Dave Fleischer fits in a gag at the iris out. See the little lines coming from the bottom left plug? The Popeye-Bluto fight earlier in the cartoon has ripped out all the phone lines in the neighbourhood, and we can hear people calling for the operator and calling “Hello?”
Willard Bowsky and Orestes Calpini get animation credits.
This was the first Fleischer Popeye cartoon I saw. A local station ran the Popeye theatricals as part of an early morning "Cartoon Carnival"-type show. Only the color Famous cartoons, though. Apparently, somebody slipped up one morning and aired "Hold the Wire" by mistake. I, for one, was very happy about that. Unfortunately, it never happened again. I succeeded in getting my mother to call the station about it. Whoever she wound up talking to, the program director or someone similar, kept repeating that kids (other than me, apparently) won't watch black-and-white cartoons.
ReplyDeleteThis was in the mid-'70s. *Sigh* These young-uns today don't appreciate how good they have it.
As seen on MeTV's "Toon In with Me" on Friday, 2/12/21. :)
ReplyDelete"Hold the Wire" is as good a Fleischer Popeye as any to introduce someone to those cartoons. I'm just old enough to remember the Fleischer Popeyes still being shown on TV, in all their black-and-white glory, before the idea took hold that kids would run screaming from the room at the sight of a black-and-white cartoon.
ReplyDeleteAfter the Fleischers disappeared from TV, there was a long stretch of years when one of the only ways you could satisfy your craving for those cartoons was via 50-foot (roughly three minute) extracts from a few of them on 8mm home movies.