Title: Hello How Am I (note: the DVD menu lists it as "Hello, How Am I?", but there is no punctuation in the title as it appears in the cartoon itself)
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 7/14/39
Credits:
Directed by
Dave Fleischer
Animated by
William Henning
Abner Matthews
Series: Popeye
Running time (of viewed version): 5:53
Synopsis: Wimpy dresses as Popeye to get the boigers from the goil.
Comments: Title cel appears over an animated phone. Why is there an axe kept between Popeye and Wimpy's beds? This Popeye was unique enough that I remember the plot from my youth, which isn't exactly the case for most of the one reelers from the series for '39. Is this the first cartoon with a terribly obvious clone who is nevertheless accepted as the original? Watching and framing through this cartoon, it is unusually noticeably (wavy? intermittently stuttery on a frame to frame basis? intermittently fuzzy in frames?) for the official releases; I would tend to think it was an issue with the transfer, but it could be the fault of the original filming. Love In Bloom (which I know because Jack Benny used it as his theme) shows (sounds?) up in the cartoon. Popeye keeps doing takes whenever he gets frustrated. It seems whoever can beat anyone else counts as Popeye for Olive. Olive looks pissed off in much of this cartoon. The spinach looks like it goes through Popeye's neck too hard for his own good.
Just thinking about it for a while on the way back from vacation, "Porky's Double Trouble" beat out this cartoon by a couple of years. But that cartoon was written by George Manuell, who by this time was also at the Fleischer Studio (he might have written this short, but the Fleischers didn't start giving story credits on their cartoons until the end of 1939).
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