Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Popeye takes Olive Oyl to a roller rink. She has never skated, and after a wobbling start, with Popeye holding her up and demonstrating figures, she gains a little confidence and loses all control. She shoots out of the rink door and into the street, careening through traffic, down stairs and across a construction site, screaming the whole way, while Popeye chases her on his own skates. He reaches for his spinach and finds the can empty. Stuck, he turns to the camera and asks whether anyone in the audience has any spinach; a silhouetted patron in the front row stands up and tosses him a can, Popeye thanks him, eats, and roars after Olive, catching her a moment before she goes over a cliff. He skates her home, and she declares that she has had enough skating for one lifetime.
Why It Matters
- The appeal to the audience for spinach is the most famous fourth-wall gag in the Popeye series, a reminder that the Fleischer cartoons were made for grown-ups in picture palaces who would get the joke, and Olive's runaway skate is a well-sustained piece of slapstick with no Bluto in sight.
- It was the last Fleischer Popeye made in New York before the studio moved to Miami, and the last with Mae Questel as Olive Oyl for several years, Margie Hines taking over in Florida. Its copyright was never renewed, so it is in the public domain and widely seen.
Notes and Trivia
- Questel returned to Olive at Famous Studios in 1944 and voiced her until the series ended in 1957.
- The Fleischer move to Miami was partly an escape from the 1937 New York animators' strike.
- See also: Little Swee'Pea (1936), I Never Changes My Altitude (1937), Customers Wanted (1939).
