Olive Oyl's Beauty Treatment

 

Olive Oyl's beauty routine, which is as detailed and transformative as Cleopatra's. Well, maybe not. But she could lend herself out as a cooling device. 

Auto eroticism, part 2: the Popeye connection

As a kid, I am sure I saw this Popeye cartoon (called Service with a Guile, a title no kid would ever understand) repeatedly. I remember thinking the car in it looked a little strange. It wasn't contemporary, not for 1963 anyway. More like 1943. (Today, this is the kind of car I have a major Jones for.)

I don't know what the animators were thinking here. Even as a kid, this cartoon made me a little uneasy. Something decidedly tumescent was happening to this tire as it slowly overinflated while Olive kept - hmmm. Rubbing it and rubbing it. And - 

This is a wartime Popeye, and one of the ways you can tell is that they've glammed Olive up a little bit. She has nicer shoes, for one thing, with high heels, and a more shapely ass. She ain't no pinup girl, she won't give Betty Grable a run for her money, but hey, this is for the kiddies. And that turban! Hubba-hubba.

(Pre-War Olive. Compare and contrast.)

Not only is the car's scrotum about to explode, the fender now has an erection. Can't help it, that's just what I see. Popeye is in a state of panic through all this.

Now HERE is where it gets interesting.  There are these two gigantic red globular "things" that keep expanding and expanding, with this horn-like thing in the middle, and then there are more red bulges coming up behind them with sort of fleshlike creases in them, and then the whole thing stretches and stretches (with a sort of weirdly sensual, tonguelike effect not unlike the Rolling Stones emblem) until you can SEE through it - and there's even a sort of creaking noise for hard-core rubber fetishists - and - 

OMG. The explosion blows them all backwards through a wall, so that they land in different sets of clothing on a clothesline: Popeye is a baby, Bluto is wearing an enticing bustier, and Olive - what the hell does Olive have on, anyway? It sure isn't very sexy. At least she still has her fetish heels on. All these things, now that I look at it, are designed to be humiliating in one way or another. Long red underwear on a woman trying desperately to be a World War II pin-up girl. Bluto, the essence of manhood, in a corset and a bra. And Popeye. . . the Spinachmeister, reduced to helpless infancy.

I can see now why this cartoon disturbed me: it's plain weird, is what it is, and the more I look at that tire blowing up the more uncomfortable I get.

Olive's beauty ritual

Eugene the Jeep

This is probably my favorite of my many favorite cartoons from the first Popeye series of  the early 1930s. Long ago, my children got fascinated with these (they came on TV at about 5:30 in the morning, so I  videotaped them and we watched them together), and at one point I sent my 8-hour collection someplace to have them transferred to DVD. I never saw them again. But a few years ago, I happened upon a cleaned-up, pristine, re-released boxed set and was in Popeye heaven. I was a bit surprised to see these in glorious black and white, as the ones we saw back in the '80s were in colour. Later I found out they had been sent to Korea to be badly colorized, probably by Ted Turner. (Why Ted Turner was forgiven for all that atrocity amazes me, but he was, and his name now proudly stands for Turner Classic Movies, a bastion of cinematic purity with no interruptions, no edits and no commercial breaks. How did he pull that one off?)

Considering what an adorable creation Eugene the Jeep is, it surprises me that Fleischer only used him in two cartoons. In this one, he rescues Swee' Pea from certain death by taking Popeye on a wild Jeep chase. The second one just doesn't have the same charm. In the kind of cruel boondoggle I came to expect as a sullen, embittered little girl, the animators decided to un-make him and start all over again, having him delivered in a mysterious box (a gift from Olive - ?) to Popeye's door.

But it doesn't really matter what Jeep does - it's all adorable. He's a sort of magic teddy-dog with the ability to dematerialize, walk through walls and foretell the future. His tail makes a sort of jingly sound, and every so often he goes, "jeep, jeep".  But all this is barely touched on in these two cartoons - in fact, in the second one he hardly has any mojo left at all. .

