We got another Fleischer, this a Popeye entitled Bridge Ahoy (1936). Keeping Popeyes apart does not come easy, being there are so many, all of black-and-whites reliably good. Was there another cartoon series from the thirties to maintain such high standard? I’ve spent thought on how/why the Sailor Man vanquished Mickey Mouse to become top swab at ticket windows. Records show Popeye Clubs overtook ones for Mickey and kept a lead right to the war, stopped finally by slippage of quality (Paramount forming “Famous Studios” after hurl of Fleischers), plus emergence of Bugs Bunny as combat trainer for crowds bestirred by all-over fighting. I visited Popeye Clubs before and remain awed by what they achieved for venues small and vast. Many a town had one. Membership routinely ran into hundreds, Thornton, Rhode Island signing up 875 among local population of 1,326. Paramount dispatched junior talent as good will ambassadors to Popeye meetings. Major stars were photographed with Sailor Man puppets and stuffed figures for eventual publication in fan magazines. School superintendents endorsed Club chapters, "wholesome recreation" as classified by these as well as parents.

But whoa a moment to the wholesome part, for did Popeye amount to anything other than ritualized violence done by seven-minute metronome, that is, beatings, intake of spinach, then reprisal at severity many times a level of abuse that inspired it? If eating spinach will vanquish all comers, then bring on spinach said I at age five, though leaf which was offered, dry as it was raw, tasted no different from grass in the yard, which we were told dogs ate only when they wished to throw up something disagreeable. Given reality of spinach, let Bluto go his way. Thing about Popeyes, at least ones Fleischer made, was how sophisticated they seemed, even Avant Garde. How would audiences sit otherwise through models identical as to structure and execution played year after (thirty) years at least. To know is to account also for Punch and Judy, which was approximate same except with puppets. Popeye will trounce Bluto and that is all we need to know. Even after the cartoons went to color with mechanics too revealed, still there was irresistible impulse to watch and know that expectation would be fulfilled. Mickey Mouse for all his gifts could not appeal to yearning so basic and outcome so assured. We are a warlike species, and Popeye proves it. Such human nature dictated that he would prevail almost upon arrival, first clubs organized by late 1933 with a mere six sailor cartoons so far released.

Success of Popeye was almost alarming. Few thought Disney could be stopped, then comes Paramount/Fleischer to do just that. This may have been when Zukor and sub-chiefs began asking how dispensable Max and Dave might be. The brothers fought between themselves and a front office found that unseemly plus destabilizing to steady flow of Popeye. The character was no Fleischer creation in any case, leased instead from a comic strip. Popeye became too valuable to leave anything to chance. Max/Dave imitated Disney when what they did best was beat him on terms with which Walt could/would not compete. How to counterfeit attitude of East Coast delinquents too scruffy to draw for up-market betters? Disney wanted no part of such rabble. Fleischer “Color Classics” which tried to be like Silly Symphonies were lush and sometimes clever, but few figured they could meet, let alone pass, the Disneys. Gulliver’s Travels was barely worth making, nobody’s idea of an advance on Snow White even though it profited OK, if nowhere near what Disney/RKO had earned. Meaningful was fact no other major studio tried an animated feature, having ceded the field to Disney.

Usefulness of the Fleischers would be the more questioned once Paramount realized Popeye was near all value Max/Dave had to give. Betty Boop was done by 1939, the color art reels wrapped, and a strike by Fleischer staff looked like a problem that could and should have been avoided. Memos between New York and Miami, latter the Fleischer’s transferred-to site, gave confirmation that Max and Dave weren’t speaking. Dave had got production control and weak cartoons reflected it (remarkable exceptions: the Superman group). He also had a secretary girlfriend and an office he refitted for a horse parlor. Ticker tape to record bets was innovation not toward the good of animation now needing an oxygen tent to score laughs. Many said the move to Florida was misjudged, or maybe it was inevitable that Paramount would pull plugs and take the operation over. Doing that was simple as turn-off of tap and starving the Fleischers out onto streets. It all reads like a rawest of deals, but clearer shines life’s oldest adage of nobody in any argument being all right or all wrong.

The Duncan Sisters Swoon for Popeye

Fleischer would have his victory, but it was pyrrhic, plus came too late to do him good. The Popeyes had gone to television, the lot of them, in 1956, and did culturally phenomenal business. Not to use the term light … these shorts amazed a jaded trade who thought one kid-filler barely different from another. Popeye touched a reflex and there was simply no getting enough of him, all the while Disneys from same past era absent from syndication (Walt’s withhold), or there for Mouseketeers to pull from magic drawers and largely bore viewers with. Nothing from Disney it seemed had anything like energy Popeye gave out each afternoon plus Saturdays. New owners of negs took Fleischer’s name off remade credits and he sued, scant good coming of the gesture. Max got history’s commendation however, this a best win of all as awarded by posterity. Massive TV spike like what Popeye had would seem like history with capacity to repeat itself, and indeed, the sailor should have cycled through generations to a present, but for reality of best Popeyes being black-and-white and fed into a syndicated market that by the seventies rejected them for being black-and-white. By the time I caught up seriously to the Fleischer group during 1972-1976, they were fit only for UHF, and darn few of those outliers could care. Television’s blight on black-and-white, beginning in the mid-sixties when color sets took off, had its fulfillment within a decade after, Popeye a casualty along with B/W feature packages. The cartoons today are hardly missing, not so long as TCM and You Tube thrive, and there is of course DVD and the sets Warner sells. It’s just that Popeye is no longer something you discover by stumbling over him. You must go looking, like Trader Horn. Help toward that end, learning Popeye plus the Fleischers and their work, best begins with books by Ray Pointer, Leslie Cabarga, or better, both. Add to these a reservation for the next Columbus Moving Picture Show, already down for May 2023 dates.