I've Censored the Sailor Man

No one swore in our home when I was a child, but I knew there were words that you shouldn’t say, though I didn’t know what they were.

There were swearing gags in a few cartoons I watched back then, but the one that made the biggest impression was the Popeye cartoon “Shape Ahoy.” Maybe the fact there were real human hands involved was the reason it stuck out. Or because the Popeyes ran ad nauseum on a local TV channel. Here are a couple of frames from a battered old AAP print (courtesy of Devon Baxter).



The old hoofer Jack Ward and Irving Dressler were the storymen on this cartoon, directed by Izzy Sparber.