Like all the Popeye characters, Eugene got his start in the "funny papers", in a highly eccentric 1920s comic strip called Thimble Theater. Popeye was probably the least likely of them to get his own cartoon franchise. Since the Jeep started off as a static comic strip character, the animators would have had very little idea of how he was supposed to move. I think they did a delightful job with him, with his spins and twirls.

This is a particularly neat sequence, and an example of what Fleischer and his animators did best. Labyrinthine chases that double back on themselves are a standard feature, usually involving Popeye risking life and limb. (This is one of the very few cartoons in which he does NOT eat his spinach. Even spinach is no match for the power of the Jeep.)

A superb moment!

Though Popeye doesn't eat his spinach, Eugene eats his orchids. I just had a thought as to why he only appears twice. Cute as he is, it would be hard to think up "business" for him. He has to be the centre of the action, with all that spooky magic power, so he can't just be a faithful Jeep trotting along at Popeye's heels. But what sort of action, when Popeye cartoons are usually of the knockdown-dragout variety? Where would Bluto fit in? Or Wimpy, for that matter? Most of the Thimble Theatre characters were dumped when Popeye went animated. For the most part, the whole cartoon series revolved around that eternal triangle: Popeye, Bluto and the raven-haired wench who holds them in her fatal spell.

I just remembered something about this ending, which only appears in the first few cartoons. When we were watching them on VHS tape, we only saw a tiny flash of "something" that looked like an inkwell. The people who colorized the cartoons had so adulterated the animation that this logo almost disappeared, or was reduced to a fraction of a second. So the game was to pause the tape at the exact moment when that frame or two appeared. We also acted out a dramatic version of Barnacle Bill the Sailor, but I doubt if either of them remembers it. Oh, the memories.

My strange obsession: the auto-erotic car

Behold, the only car I've ever been truly obsessed with: the 1940 Mercury Westergard convertible. I thought I saw one of these driving around town years ago, before a local car show, but I may have been wrong. It was painted maroon and cream, with a lot of chrome trim. But it was basically the same enormous, bulbous shape, with rear wheels completely obscured (so how did they ever change a tire?).

It was only by digging around that I found out anything about this. There's nothing at all in Wikipedia except some sort of vague reference to the Ford Mercury line, started in 1937 by Edsel Ford (and we all know who HE was!). This wet dream of a car came later, when an auto-erotic genius named Harry Westergard  revamped the whole design.

In showrooms, they almost look pornographic. The universal gleaming cherry color, like a red lollipop that has been sucked and licked and set out in the sun, makes it look as if it would be hot to the touch. The car is both male and female, with a great thrusting phallus at the front (not to mention round, staring eyes and a bow-shaped, frowning mouth) and a big round ass in back, crouched almost as if in submission, waiting to be fucked (or for that tire to finally be changed).

When you think about it, it's downright obscene.

I want to slide down that fender-thingie (and I'm not even sure I should call it a fender, it's so odd-looking, like some sort of elevated running-board), curl up in the curvature of that massive trunk. I can only imagine what the interior looked like.

 Whew.

But that's not why we're here today, boys and girls. I am about to show you some truly-over-the-top Popeye porn.

It's from a cartoon called (strangely) Service with a Guile, and it's about an "admiral" (this must've been a wartime cartoon) who drives up in the car pictured above, wanting "just some air in the tires". Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl manage to  make a hash of the whole thing.

You know things are getting a little symbolic here: Olive rubs and rubs and rubs the fender, while the tire swells and swells.

Popeye goes into crisis mode. The fender suddenly bends up, looking alarmingly erectile. This car seems impossibly aroused!

But it just goes on and on. Though Bluto thinks he has solved the problem by shutting off the air, the tire just begins to "pock", burgeoning with straining balls of air like so many swelling breasts or engorged testicles. There is definitely something disturbing about this!

And I can't find the fifth one. Perhaps I saved it somewhere else? It pictures Popeye, Olive and Bluto being blown back through several walls, leaving them-shaped holes, before falling into a clothesline and into various outfits (Bluto is in some kind of corset) and taking off back to the ill-fated car.

Which, except for the color, looks exactly like the 1940 Mercury Westergard.

(Found it!)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Popeye and the exploding phallic symbol: don't read this post! Whatever you do!

