Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Popeye and Bluto, walking Olive Oyl down the street, pass an army recruiting office and both decide to enlist, each to impress her. The recruiting officer wants proof that they are fit for service, so the two rivals take turns boasting of their past exploits, which the film shows as flashbacks: scenes lifted from Blow Me Down, Choose Your "Weppins", Shoein' Hosses and King of the Mardi Gras, with Bluto's feats of strength answered each time by Popeye's. The recruiter, unimpressed by Bluto, takes Popeye, who marches off in uniform; Bluto is left behind. The new material around the clips is brief, and the cartoon is essentially a showcase for four earlier films.
Why It Matters
- It is the first of the Fleischer "cheater" cartoons, compilations built from earlier footage with a few minutes of new framing animation, a device the studio used when the schedule demanded a release and which Famous Studios would later lean on heavily; seen now, it is a sampler of the 1933-35 Popeyes at their best.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed, although the cartoons it quotes are not, an oddity of the kind that makes the Popeye series a favourite case study for copyright lawyers. Gus Wickie's gravel-voiced Bluto is heard at length.
Notes and Trivia
- Frank Matalone, a studio staffer, voices the recruiting officer.
- The title is from the First World War song "You're in the Army Now".
- See also: Little Swee'Pea (1936), Customers Wanted (1939), Popeye the Sailor (1933).
