Sunday, November 14, 2010

Frankenstein and Popeye Revisited-An Update




A little more than 5 years ago, in one of my early blog posts, I told the story of THE POPEYE SHOW, the last of many years worth of kiddie matinees I attended, circa 1972. That original post can be found here: http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/2005/10/frankenstein-meets-popeye.html .

Well this past week, through the magic of Facebook, I rediscovered the person who attended that long ago show with me and not only were his memories of the event slightly different than mine...he had pictures!

In my mind, there were just a couple of guys in monster suits stalking through the audience between ULTRAMAN episodes and POPEYE cartoons. These photos, courtesy of Terry H, we see that there was, in fact, a stage show that I have blocked completely from memory. Seeing the costumes, I think I understand why.

I lightened up and cropped the dark photos for inclusion here but in case you can't tell, there really was a Popeye along with Frankenstein's monster, Mighty Mouse, an extremely low-rent Ultraman, someone I am told was supposed to be the Pink Panther and Heckle...or Jeckle.










3 comments:

  1. Cool! How neat to find actual pictures of an almost (shudder) 40-year-old event! I get the feeling that these kind of down-home local fun-time-for-the-kids things just don't go on any more (sigh). Looks like somebody's mom's sewing machine did a LOT of work...a labor of love, maybe?

    The internet sure is our friend with this kind of stuff - we used to have "bottlecap theater" about 1974...we kids could see a movie on a weekend morning for a handful of some certain brand of soda pop caps. I thought maybe I had imagined the movie I saw there, with Jerry Lewis as his own secret-agent double - but NO, the interwebs tell me it's his 1967 movie "The Big Mouth". Not on dvd, but proof it exists is on YouTube! I'm not crazy, after all.

    BTW, I think the Popeye character in the photos is even scarier than the Frankenstein monster!

    So cool.

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  2. Thank you! For years I've wondered if I'd really seen this or if it was a particularly crazy dream! I saw this same show at the Russell Theater in Maysville when I was 7 or 8 years old but the memory was hazy and no one else in my family seemed to recall it. Thanks for confirming it actually happened.

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  3. Thanks for confirming this actually happened! I was younger than you when I sw this same show in Maysville at the old Russell Theater and for years now I haven't been sure if it actually happened or was just a particularly crazy dream of my 6 year old self. No one else from my family could seem to recall it, so it's reassuring to get some concrete proof that I did see a bunch of animated characters mix it up with Frankenstein and the Wolfman on stage long ago!

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