Yes, in a strange sort of way. I remember this one freaking me out as a kid. I wondered why that car looked so odd, more like some sort of bulbous tank with a nose thrusting out in front.

I know now that this is one of those elegant cars of the mid-'40s. For some reason Popeye has to put air in the tires, and of course goes too far with it. Ohhhh, that swelling and swelling, the red bulges growing bigger and bigger and popping out with more red bulges that become transparent before the whole thing explodes!

I notice Popeye sounds different in this one, though Olive Oyl is likely voiced by Mae Questel as usual. The real Popeye may have been in the service or suffering from war wounds or shell shock.  Things were different in wartime. This is dated 1946, but who knows when it was made. At least it doesn't have a cartoon Hitler in it (though that tire explosion is pretty scary in itself - not for the faint of heart).

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Out of the inkwell, into my dreams

Fatter 'n a hamster's ass!

I swear, this isn't as incoherent as it seems. It all ties in with the grand show of vintage cars I took in on Sunday, my favorites being those immense, bulbous tanks from the 1940s. There was something imposing - almost disturbing - about these things, a great upthrusting nose like the prow of a ship, giant (bosomy?) swellings at the front and a falling-off at the back so extreme that in some cases the rear tires were completely invisible. How these things navigated road-bumps without severe damage is beyond me.

I remembered this Popeye cartoon, one of the good old vintage ones from the '40s (which means, of course, that it has a mililtary flavor to it). The car in it is a splendid example of the 1940s tank. Most of all I remembered that exploding tire scene, was almost traumatized by it as a child, and now I see why. It seems to build and build, expand and expand until you know what's coming, a sort of screen-filling red-drenched orgasm that blows all the main characters into next Thursday. They blast through several billboards before colliding with a clothesline, leaving them all clad in someone else's underwear (Bluto in a frilly corset), adding to the bizarre erotic effect.

Sex in cartoons? Are you kidding? Not that Popeye squeezing his spinach-can until it spurted into his mouth had any sort of Freudian significance at all.

It was nice to find this dear old thing - strictly through a Google search, I never would have tracked it down any other way - because I've been obsessed with those bulbous, surreal '40s vehicles lately, particularly the custom-made ones that pushed all those features to a fetish-y extreme.

The kids could slide down this one, except their short pants might get caught on that pointy rear bumper. It's hard to see the rear tires, though they do just peep through seductively. A little trap-door thingie over the rear tire is also just visible. Else how'd you ever change the thing?

A lot of these extreme cars were custom-made by a guy named Westergard. I think I caught a glimpse of one of those cars once, and it was breathtaking, but didn't quite look real.

This is some sort of convertible, I guess, but I'd be too scared to get in it. It just looks intimidating.

Now we get to it. This car has a FAT ASS. It has haunches on it that are as cobby and waddly as a hamster's. It looks overweight. It looks like it has big overstuffed seed-pouches both fore and aft: a hamster squared!

Hamster!. . . Car!. . . Hamster!. . . Car!

Does this thing even HAVE rear tires? Does it just sort of drag itself around, creating horrendous sparks behind it and making an awful screeching noise? It seems to sit level on the ground, belly down, kind of like a. . .

Yes.

Would you call this a station wagon that's been left out in the sun too long? A pregnant trailer? What the fxx IS it? Like Popeye's tire, it looks as if it's about to explode from internal pressure.

Then again, maybe it's just a hamster on wheels.

Cars were more animal-like then, but this one seems so hunkered-down, so crouched. It would have to scuttle around on its belly like a badger. And the squinty little eyes on it: disturbing. It must have run, or no one would have gone to the trouble to have this Westergard guy build it for them. But it just looks so wide. How did you navigate turns in it? How could you see out of these tiny little window-slits? How much gas would it guzzle in a day?

I don't particularly trust hamsters at the wheel, but some of their antics are kind of amusing.

But just look at this majestic thing, jeez, it almost has a face on it, with a fierce toothy frown and great upjutting phallic nose. It's a straight-ahead sort of thing, a get-out-of-my-way car. Come to think of it, it seems like something from another planet. But breathtaking nonetheless.

Any resemblance to a hamster's ass is purely coincidental.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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