Into the Inkwell

Any child of five should easily be able to grade the Popeye cartoons. At least, as a child of five, I did. The ones with the opening and closing doors at the beginning were the best. They had a flow of funny little things going on, warped stuff like buildings and furniture in the background and John Philip Sousa quickly pumping away as Popeye humiliated and beat the crap out of someone.

These, of course, were the Fleischer studios Popeyes. They vanished from local TV in my area around 1967, never to return to my childhood. Years later, they were released on DVD, and seeing those doors open and close again bring back happy memories. But the DVD versions have something I never saw as a kid.

The television rights to 234 Popeye cartoons were sold by Paramount in mid-April 1956 to PRM, Inc., a shell parent company for Associated Artists Productions that re-did the titles, getting rid of all those nasty references to Paramount. In the process, it cut off stop-motion animation at the end of the first eight Popeyes where the iris out turned into an inkwell.




The titles faded into view as the inkwell flipped up, and the inkwell top did a little spin and landed in its proper place.







It’s a shame they did away with this ending. It’s distinctive and it’s an appropriate tie-in to Fleischer’s silent-era past with the imaginative Out of the Inkwell cartoons.

Chopping off the ending wasn’t the most egregious abuse these cartoons suffered. That was when they were colourised and re-filmed. The shades of grey enhance the originals and adding colour completely ruined the atmosphere. Fortunately, you can now see them again as they were originally made, with the neat little inkwell included.