Title: Happy Birthdaze
Studio: Famous
Date: 07/16/43
Credits:
Direction
Dan Gordon
Animation:
Graham Place
Abner Kneitel
Story:
Carl Meyer
Series: Popeye
Running time (of viewed version): 7:55
Commercial DVD Availability: Pv3D2
Synopsis: Popeye learns to let the loser die, and by let him, I mean convince him not to commit suicide, followed by murdering him (or possibly committing suicide himself).
Comments: I'm not sure of the title is painted or may be frosting (or clay pretending to be frosting). V Mail sounds like a modern pun; I wonder if it was a joke at all at the time. Pistol attempt at suicide. Popeye's gonna top Shorty. Bing Crosby caricature; suicide over looking like Bob Hope. Different feel to these backgrounds. I think Olive may almost have GlaDOS's cake recipe. Reuse of flood animation. And the gutter background. Golf joke. Followed by a hockey joke. Unusual running on Olive. Silhouettes. Popeye ends up murdering Shorty at the end; I don't think he kills himself, because it silences Shorty. With a gun. Introduction of mad libs? Something about the backgrounds reminds me of pre-'70s Mad Magazine. Love in Bloom plays. Olive picks up Shorty and kisses him.
V-Mail wasn't a joke at the time. It was a system of taking mail for the troops overseas and photographing it onto negative microfilm. The microfilm, which weighed a lot less than the actual letters, would then be transported to where the troops were and then the negative microfilm would be used to make a print at the destination. 150,000 single page letters which would occupy 37 mail sacks could be sent in a single mail sack and the weight reduced by over 2500 pounds.
ReplyDeleteInteresting and, as expected, not a joke at the time.
ReplyDeleteThis cartoon pretty much had proto-Mad Magazine written all over it!
ReplyDeleteThis is cut short before the gunfire nowadays.
ReplyDelete