Spooky Swabs
About Spooky Swabs
Popeye and Olive Oyl are playing checkers on a life raft when Popeye spots a sailing ship. He spins his pipe like an outboard, rams the raft, and the two of them land on the Sea Witch, adrift since 1678. Ghosts with English accents want the ship left alone. They grease the anchor rope, send Olive along a plank, and drop a sail on Popeye. Olive clubs him with a baton, sure he is a ghost. In the galley he eats a jar labeled 'ye king's spinach,' turns invisible, and punches the ghosts until they are solid. Olive sews them into a sail, and the pair head for shore.
Cast & crew
More about Spooky Swabs
Isadore Sparber directed, with Seymour Kneitel as producer. Larz Bourne wrote the story. Thomas Johnson and Frank Endres animated, and John Zago painted the backgrounds. Paramount released it on 9 August 1957. It is the last Popeye short Paramount put into theaters, the 230th in that series.
Themes
Making
Paramount Cartoon Studios, the former Famous Studios, made only a handful of theatrical shorts under that new name. This was one of the last four, and the last Popeye.
Technique
The short was made in Technicolor.
Music
Winston Sharples composed the music.
Preservation
The short is in the public domain in the United States. It is the last Famous Studios cartoon with that status.
Notes
- Jack Mercer voices Popeye and one of the ghosts. Mae Questel voices Olive. Jackson Beck, Sid Raymond, and Gilbert Mack voice the other ghosts.
- It is the last Famous Studios cartoon to fall into the public domain in the United States.
- The setup repeats the 1934 Fleischer short Shiver Me Timbers!, which had put Popeye and Olive on a ghost ship with Wimpy aboard.
- No new theatrical Popeye followed until Paramount's live-action feature in 1980. King Features started a TV series in 1960.
Scenes
- Popeye's pipe spins like an outboard and drives the raft into the hull.
- Olive sews the solid ghosts into a new sail and the ship moves off.
Influenced by
- Shiver Me Timbers! (1934)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Spooky Swabs (1957).webm)
