Poopdeck Pappy

Popeye's father is a high energy, stubborn being. Popeye wants him home because he is too old to be partying late at night. No matter what the son does, the old guy seems to get away. It ends up in a saloon where Pappy antagonizes everyone there. When Popeye arrives, he has a lot of cleaning up to do. That, of course, involves the used of spinach.

Poopdeck Pappy wants to go out partying, but Popeye thinks that at 99 his father needs to save his youth for his old age. Pappy sneaks out anyway and goes to a bar where he cuts in on the dancing, alienating the men there, and starting a brouhaha.

It's always fun to see the lesser remembered characters from Elzie Segar's THIMBLE THEATER show up in the Popeye cartoons, and this one is no exception. Even though we know that at some point a can of spinach will be downed, it's good to see the focus other than the constant war between Popeye and Bluto over Olive Oyl. Popeye wasn't even an important character there. Whatever happened to Ham Gravy?

Poopdeck Pappy (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Popeye tells his father that he's old and needs to slow down a bit. The old man says he's as young as his son so the two hit the town and trouble follows.

POOPDECK PAPPY is a pretty good entry for the series as it features Popeye at his best and the father character is also pretty good. This year saw a couple different shorts with the father character so obviously people of that time must have enjoyed it. This one here is pretty funny as the two get into some nice fights as the old man tries to pick up some ladies. As usual the animation is nice and there's no question that it moves at a very good pace.

Before Famous Studios gradually reduced the Popeye series to a marshmallow-soft snoozer, the Fleisher brothers were still pumping adrenaline into it, and in some of the best entries, they abandoned the "Help, Popeye" rut in favor of focusing on some of the great Thimble Theater supporting characters. In this one, our hero is trying fruitlessly to keep his scrappy Pappy from going out on the town and picking fights. Solid entertainment. And we can only imagine how ornery Pappy will someday be when Popeye eventually decides to dump him in a nursing home!

Pappy is 99 years old and tries to escape bedtime. Popeye will have non of it. Pappy does manage to escape but Popeye is able to track him down. Pappy escapes again and this time, causes a riot in a bar which Popeye has to clean up.

I love Pappy and Popeye is funny in this. This relationship is more real than one expects. This is one of the funnier Popeye shorts. The title is called "With Poopdeck Pappy" instead. I hope it's the right one. It's certainly one of the better ones.