Thursday, 13 March 2014

We Aim To Please

Who doesn’t like the cityscapes in the old Popeye cartoons? Even the ones that don’t feature buildings, light posts and so on that are bent and warped are interesting, especially when you compare them to what downtown areas look like today.

Here’s the opening background of “We Aim to Please” (1934). Note the handle on top and the snaps over the front windows.



There isn’t much pedestrian traffic where the diner is, so Popeye punches it down the block. No spinach required (that’s for quelling bad guys only).



I loved the first Fleischer Popeyes as a kid. Many of the gags stuck in my mind for years after the cartoons vanished from local TV some time in the mid-‘60s. The two songs I remembered best were “King of the Mardi Gras” and the title song from this cartoon. Music by Sammy Timberg, lyrics by Jack Scholl (copyright April 3, 1935):

We aim to please.
It’s our business to be at your service.
We aim to please.
Strawmberry, pineapple pie.

You don’t have to go on a diet.
We always make sure that you’re fed.
Our hamburger steaks are a riot.
You’d better try liver instead.

'Cause..

We aim to please.
It’s our business to be at your service.
We aim to please.
Onions are beautiful things.
Posted by at 07:12
Labels:

3 comments:

  1. Deb13 March 2014 at 07:47

    There are few cartoons that are as memorable as the Max Fleischer Popeye shorts. Popeye's surroundings look more like New York than the settings of the comic strips and comic books.

    ReplyDelete
  2. J Lee13 March 2014 at 18:07

    It would have been interesting if the studio had made this short a couple of months later, if they would have used their new 3-D stereoptical process for any of the urban background (not sure if it would apply here, because the Fleischers generally preferred using the tabletop device with side-to-side motion, and this is more of a perspective shot),

    This is also one of those shorts that was into the 1934-36 transition period, where the cartoon stories themselves got lighter and less gruff, but William Costello had trouble adjusting to the required change in Popeye's demeanor (i.e. -- There are several spots here where Jack Mercer's mumblings would have fit in, but Costello's not as deft with his ad-libs).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marshall Dunn's Satire Emporium18 January 2017 at 14:57

    This song has stuck in my head for 50 years.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)