Page 13 - October 2023 e-Magazine

The World According to Me!

By Anthony Lightman

October 2023

The Amazing Story of Popeye the Sailor Man

In early 1929, Elzie Segar, a rising cartoonist, stared at his
drawing board. He was stumped. For 10 years, he had been
drawing the syndicated “Thimble Theatre” comic strip. The
star of the storyline was long, lean, and frequently lazy Ham
Gravy with a fussy, no-nonsense girlfriend, Olive Oyl. Olive’s
nearsighted brother Castor Oyl joined in their adventures. For
Segar, this next plot held a challenge.

It seems Ham Gravy and Castor Oyl schemed to break the bank at a casino on Dice
Island, but they needed an experienced sailor to skipper their boat. As Segar weighed
the possibilities, he thought back to his boyhood in Chester, Illinois and how he would
listen to the astonishing tales told by local character, “Rocky” Fiegal. A native of
Poland, the former merchant marine returned to Chester and became the town’s star
entertainer, delighting young and old with tales of his adventures on the seven seas.

Rocky was the epitome of a world-traveling
adventurer--powerfully built, a perpetual
pipe stuck in one corner of his mouth, and an
endless repertoire of incredible yarns. And
there was his eye. One fight too many had
left him with an injury that led to a second
nickname: Popeye.

As Segar mulled the sailor he needed for his comic strip, he realized, “Why create
someone from scratch when I already know the perfect one?” And so, Popeye the
Sailor Man, based on Rocky, first appeared in the nation’s funny pages on January
17, 1929. It was initially intended to be a short run but fans of the outlandish seaman
begged to see more and the love affair with the “I yam what I yam” sailor continued
for years. The squint-eyed sailor soon pushed Ham Gravy out of the Thimble Theater
storyline and stole his girl. Olive Oyl, initially unimpressed by the burly, pipe-puffing
sailor, eventually became his devoted sweetheart.

Word that Rocky was Popeye’s prototype got out and the story teller soon basked in
his newfound fame with fans. Segar even began sending him a percentage of the
cartoon strip’s income. That ended in 1938 when the cartoonist succumbed to
leukemia at age 43; however, the Popeye character would endure, appearing in
animated cartoons and later becoming the subject of a feature film starring Robin
Williams.

Rocky passed away at age 79 in 1947. His tombstone modestly says, “Inspiration for
Popeye the Sailor Man.” Occasionally, a fan will leave a can of spinach in tribute to
the town character turned cartoon icon who was always “strong to da finish.”

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