JITTERBUG JIVE (Paramount, 1950), is another one in a long series of the ever popular Popeye cartoons that brings forth a slight change from tradition. It presents the age-old characters that originated in the early 1930s up to the popular 1940s phase of jive talk, hip suits and jitterbug dancing, an excuse for Olive Oyl's swinging dance party with her battling beaus, Popeye (the square) and Bluto (the hipster), as her only guests. Imagine that? Of course there's going to be trouble in store, especially between these two sailors vying for Olive's love and affection. By not doing this, however, there would be no story nor any reason for Popeye to do what he does best, gulping down his spinach and beating up his advisory after taking more than what he could handle.
Conflicts arise when the modernized, clean-shaven Bluto in swinging outfit slipping Olive "some skin" and being her dancing partner to the jitterbug jive music that causes the jealous Popeye to make every attempt to interest Olive to his ways of quieter past-times. The fun begins as Bluto and Popeye play tricks on one another, each trying to get the other out of the way, with both being of equal standing when it comes to being sinister. During a game of Popeye's "pin the tail on the donkey," Bluto tricks his blindfolded pal into going outside, pinning the tail on a real donkey and getting kicked in his you know where. With one thing leading to another, Popeye's annoyance finally gets the best of Olive, who now favors the company of Bluto. Continuing to annoy Olive with some kid games, indicating that he's still Popeye the Sailor and not Popeye the Swinger, next on the agenda is a wooden tub of water with apples. Popeye demonstrates by kneeling down and placing his head in the water to retrieve the apples with his mouth. Some fun! While doing this, Bluto conveniently comes up with a full bag of quick drying cement. He pours the powder into the tub, the cement immediately hardens, the tub collapses and Popeye's head is entrapped from the neck up into the circular block. His body suddenly shoots upward to the sound of bedsprings, leaving him to stand in an upside-down position stiff as a board with Olive looking helplessly at his lifeless body. Now with Popeye out of circulation, Bluto grabs hold of Olive, places her in his car and drives away. As he attempts to do some smooching, Olive resists and starts crying for help (for the umpteenth time in cartoon history). And what about the human blockhead? Well, Popeye hasn't suffocated to death after all. He has managed to maneuver himself to his feet, but with the cement block being top heavy, he wobbles, loses control and starts rolling down the street through heavy traffic as cars nearly miss hitting him before crashing into Joe's Vegetable Store that puts an end to his travels, leaving Popeye laying flat on his back, head still encased, and no chip off the old block (Bluto really got his money's worth with this cement inducting product.) The duration of this seven minute cartoon continues with Popeye's further attempts to set himself free in hope to rescue Olive from the clutches of Bluto. (Oh, Olive, why don't you just give in? You know Bluto sways you).
The creators of this cartoon once again succeed in placing Popeye in another impossible predicament. Sometimes he would be set free with the help from an outside source, or a can of spinach ready at his disposal. With his head plastered into a cement oval, the question is "how is he ever going to eat his spinach and gather up his strength?" Well, there's always the other end, but that wouldn't get past the censors. The cartoonists could have had him crash into a brick wall, for example, causing the cement oval to break into little pieces, or leaving Popeye's mouth visible or corn cob pipe to be sticking out as other means of breathing or getting to gobble down his energizer. Situations like this can only be found in cartoons anyway, and with animation, nothing comes easy. Of course by the time Popeye's situation becomes too complex do the creators come up with something at the last minute that prevents our hero from becoming a permanent fixture in the cement industry. Watch for it.
Although the underscoring of swing music and jive talk unheard of in decades might date JITTERBUG JIVE, it's episodes such as these produced from the 1930s to 1950s that prove to be more favorable to viewers than the newer and updated versions made in later years simply because violence is the essence, and so are the three central characters of Popeye, Olive and Bluto, whose escapades have become a delight to those who grew up watching these threesome on daytime/Saturday morning television many moons ago. POPEYE can be currently seen on either a local independent TV station of cable channels such as Boomerang.