Title: Leave Well Enough Alone
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 4/28/39
Credits:
Directed by Dave Fleischer
ANimated By
Seymour Kneitel and Abner Mathews
Series: Popeye
Running time (of viewed version): 5:53
Synopsis: Popeye, like PETA, frees a bunch of companion animals to a life of misery and early death, until he listens to a parrot and learns the beauty of thermodynamics.
Comments: The opening is certainly a jaunty little song and dance for Popeye; the parrot's, not as much (tho it sounds like a pale rip off of the Betty Boop theme). They made sure to say pomeranian more than once (tho the second time may be "popperanian"). There's plenty of the no lip sync running comments in this cartoon. The parrot looks like he might be dead for awhile. There are limited locations in this, but I'm not sure if it saved many backgrounds; there are sufficient angles on things that I think the savings may have been minimal.
One of the shorter Fleischer Popeye shorts (that's not edited) and probably the last one that was begun in New York, before being completed in Miami (the echo-y and less fluid music track's the dead giveaway). Also the last Popeye handled by Kneitel for the next two years -- he was off to work on Gulliver after this, and then suffered a heart attack that forced him to take time off from the studio (combined with the 1,400 mile move south, he was probably wishing by the end of '30 the studio had never left New York; Leave Well Enough Alone indeed)
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