Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber
Short Synopsis
Hollywood gives Popeye a testimonial dinner for his twenty years in pictures. Caricatures of the stars fill the ballroom, with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis among the guests, and Olive Oyl at Popeye's side. Bluto, uninvited and furious, sneaks in and tries to spoil the evening. The speeches introduce clips of Popeye's finest hours, which are drawn from two late-1940s Famous Studios cartoons, Tops in the Big Top and Rodeo Romeo, with Popeye and Bluto fighting in the circus ring and at the rodeo. Between clips Bluto's sabotage escalates until he seizes the microphone and the sailor; Popeye's spinach ends the interruption, Bluto is thrown out, and Popeye receives his award, an Oscar-shaped statuette, to the applause of the room and a closing chorus.
Why It Matters
- As a record of how Paramount saw the character in 1954, a Hollywood institution worth a mock-Oscar, the cartoon is a small document, and the celebrity caricatures of Hope, Martin and Lewis are good ones; the new animation is as handsome as the studio's Technicolor allowed.
- It is one of the Famous Studios compilations built from reused footage, and it is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed. The anniversary was counted from the 1933 debut, and the film arrived a few months late.
Notes and Trivia
- Both source cartoons, from 1945 and 1946, remain under copyright although this one is not.
- The statuette's resemblance to an Academy Award was as close as a rival studio's lawyers would allow.
- See also: Big Bad Sindbad (1952), Customers Wanted (1939), Popeye the Sailor (1933).
