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eltonpot β Thimble Theatre 100th anniversary
Published: 2019-12-19 11:31:25 +0000 UTC; Views: 19016; Favourites: 417; Downloads: 0
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On this day 100 years ago, Elzie Crisler Segar debut his comic strip "Thimble Theatre", originally featuring Olive Oyl, her (then) boyfriend Harold Hamgravy, her brother Castor and her parents Nana & Cole.10 years later, the same comic would bring us a better known character. None other than... Popeye the Sailor!
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Thimble Theatre started out as a take on Ed Wheelan's very successful Minute Movies strip, then went in its own oddball direction. And 'oddball' is probably the best way to describe the pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre. For example, in a mid-1920s story arc, Castor, Olive's brother, Β while vagabonding through the Β Arizona deserts, stumbles across a valley that's a Lost World, with gnarly looking dinosaurs and a scary apeman. Castor decides to kill a dinosaur, chopping the head off inoffensive stegosaurus-type critter with a machete. It's a clean kill, no blood, but as Castor looks approvingly at his handiwork, a man sticks his head out of the dinosaur's neck and yells "That's gonna cost you exactly $2000, you sap!" Turns out Castor has stumbled into a movie set, with lifesize human-controlled mechanical dinosaurs, and an actor playing an apeman. Also, Castor was a mean spirited little runt with a nasty sense of humor. One Sunday page had him playing a practical joke on a blind beggar man with a tin cup. Castor also has a tin cup and a $20 gold piece (the only coin he had on him), sneaks up silently behind the blind man, and when somebody walks past, Castor drops his gold piece into his own cup with a loud clunk. Of course, the blind man thinks the passerby has dropped a coin in his cup, and can't understand why it's empty while Castor struggles to keep from laughing. Well, Castor pulls his gag several times, then overdoes it. The gold piece bounces out of Castors cup and into the blind man's, who pockets the coin before Castor can snatch it back. The last panel shows a disgusted, angry Castor slinking away muttering "Well, I was gonna give it to him anyway." One other gag sequence- Ham Gravy, Olive's boyfriend, is visiting an antique shop, trips, falls, and ends up with his nose jammed into an ancient Egyptian vase. Ham wants to break the vase off his nose, but the shop owner won't let him touch it until he pays the several thousand dollars the vase is worth (King Tut used it as an ashtray, you see). However, another customer, seeing Ham, bursts into laughter, then tells Ham he'll pay for the vase if Ham comes home with him. The man's wife hasn't laughed in 30 years, and he thinks the sight of Ham with this vase stuck on his face will make her laugh. Ham agrees, but the woman sees nothing funny about Ham's predicament at all. So the disappointed husband cracks the vase off Ham's nose, but when his wife sees Ham's naked nose, she shrieks "Lookit the banana!" and goes into a fit of hysterics. The last panel shows a forlorn Ham looking at himself in a mirror saying "Well, at least she laughed." Aw, I've rattled on enough. Great work, Elton!Β
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That's some awesome pieces of trivia! Thanks so much for sharing it, Marc! ^^
I've been a huge Popeye fan since I was a toddler thanks to the classic cartoons, but before the internet times I could only have access to comics from Bud Sagendorf's era, back in early 80s. Only in recent years I realized how much I've skipped on tons of Popeye publications, specially the original ones from Elzie Segar, and those "pre-Popeye" comics. I still hope to properly collect most of those comics someday.Β Β
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Was interesting to see how Thimble Theatre evolved.
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Castor: Hello there! Are you a sailor?
(Guess who): Ya think I'm a cowboy?
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Thanks for the awareness!
Without thimble theatre,we wouldn't have Popeye the sailor man
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One of the early (still remembered) examples of rampant puns and word play -- naming all those characters after physical things.
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Cultura inΓΊtil, haha!
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Hey, nice bit of trivia.Β I know there was a lot of Thimble Theater pre-Popeye but didn't expect Olive would be 100 today.
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oh man, nothing like the classics to bring a smile on ones faceΒ
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