Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald, Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber, Dan Gordon (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
Popeye's four nephews, Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye and Poopeye, are practising their instruments late at night while their uncle nods off in his chair. He sends them to bed with the promise of a story, tells one so short they protest, and tucks them in anyway. The nephews are not tired. One by one they find music in the bedroom: the bedsprings become a harp, suspenders a bass, medicine bottles a xylophone, a hot-water bottle a bagpipe, and they are soon playing a full swing number. Popeye, hearing the racket, blames the radio and smashes it, then creeps upstairs to catch them; every time he opens the door they are asleep, and every time he leaves the band starts again. Driven frantic, he tries to sleep through it, fails, and finally leaps out of the cinema screen itself to escape, leaving the film to run on with the nephews still playing.
Why It Matters
- The bedroom band is one of the best musical sequences in the Famous Studios Popeyes, with every household object turned into an instrument in rhythm, and the ending, in which Popeye bursts out of the screen into the auditorium, is the studio's last great fourth-wall gag.
- Made in the first months after Paramount took the studio from the Fleischers, the film shows the new management's taste for domestic Popeye stories without Bluto. It is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright not renewed, and is the earliest Famous Studios Popeye in that condition.
Notes and Trivia
- The ending gag was cut from the a.a.p. television prints because it showed the Paramount logo.
- Jack Mercer, who voiced all the characters, also co-wrote the story.
- See also: Customers Wanted (1939), Shuteye Popeye (1952), Greek Mirthology (1954).
