Profile: Jack Mercer

[tv star collector]

Popeye, the ever popular squinty-eyed, muscle-bound, spinach-eating sailor man first appeared playing a secondary character to regulars Olive Oyl and her boyfriend Ham Gravy in a popular newspaper comic strip called "Thimble Theater." The brainchild of Elzie Crisler Segar, he was created for a single appearance in 1929; howver, by 1933 he remained so popular that the
Fleischer studio acquired the rights for an animated version. When he made his appearance, it was yet again as a supporting character, this time to Betty Boop in the aptly titled short "Popeye the Sailor." But, it was only when Fleischer animator Jack Mercer was able to bring his wit and
talent as both a writer and voice-actor to the character in subsequent cartoons that Popeye was on his way to becoming a cultural icon.

Mercer was born into a show business family and had been comfortable on stage since he was able to walk and then tap dance. His parents, knowing that show business was a tough lifestyle, wanted their son to earn a living using his artistic talent. His wife Virginia recalled that he complied
until the 17-year-old briefly enrolled in a design school. On the first day, he sold a design for curtains and quickly decided that home-decorating design was not the career path he wanted to take. Fortunately, Mercer's mother--who was a successful enough performer to have worked with entertainers as renowned as Lucille Ball--relented and, through her agent, got him started in the Fleischer brothers' studio as an animation artist.

Mercer seized his opportunity to add "voice artist" to his resume after the first man who voiced Popeye--the vaudeville singer William Costello, better known as "Red Pepper Sam"--was fired.

Mercer's work help make the Popeye series so successful that by the late 1930s, some polls showed that the character was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. Production did not stop, even with the onset of World War II, when Mercer was called into active duty and trained for combat. In New York, the overly optimistic Fleischers backlogged the scripts, hoping that
Mercer could do them on a furlough. Eventually, though, they had to scramble to find a replacement, which sometimes meant even Mae Questel had to double for Mercer on "six or seven" of the wartime cartoons.

When Mercer returned from the war, he went back to work for the studio but also did some moonlighting for onetime Fleischer animator Joe Oriolo, who became the producer-director of a version of FELIX THE CAT syndicated for TV in the early 1960s. Mercer was the voice of all of the characters in 260 FELIX cartoons.

When Fleischer's studio eventually folded, along with it went Mercer's steady nine to five job When a new series of POPEYE cartoons was produced for syndicated television, in 1956, Mercer reprised his role as Popeye and Wimpy and was reunited with Mae Questel (as Olive, Swee'Pea and the Sea Hag), and Jackson Beck (as Brutus, formerly called Bluto).
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According to his wife, Hanna-Barbera then asked Mercer (who now also had experience writing for MILTON THE MONSTER and would go on to write for cartoons like the 1960s version of CASPER and DEPUTY DAWG), to come out to Los Angeles to write and perform character voices in THE ALL-NEW POPEYE HOUR (1978).

When Mercer was working in L.A., in 1980, Robert Altman brought "Popeye" to the big screen (with Robin Williams in the title role). Mercer recorded Popeye's voice for a brief cameo at the start of the picture ("I'm in the wrong movie!"). Many people said Jack was the best thing in the ten million dollar picture. Fifteen years later, his wife Virginia was still amused to find that every time the film appeared on television, she continued to receive a
ten-dollar residual.

Sadly, only four years after Jack Mercer was finally recognized as a voice actor on the big screen, he passed away, leaving an unprecedented body of work for writing and voicing numerous animated shorts and series. For Popeye alone, he had voiced the character for more than four decades in addition to performing the voices of Wimpy, Poopdeck Pappy, and his nephews Peepeye, Poopeye, and Pipeye--as well as at one point recording 220 episodes in less than a year when King Features Syndicate produced it for television.
Given his contribution to animation, it is surprising that Mercer is not more widely known.

It has been noted that Mercer could have promoted himself publicly, if nothing else, as a voice actor. Popeye and Casper animator Myron Waldman was quoted in 1995 as saying of Mercer, "He could have made a lot of money doing personal appearances, but he was so shy he wouldn't do it." Despite his varied career and substantive role in the history of the medium (further discussed in Fred Grandinetti's self-published HE YAM WHAT HE YAM!)
Virginia Mercer said the number one question he was always asked was, "Do you really like spinach?" She concluded with a laugh, "His stock answer and the truth was 'Yes, with vinegar.'"

[THE MAGIC BEHIND THE VOICES, by Tim Lawson & Alisa Persons (2004)]

[Mikado]

I Yam What I Yam!- Jack Mercer (January 13, 1909 – December 4, 1984)

[tv star collector]

Thanks for posting. I've got to get that book someday (hopefully sometime
next year, if my situation improves). Forty years is a long time to voice the
same character. Must be a record. Popeye has probably appeared in more
cartoons (counting both movie and television) than any other animated
character. Surprising, too, since--unlike most other cartoon superstars--he
is a human and not an animal. I think the key to Popeye's appeal was largely
Mercer's great ad-libs. Interestingly, those under-his-breath asides were born
of necessity. Unlike most cartoons, the voices for those Popeye shorts were
recorded AFTER the drawings were finished; and thus the lip movements had
to be "post synched." So, Mercer, as one of the writers, was very clever to
come up with those extra lines while serving his other function as actor.

[Mikado]

Yup, that was standard procedure for the Fleischers because recording the sound tracks last was cheaper, because you didnt need to fully animate the mouth movements & the actors could adlib.....after Paramount-Famous Players took over the studio, they went to the more common recording the voices first and animating the mouth movements to match, under that system, there wasnt the same opportunities for Mercer to do his famous "assides".