Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber
Short Synopsis
It is April Fools' Day, and Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto go on a picnic. Bluto has come prepared with practical jokes and plays them on Popeye one after another: a snapping cigar, an exploding sandwich, a rubber frankfurter, a trick chair, each followed by a bellow of "April Fool!" and Olive's laughter. Popeye tries to be a good sport and keeps getting hurt, and when he protests, Olive sides with Bluto and calls him a poor loser. The final prank goes too far and leaves Popeye in the lake. He climbs out, reaches for his spinach, and turns the tables with a joke of his own: Bluto, pounded flat, is served up on the picnic cloth, and Popeye's "April Fool" closes the film with Olive on his arm.
Why It Matters
- A Popeye cartoon in which the hero is the butt of the jokes for five minutes is a reversal of the usual rhythm, and Carl Meyer's string of 1950s novelty-shop gags is a small catalogue of what was sold in joke shops at the time; Bluto's glee at each one is Jackson Beck's performance at its most exuberant.
- Cookin' with Gags is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed. The television prints distributed by a.a.p. mistakenly kept the Famous Studios credit with the Paramount logo behind it, which most other Popeye prints had removed, so the film is often cited as evidence of what the original titles looked like.
Notes and Trivia
- Carl Meyer had written for the Fleischer Superman series a decade earlier.
- The picnic setting recurs in several mid-1950s Popeyes as the studio moved its plots outdoors.
- See also: Private Eye Popeye (1954), Taxi-Turvy (1954), Insect to Injury (1956).
