Fresno has a semi-arid climate ("Bsh" in the Koeppen climate classification).
1955
1955 (MCMLV) was .
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is one of the most popular cartoon characters of all time. He first appeared in a comic strip called "Thimble Theatre" by E.C. Segar in 1929. Popeye is a sailor who smokes a pipe and mutters things under his breath. He has only one eye, he is short and uneducated, but when trouble occurs, usually saving his girlfriend, Olive Oyl from his nemesis, Bluto/Brutus, he eats a can of spinach, and gets super-strength.
Over the years, He also appeared in a series of cartoons made for movie theatres by Paramount Pictures, comic books, arcade, video games, hundreds of advertisements, peripheral products (ranging from spinach to candy cigarettes). The character has been voiced by William "Billy" Costello, Jack Mercer, Floyd Buckley, Harry Welch, Mae Questel, Allen Swift, Maurice La Marche, Billy West and Tom Kenny, and in the 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman, starring comedian Robin Williams as Popeye. In 2002, "TV Guide" ranked Popeye #20 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list.
Popeye was created by E. C. Segar and was inspired by a man Segar knew in Chester, Illinois: Frank "Rocky" Fiegel. Popeye would make his debut in the January 17, 1929 "Thimble Theatre" strip "Dice Island" as a rough sailor for hire. While originally introduced as a minor character (with the actual star of the strips then being Castor Oyl), Popeye's popularity eventually grew to the point where he became the main character of "Thimble Theatre", with the strip now focusing on his adventures and hijinks. Initially, Popeye was portrayed as a very strong and seemingly uneducated but very savvy sailor who would gain extraordinary luck and resilience when he rubbed the magical Whiffle Hen Bernice, but by 1932, he began to favor spinach, crediting it as a healthy source of strength. As the strips started focusing more on Popeye, he began to form a relationship with Castor's sister Olive Oyl after she had left her previous boyfriend Ham Gravy, and the two would eventually go on to become one of the most recognizable couples in cartoon history.
After Popeye's run in the original "Thimble Theatre", he would return as the main character in the 1948 comic book series by E. C. Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf, which combined elements from both the original "Thimble Theatre" and the Fleischer Studios cartoons. His comic book appearances would continue for decades until the title's end in 1984.
Popeye's huge popularity led him to be adapted into animation, which would only be loosely based on "Thimble Theatre" due to the limited length of the theatrical shorts at the time keeping them from making proper full-length adaptations of the "Thimble Theatre" sagas, which resulted in the shorts being episodic. The huge success of the first "Popeye the Sailor" cartoon (which originally started as a part of the Betty Boop shorts) would ensure a long-running series of independent theatrical shorts for the now famous sailor. In the various cartoons by Fleischer Studios, he would usually have to rescue his girlfriend Olive Oyl from Bluto, his rival and sometimes friend or go on a daring adventure with Olive and his good friend J. Wellington Wimpy. Some of the cartoons take a different recurring approach, like him rescuing Olive from another threat, dealing with something alone, fighting a small enemy he cannot beat, or watching over his adopted son Swee'Pea. As these theatrical shorts deviated from Segar's strips quite a bit, many characters from the comic never made an appearance or only appeared once (like Castor Oyl and the Goons). However, other characters like J. Wellington Wimpy (who sometimes served as Popeye's sidekick), Poopdeck Pappy and, more rarely, Oscar would make semi-regular appearances in the shorts. Eugene the Jeep also made some appearances but would not be used as often as the above. George W. Geezil also made only two appearances alongside Popeye. Many of these cartoons mostly focused on Popeye's adventures and antics along with Olive and occasionally Wimpy as they tried to resist the antagonistic Bluto. While not appearing as a sailor very often (as Popeye was usually portrayed with a number of odd jobs) the stories in the cartoons would involve his brawling escapades or his adventures in certain areas of the world while doing impressive feats and preserving Olive's safety and their relationship.
During the World War II-era animated shorts, Popeye was a member of the U.S. Navy and his outfit was changed to a white Navy suit, and he would continue to look like this in animation from the 1940s through to the 1960s. During Fleischer Studios's final years of operations, the shorts they produced were WWII stories focusing on Popeye's heroic attempts to help America fight the enemy, mostly the Japanese and Germans. The cartoons with these battle scenes have often been banned from television for being considered too "politically incorrect."
Also, in the 1940s shorts, Popeye gained four nephews named Pipeye, Peepeye, Poopeye and Pupeye, who originally debuted in an earlier short within a dream sequence as his children, before being made recurring and turned into his nephews. However, their exact relation to Popeye remains unclear, and the parent of his nephews has never been properly identified.
Following the takeover of the Popeye animated franchise by Paramount Studios in 1942, the Popeye cartoons were now handled by Famous Studios, which made drastic changes which abandoned almost all traces of "Thimble Theatre" and focused largely on plots involving Popeye, Olive, Bluto in something resembling a love triangle, without many other characters appearing and with very few shorts deviating from that setup, which involved Olive falling for Bluto and Popeye beating him after eating spinach in an oft-repeated formula. Also of note are Famous Studios' remakes of Fleischer cartoons (such as "Goonland", itself a loose "Thimble Theatre" adaptation), heavily changed by Famous to remove all traces of Segar creations outside of Popeye, Bluto and Olive, i.e. "Popeye's Pappy" replacing "Goonland"'s Goons with what might be considered racial caricatures of Africans led by a Bluto-like cannibal, with the only thing in common between the two versions being the rescue of Pappy - who would go on to make only two more appearances after this (one of which contradicted the established fact that he left his son shortly after his birth). Supporting characters who were notable friends of Popeye and even had several appearances in Fleischer cartoons, such as Wimpy, Pappy and Swee'Pea, were featured less than a handful of times: Wimpy only appeared in three shorts (aside from flashback-oriented stories) and others such as Eugene the Jeep never appeared at all. Popeye's role as an adventuring sailor was also reduced to a point where he was barely ever seen at sea or in the Navy other than in a few shorts mostly from the war period, as the majority of stories preferred to avoid doing more adventurous and fantastical stories and focus on Popeye's everyday life, his vacation hijinks or the "love triangle" setup.
Popeye's portrayal in the animated adaptation (such as the theatrical cartoons and especially the Famous outings) has alternately been criticized for giving him a single means to solve all of life's problems (unlike in the older strips), or praised for bringing children to eat healthy. This reliance was most exaggerated in the short "How Green Is My Spinach," which presented Popeye as being helpless without spinach (and portrayed other vegetables as ineffective), spoofing the cartoons's own formula but at the same time providing a rather questionable message.