This gives the animators a change to have Olive’s arms gesticulate all over the place. At one point, she does a quick high-step dance in a circle and wraps her arms around herself to signify love.
This being a Popeye cartoon, you know what’s going to happen. Popeye’s attempts at brotherly love will end in fisticuffs and battered bodies against a dingy New York streetscape.
Brotherly Love was released in 1936 with animation credited to Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall. This has all the elements I like about Popeye—the ship’s doors opening and closing on the titles, a fun song, goofy-looking characters and run-down city backgrounds.
The Kneitel Popeyes of the mid-1930s tended to be a little more playful than the ones done by the Willard Bowsky unit, and this cartoom was one of the best examples (Willard Bowsky in contrast, had the more psychopathically menacing Bluto, so those had a little darker tone, but they also made the audience cheer more when Popeye beat the tar out of him at the end of the picture).
ReplyDeleteLook at those eyes. Olive is definitely on something.
ReplyDeleteAs for Olive's own brother Castor Oyl, who's the reason Olive met Popeye in the first place, he only appeared in animation once, assuming that's him making up the little combo Popeye conducts in "The Spinach Overture."